Storytelling is dangerous

How to tell a story from a copy? How to find the value of a story? Can a good story be written within the existing rules? How to go deeper into the theme of a story? How to find a story and a market from a life of scarcity? Let us follow the author and read Robert McKee's "Story" to find its guiding significance for advertising.

Plato said that storytellers are dangerous. Philosophers influence the world in an open and rational way, while writers, poets and artists hide their thoughts in seductive stories and manipulate people invisibly.

Recently, I finally calmed down and finished reading Robert McKee's "Story". I knew it was a must-read for screenwriters a long time ago, but I vaguely felt that it should also have some guiding significance for advertising. However, the content was too much and the difficult translation made me drowsy every time I read a few pages. I finally finished it.

01 Value is the soul of the story

Stories create changes, but changes do not necessarily constitute stories. The street outside the window was originally dry, but you took a nap at noon and woke up to find that it was wet. The world changed from dry to wet. The event that caused the change was rain. But this is not called a story, it is called weather. But if a person is soaked in the rain, this change is interesting and may constitute a story. Maybe he forgot to bring an umbrella when he went out because of an emergency, maybe he needed a rain to wash away his sadness because of a broken heart, or maybe he got a promotion and a raise and couldn't suppress his excitement and wanted to run wildly in the rain... In short, stories are meaningful changes in life situations.

To make the changes interesting, the creators must express themselves and the audience must respond. This process is an exchange of story values. The creators and the audience communicate through their works, which is essentially a collision of values. Value is the soul of storytelling. Stories are ultimately the art of expressing values ​​to the world.

Values ​​are the transformation of people's life experience characteristics. For example: love and hate, freedom and slavery, truth and lies, bravery and cowardice, loyalty and betrayal, wisdom and ignorance, strength and weakness, excitement and boredom, from positive to negative, or from negative to positive. The cognition or orientation in this transformation process is value.

This year's hit "Kuang Bi", in addition to Zhang Songwen's superb acting skills, is more about the interpretation of life values, the transformation of the protagonist from kindness to evil, the transformation of small people from obeying the arrangement of fate to breaking the fate of struggle, and the transformation of public officials from loyalty to betrayal. Watch him build a tall building and watch him collapse. In the ups and downs of the plot, there is a collision of values. Why is a person's black history interpreted as an inspirational drama? Because it is too real. In such a situation, you may have to make the same choice as the protagonist. Everyone can see their own shadow in the story. This makes the producer a little bit laughable.

However, there is still a big difference between brand stories and drama stories. A drama story can be one in which justice is upheld, or one in which evil ravages the world, or even one in which everyone is a villain. The clash of values ​​does not necessarily mean that the affirmative side will win, as long as the story is exciting and resonates with people.

The brand story must have correct and positive values. The values ​​of great brands that last a long time must stand up to scrutiny. Your products can be unhealthy, but your values ​​must be healthy.

For example, Coca-Cola, the happy fat-house water, chose sharing happiness as its brand value. It naturally became an opponent of negative values ​​such as selfishness, loneliness, and depression. People are busy all day long in the world, not just to fight against these negative values, and tirelessly pursue positive responses from the world and life. So the brand became a hero fighting side by side, and people got extraordinary meaning from ordinary commodity consumption and resonated with values. The formula of Coca-Cola can be copied 1:1, and what is really expensive is that it has long insisted on telling the story of "sharing happiness". This is the brand value. As for whether it is fat-house water or whether it is harmful to health, it is no longer important.

From this perspective, "Sangcha" can only be a pop-up store of a joking nature. In terms of value selection, it cuts into the negative side of human nature. Even if it can attract people's attention with its indulgent attitude in the short term, it is destined to not go far.

One of the difficulties in brand communication nowadays is the judgment of values. If the copywriter does not understand the values ​​of the mainstream population and cannot grasp the market sentiment, the communication is likely to fail. For example, Ant Fortune’s “The older you are, the less people will forgive your poverty” is a very sharp and powerful insight, but without positive value guidance, it was ridiculed by the public.

Copywriting is a dangerous job. It is very difficult to tell a good story, and brand success seems to have nothing to do with copywriting. If you don’t tell a good story, you will be criticized. What’s more dangerous is that no one pays attention at all.

02 Use rules to stimulate your inspiration

Many years ago, Xiaoma Song and Luoji Siwei planned a massive "Shut Up Party A" campaign, where a group of advertising experts created advertisements for multiple brands, and Party A was not allowed to make any comments. As a result, the most successful part of this campaign was the planning of the campaign itself.

Advertising is a dance that cannot be performed well without shackles. Without the constraints of the client’s business goals, brand tone and other shackles, advertising becomes rootless and even incomprehensible.

The story mentions the American poet Robert Frost’s view: “Writing free verse is like playing tennis without the net.”

How can you play the game without the net? You can only play randomly, which means no competitive meaning or viewing value. The same is true for creation. Without requirements, it is difficult to deliberately train yourself, and you will fall into the emptiness of goals and get lost in the sea of ​​creativity.

