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Park Howell has a hypothesis.
“We were all on top of our storytelling game in kindergarten,” he told attendees at PromaxBDA: The Conference.
The founder and CEO of Park and Company Marketing Communications has spent 30 years in the advertising and marketing world, and 15 years studying the art of storytelling and what makes it great.
The key? Creating connections on your audience’s terms.
“The masses are the media, and we have to turn our stories over to them and get them to share them with their world,” he said.
Refinery29, for instance, is a brand that’s doing just that.
“We don’t set out to market Refinery29,” said SVP of Global Video Strategy Stone Roberts. “We set out to create content and the result is attention from an audience that wants more.”
If the audience doesn’t want more, if they don’t like something, they’ll let the company know and Refinery29 will respond quickly. It’s this ability to pivot in real time; to respond to changes on social distribution platforms like Snapchat and Facebook as they come, that allows the company to tell stories that evolve along with the industry.
When it comes to the company’s marketing, there’s no actual department in the traditional sense.
“In one facet or another, every content creator that works at Refinery29 is a marketer,” Stone said.
Brands that work with the company are learning to put more trust in the process of what it means to create like that, he said.
“It’s definitely different. It’s definitely faster.”
It’s a sentiment that resonated with Michael Engleman, EVP, marketing and brand innovation, Turner Broadcasting System, when TBS partnered with Refinery29 for Shatterbox Anthology, featuring 12 short films that aim to shatter the glass ceiling when it comes to female directors in Hollywood.
In rethinking how to communicate with its audience in digital and social terms, TBS wants to entertain fans rather than sell to them.
“To allow Stone to be successful, people in my situation need to say here’s what we’re selling, and then take a much more hands off approach,” Engleman said.
“But it’s hard, right?” Stone responded. “It’s hard to let go.”
Striking the right tone is also a moving target, as Beautycon Media, which launched a content division about six months ago, has discovered as the festival and conference business enters the media and content realm.
I don’t think anything that works today is going to be working three months from now,” Mahdara said. “How to reach an audience is constantly iterating based on the trend.”
Thankfully, the art of storytelling remains constant.
“Story is primal,” Howell said. “It is what has evolved us from caveman to consumers. It’s more important than our opposable thumbs to survival.”
Our brains are wired to create narratives and we’re naturally drawn to challenges and conflict.
“Story trumps fact,” he said. “All you have to do is look to the White House to see that.”
Take, for instance, climate change and global warming, which has been an urgent but boring narrative for a long, long time.
“Until [President] Trump said ‘We’re not gonna do it.’ Now, we have conflict. You’ve seen major corporations step up and say we’re going to take this on.”
Stories are also a reflection of society.
He points to shows such as Black Mirror that provide a look at the potential dark side of technology in the not-so-distant future, as well as the marketing around Deadpool, which breaks the fourth wall by inserting the superhero into the real world.
And, perhaps most importantly, stories are a reflection of ourselves.
“The most potent story you will ever tell is the story of yourself,” he said. “So make sure yours kicks ass.”
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