Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Collection of tracks for demonstrations
How to Build a Story
Brought to you by Assemble You.
It's time to work on YOU. So sit back and listen to practical, actionable advice to accelerate your progress.
Today we’re looking at how to build a story and why structure is vital when you tell a story. We’re going to cover business storytelling, how to appeal to listeners, the importance of demonstrating transformation, and provide some tangible examples of where effective storytelling has been a success.
Your favourite books and films rely on surprisingly similar structures. Once you understand how stories are built, you’ll become a much more confident presenter and writer. The word structure implies strength and solid foundations, which are undoubtedly good things. But some people fear that structure implies rigidity and inflexibility. They hear the phrase ‘the rules of story construction’, and they think their creativity will be stifled. Experienced business writers think differently. Structure means form, but that doesn’t necessarily mean formulaic. Guidelines are essential if an audience is to follow your story, but they don’t limit your imagination or your ambition. They’re derived from thousands of years of storytelling and are as relevant to ancient epics as they are to contemporary games, films, books, and business practices.
Here’s business storytelling expert Andreas Loizou on why story structure is a guide but not a restriction. ‘Storytelling structure must be flexible as well as strong. Sometimes a home built from bamboo is better than one made from bricks.’
In this track, we’ll jump between popular fiction (which includes movies and books) and business storytelling. You’ll soon see just how similar they are.
*
It’s crucial to note that your best story structure focuses on Situation, Complication and Resolution. The structure of Situation, Complication, Resolution has been used for thousands of years. You’ll recognise it from sitcoms, thrillers and pretty much every Hollywood movie.
We start with the Situation. This is a person going about their everyday business. The Complication (or more usually the complications) are the barriers or obstacles in their way – this could be baddies amassing outside the castle or the mum who comes home unexpectedly just as you’ve started talking to ET. The Resolution is more than just how the story ends. It must show us how the hero has been changed by their experience.
Let’s see this in action with the classic fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. The situation is that a young girl is walking to her grandmother’s house, something she has done regularly in the past. The complication is the appearance of the wolf, first guiding the girl down the wrong path and then disguising himself in the gran’s bed. The resolution, depending on how much you want your child to sleep, is that either the girl escapes or is eaten. Either way, she’s learned never to trust strangers.
Essentially, we love stories with a beginning, a middle and an end. There’s nothing difficult about Situation, Complication, Resolution. It’s logical and gives our stories a flow that appeals to our listeners. Let’s see how you can use it when you’re pitching to a potential new investor.
Imagine you want to launch a new product. You begin with The Situation. The current competition is unappealing to customers, perhaps because the incumbent companies are slow-moving and too comfortable. Their products are expensive, old-fashioned and lack quality. Then you get into the Complication. You tell the investor about the obstacles you’ve conquered to launch the new product. You might talk about how you struggled to make your technology the best in the sector or how you took risks with your advertising to stand out from the crowd. And then, you come to the Resolution. This is the payoff, where you defeat the enemy (that is, your main competitors) and become the market leader.
What’s the transformation? You’ve learned what customers really want. You’ve grown a team, built a brand, and dominated the market. Who wouldn’t invest after a story like that?
*
Stories can be embedded into an organisation’s identity. Innovative companies build their brands around their stories. Let’s take a look at Fever-Tree, and how they created a product which changed a market which was long regarded as stale, mature and impossible to enter.
The Situation was that customers only had two choices of tonic. The category killer was Schweppes, which suffered from a dowdy image. The alternative was own-label supermarket brands, which were low quality and competed on price rather than taste. Both suppliers used artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame and saccharine, in their drinks.
Fever-Tree spotted a big gap in the market. Consumer tastes were becoming more sophisticated, but expensive spirits were drowned in poor-quality, artificial-tasting mixers. Fever-Tree launched their new product with one of the great advertising lines - if three-quarters of your gin and tonic is the tonic, make sure you use the best. From the first product the company launched - Indian tonic water – the emphasis was clearly on flavour rather than price. The mixer added to the taste of the drink rather than simply diluting it.