I have a vague feeling that the overall quality of metrical poetry is much higher than that of free verse, although there is no data to support this. Meter restricts the poet's creation, but this restriction can inspire the poet's inspiration, so the best Chinese poetry is in the Tang and Song dynasties.

Robert McKee said: "Genius is like a muscle: if there is no resistance, it will atrophy." Free creation in a circle is the real freedom. Commercial creation is a better writing training than metrical poetry.

The requirements and opinions from Party A are the “rhythm system” of advertising. Many advertisers complain that Party A is too restrictive. I want to say that it is precisely because of Party A’s restrictions that your creativity cannot be as free as the wind. If you don’t believe me, go and watch the wave of productions called “Party A Shut Up”.

We have seen many advertisers successfully transform themselves into self-media, writers, screenwriters, actors, etc. Because they have undergone rigorous commercial creation training, they understand better how to play to their strengths in accordance with market needs.

A cat that catches a mouse is a good cat, but a cat that can catch a mouse in a porcelain shop without knocking over the dishes is a powerful cat.

03 Tell the story clearly in one sentence

Robert McKee believes that a film must have a theme, but the themes in the writer's vocabulary are too vague and broad, such as war or love. The real theme is a clear and coherent sentence that can express the meaning of the film's story. It is more accurate to call it the "controlling idea". The simpler and clearer the idea of ​​the story, the more the audience will accept it, the more meaning they will find, and they will compare it to every aspect of life. When you want to express too many ideas in the story, they will squeeze each other and eventually collapse.

In an advertisement, if it is a brand story, then explain the main idea thoroughly; if it is a product story, then explain the core selling point thoroughly. In his book Save the Cat, Hollywood screenwriter Blake Snyder mentioned that a good script should be clearly stated in one sentence, called a logline or one-line. Everyone in the film process is very busy, including agents, producers, film company bosses, and even ordinary audiences who are considering whether to watch a certain movie. You don’t have a long time to tell a long plot, and you don’t have the opportunity to brew emotions. If you can’t capture them with one sentence, how can you arouse the interest of strangers?

A policeman came to Los Angeles to visit his estranged wife, and the building where his wife worked was occupied by terrorists. - Die Hard

Advertising is not that important. It only occupies a small part in the entire business process. Some brands are still very successful without advertising. Sometimes the boss of Party A only gives a very short time to listen to the proposal, 10-20 minutes, no more. If you can't explain it clearly within this time and fail to arouse the boss's interest, then it is a failed proposal, and the advertising company's team has worked in vain. You must grasp the issue that Party A cares about most, get straight to the point, and explain your core solution in one sentence.

If we further simplify this sentence, it is not even a complete sentence, but just a phrase or even a word, which is the creative concept, commonly known as concept, such as anytime of NIKE.

Without concepts, strategy is like a fly on the glass. It can’t find a way out even though it is heading in the right direction and has a bright future. Without concepts, creativity is like lonely fireworks on the sea, which shine for a second but can’t illuminate the night. Concepts are bridges, with strategy on one end and creativity on the other.

No matter how global a strategy is, if it cannot produce concepts, it will ultimately be just a mere decoration; no matter how creative an idea is, if it cannot produce concepts, it can only be a writer or an artist. Of course, I don’t mean to say that workers are bad.

Whoever can produce concepts is the soul of the team.

04 Find opportunities in the scarcity of reality

Stories are metaphors for life, but what is life? The essence of life is the conflict caused by scarcity, and everyone is trapped in this eternal conflict.

Robert McKee quotes Sartre as saying that the essence of reality is scarcity, a universal and eternal lack. There is not enough of anything in this world for people to enjoy. Not enough food, not enough love, not enough justice, and never enough time.

Life is only a few decades long. If we want to fulfill some wishes or achieve something and die without regrets, we will have to face all kinds of scarcity head-on.

This is exactly the opportunity that brands can take advantage of. Even if you have no desires, they can still sell you poetry and distant fields.

In a rapidly developing market like China, product functional demands, new consumption scenarios, contemporary aesthetic trends, and spiritual and emotional communication are updated every few years, creating greater scarcity, calling for more demands, and providing fertile soil for the flourishing growth of new consumer brands.

The mobile phone market is such a super red ocean, but Xiaomi has carved out a bloody path. The market needs a mobile phone that is easy to use and cheap enough. There are already enough choices in the underwear market, and Neiwai has taken the lead with its free and independent attitude towards life. The perfume market was originally dominated by a group of luxury brands. Guan Xiasheng is unwavering in its adherence to the aesthetics of oriental culture in product development and brand communication...

The market is far from saturated, and people’s lives are always lacking in terms of functionality, price, emotion, aesthetics… The key is whether the brand pays attention to these real scarcities and whether your brand story can satisfy them.

Author: Chen Wuyong

Source: WeChat public account "Chen Wuyong (ID: wuyongzhiyong2022)"