Crafting a Compelling Narrative: How storytelling can bring your PR efort to life, by Dick Pirozzolo was published in the February 2013 Public Relations Tactics, an official PRSA publication.
A version of that article appears below.
Question: What do you know about the whaling industry of the 19th century and where did you learn it?
Answer: Most of us will immediately say, Moby Dick.
Whatever we know and remember about whaling is probably thanks to Herman
Melville’s story of
Ahab and the Great White Whale. We most likely didn’t learn
about whaling from thick history books, newspaper accounts and certainly
not trade magazine articles in Whaling Age on the finer points of
harpoon selection.
It’s the great story – the narrative – that makes the events and reality more vivid and the details stick in our memory.
What does this have to do with public relations?
Consider the value of using the principles of fiction to tell our clients’. Consider the NASA space program for example. Sure, we saw and read about plenty of Space Shuttle launches and have seen scratchy news footage of the Mercury program and the lunar landing. But we got our feeling for the camaraderie, the teamwork and the danger from the stories we read or movies we saw such as The Right Stuff or Apollo 13. Likewise, Tom Wolfe made the roots of NASCAR come alive in his account of Junior Johnson, “The Last American Hero”, that he wrote for Esquire www.esquire.com. Spies? Ian Flemming and John Le Carré made the intrigue — and tools of the trade come alive for us.
The list goes on. “We remember a wealth of details and identify with the heroes because the events are knit together by the narrative, the story. As children, we even learned important life lessons about planning, prudence, trust and self-reliance from the three little pigs, Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood,” says veteran TV journalist Barry Nolan, a former Hard Copy anchor.
Explains Nolan, “A compelling narrative makes stories stick. A love of stories and the ability to recall narrative is probably hardwired into our DNA. Cavemen hunted bison and afterwards told stories of the hunt around a smoky fire. If a group was lucky, it had a good storyteller who retold the story of the hunt and helped spread valuable information about what worked and what didn’t. Remembering the details of the successful hunt would mean the difference between survival and starvation.”
Add emotion to a story, and the details are even stickier.
Too bad PR professionals so often chuck "story" and instead sell the blah, blah, blah benefits of new products or services in ho-hum announcements and press releases with contrived quotes when a great story can make their message so much more powerful.
Let’s consider the power of "story" to pitch the media on
behalf of the organizations we represent. Think of the memorable corporate stories. They
are about Jobs and Wozniak, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Mark Zuckerberg,
Bill and Melinda Gates, Jack Welch.
We can incorporate the elements of “story” that made Apple, a Vermont Ice cream company, Facebook, Microsoft and GE come alive by making sureour pitches have the same elements that make fiction so powerful and — memorable
Character - who are the people and what makes them interesting? I want to get to know about the iPhone 5, not because it is thinner, but because of Steve Jobs’ legacy. Is your client a Steve Jobs or Richard Branson ready to be unleashed on the public? Don’t hold back, make cultivating personality part of your strategy.
Story Arc - is there a beginning a middle and end? Is there continuity? If so it will support your brand and build equity. What would the Trump brand be if it were nothing more than another developer slapping his name on another skyscraper?, The Trump brand is inexorably tied to Donald Trump, a character whose saga continues to evolve and surprise us. Love him or hate him, we see him get knocked to the canvas a few times, and come back with a right hook. We keep watching, wanting to know what’s next for The Donald.
Conflict - where is the tension in your story? Jobs’s and Wosniak’s conflicts made the Apple story even more compelling. And if anyone in PR thinks we can only tell good news, be mindful: all art – literature, music, sculpture – is the resolution of conflict and with conflict comes suspense and surprise. That’s what sucks us in till the end. As Nolan calls it, “a reveal.”
Relationships – every movie is at its core a love story. “Casablanca’s” Rick and Ilsa have endured for over 70 years. Why not find the love story in your client pitches? Bill and Melinda, Ben and Jerry, Barack and Michelle are three examples that make us want to know more about these people because love is such a universal emotion.
How does it end - do you have a happily ever after? How were the problems of the Volt or the iPhone 5’s maps resolved? Who solved the problem? What was their vision? Who stood in the way? Don’t shy from conflict and problems. It makes your story and your characters real and your organization respected.
Think Visually – “All media, including print, are becoming more visually driven than ever before,” Nolan reminds us. How did we know how hard Rocky trained? Because they told us? No. We know, because we saw him pounding a side of beef into hamburger in that classic meat locker scene.
Props – In Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie the props – the glass animals, the fire escape, the portrait of an absentee father – drive the story and reveal the characters and their development. How do you set the stage for your CEO’s press exposure. For examples, consider the White House beer summit or how burgers, subs, corn dogs and your name it make presidents and politicians look and feel like just plain folks to their constituents.
If you still think “story” and a great narrative do not matter, remember, without story Casablanca would be but a pushpin on a map, and Ben & Jerry’s would be just another ice cream stand.
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Dick Pirozzolo, APR is the founder of Pirozzolo Company Public Relations in Boston, Massachusetts He delivers seminars on public relations practices to executives in the US, Malaysia and Indonesia. Pirozzolo Company figured significantly in fostering reconciliation and the opening US trade with Vietnam.