Fever-Tree made a virtue of its struggles during the Complication phase. The company’s founders, Charles Rolls and Tim Warrillow, were experienced in luxury drink manufacturing and marketing, but the story painted them as particularly adventuring, risk-taking voyagers.
They said: ‘It really did start in the British Library, researching the history and ingredients of tonic – and then we went out to go and find them.’ The story they told was of academia and exploration. Their adverts focus on natural and rare ingredients – fresh spices from Madagascar, bitter orange from Tanzania, green ginger from Ivory Coast.
The image they created stressed the efforts they took to uncover high-quality and original ingredients. The company used the word hunting instead of purchasing when they told people about their ingredients. Mixers - once chockfull of e-numbers and chemical preservatives – were now crafted from botanicals.
The competition was portrayed as staid, unsophisticated and more interested in cost-cutting than the drinker’s pleasure. Customers heard stories of how Fever-Tree’s suppliers were actually excited to work with a company that prioritised taste. As Warrilow said, ‘we told them not to worry about the price because we just want to get the best ingredients we can.’
The company’s next Complication was to get customers to pay a premium price for a premium product. The marketing team spread their foundation story to bartenders around the world, selling the tale of their mixer with the care and personal attention that was normally reserved for top-end spirits. The mixer fuelled the craft gin revolution, which led to new brands and even more demand for Fever-Tree.
The big break for Fever-Tree’s quintessentially British drink happened in Spain. A G&T made from Hendrick’s gin and Fever-Tree tonic became the signature drink at el Bulli, once the best restaurant in the world. The drink was served in massive balloon glasses with lots of ice and a fair amount of fanfare. The image was priceless. A slightly humble drink had been transformed into a staple at a restaurant with three Michelin stars.
So, you’re asking, what’s the Resolution that ends the Fever Tree story? Twenty years after its launch, Fever Tree owns 28% of the total retail market for mixers. It’s the most-served tonic in the World’s 50 Best Bars. And as you sip on your drink of choice, you can check that its stock market capitalisation is touching £2 billion. Cheers!
So the story of Fever-Tree is one of clear transformation and progress. What use are conflict and struggle if they don’t change the hero? We know that Fever-Tree as a company has changed. But what transformation has happened to their customers?
They’ve got used to paying three or four times what they used to pay for a mixer. They enjoy a better-tasting drink because they’ve spent more. They appreciate a little splash of luxury in their everyday lives.
Here’s Andreas Loizou. ‘Fever-Tree teaches us a very important lesson about business storytelling. If you want to make an impact on the customer, forget about your company for a moment. Don’t talk to customers about how many people you employ or if your distribution centre is in Leeds or Lahore. They don’t care. What’s important is that they are the hero in their story. Focus on how your product transforms them, not you.’
*
Transformation occurs when your hero crosses the dramatic gap. A hero needs to struggle for us to care about them. If your journey to being a billionaire has been straightforward, no one will be interested. You need to tell people about the challenges you faced and defeated. These could be external (a villain called economic recession has cut disposable income) or internal (the hero suffers from an illness or comes from a marginalised social background).
One storytelling technique that works well here is to highlight the differences between the hero’s world at the Beginning and the End of the story. Yesterday the hero was bored, frustrated, lacking purpose, unskilled and unhappy. Tomorrow the hero will be happy, rich, content, skilled, excited and well. The difference between yesterday and tomorrow is called the dramatic gap.
The dramatic gap is where all the Complications take place. The more obstacles your hero has to face, the less certain the end of the story is. There has to be enough at stake for the audience to worry about whether the hero succeeds. If you have the audience on your side, they will feel the same emotions – fear and joy – that the hero feels. These feelings bind the audience to the hero, and that bond can be long-lived and extremely powerful.
To summarise, the best stories have always relied on strong structures. Your business stories are no different. The Situation, Complication, Resolution format gives your stories a logical flow. However you organise your story, make sure that you focus on transformation. And remember, the hero of a story can be your customer rather than your company.
Marketing people often talk about a brand ‘speaking’ to a customer. Go for a quick walk around your home. What brands – food, drink, clothing, technology – have successfully spoken to you over the years? Can you remember the story they originally told you?
That’s all for today. Have a rewarding week!