Curious little workshop session by George Webster (@criticalmassLDN) regarding the creation of a framework for storytelling.
So what is a story? Simply put, a story is an in-balance or disruption and consists of a:
- hero
- desire
- villain
- mentor
The story frameworks demonstrated can and should be used to ideate George’s hope is that through using the tools outlined in this session someone in the room will create a campaign that hits 1 million hits online.
We can create story lines that resonate with customers using one or more of the following:
- We can scare them, create anxiety
- Empower them
- Give them magic powers
- Lie to them with comic effect
- Tell them the truth to comic effect
As this is a workshop, George led us in a round of discussions around the narrative for stories concerning Listerine, Dove, Lynx and Old Spice.
We discussed who were our heroes, what did they want to achieve and what was standing in their way.
So how to create engaging, successful stories? We start with creating a strong POV for our central character. Give this character ownership of the POV and exaggerate to extreme.
Next, you could consider a clash of context – a forced union of incompatibles. These stories are broken down into:
- unbelievable characters in the real world
- real characters in the real world.
- comic opposites
- old hero versus change hero
- hero versus rival
These story creation and ideation tools are transferable and can be applied to any brief. We were shown how ideas evident in films can be applied to creation of brand campaigns as eveident in the following award winning adverts:
Recommended reading for story creation:
Content At Large 