Marketing and its little brother advertising are all about
storytelling. It doesn't matter if you are talking about a display ad
for a magazine or a Web-video for your website or for a Google Video
Ad, if it doesn't tell a story then it's not going to do the job.
When people asked us what we did, we used to tell them we were a
website design firm that specialized in audio and video, today we tell
them we are corporate storytellers. If you aren't telling your story
you are not going to meet your marketing goals.
If you want to know how to tell your corporate story well, or even
if you want to hire someone to do it for you, you at least need to know
what makes a good story; and the best place to learn is the home of
storytelling, Hollywood.
Learn From The Experts
If you want to learn how to tell your corporate story on the Web
using video, you could do worse than reading Blake Snyder's book, "Save
The Cat.' Blake is a successful Hollywood screenwriter and his book
provides a lot of inspiration for aspiring screenwriters, but if you
are like me and see marketing as the Art of Storytelling, then you can
learn a lot about how to create Web-marketing videos and complete
marketing websites that effectively deliver your marketing message and
help you meet your business goals.
Movies are made up of scenes and 'beats.' The average movie has
about forty of these scenes. In order to organize these scenes,
screenwriters describe each scene on a 3x5 index card with color-coded
notations. The important thing for us as crass commercial business
people intent on selling our products and services is that each card is
a story in and of itself. Think of each card as a commercial for a
specific product or service you sell. If you string a bunch of these
together, one for each product or service, you have a multimedia
website that tells your marketing story.
Provide The Change and Solve The Conflict
In 'Save The Cat' Snyder refers to colleague Robert McKee who has a
technique that he uses, one that you may want to consider next time you
are thinking of initiating a marketing campaign. McKee uses two
notations (plus sign, minus sign and greater than sign, less than sign)
at the bottom of each card followed by a sentence of explanation. The
plus and minus sign notation refers to the emotional change that the
protagonist undergoes during that scene. If the protagonist hasn't
changed in some way, if he or she hasn't been affected, then you don't
have a viable scene or presentation.
The second notation (greater than sign and less than sign) describes
the conflict in the scene. All stories must have conflict and
commercials or advertisements are no different.
Think of your average laundry detergent commercial. The woman of the
house, excuse the sexist reference, starts off being unhappy (emotional
distress) with her dull and dingy clothes. Her kids, spouse, and dog
are constantly creating an increasing pile of laundry that never seems
to get totally clean (conflict). By the end of the commercial with the
use of your wonderful new formulation of laundry soap, she solves her
problem. The clothes are clean and bright and she no longer resents her
family (conflict resolved) and she is now a happy mother and wife
(emotional change). It may sound pretty sappy when laid-out this way,
but that is the way it works. And that, at least in part, is how you
create Web-advertisements and marketing campaigns that tell a story.
Mission Statements vs. Loglines and High Concept
No matter who you are or what you do, you are a salesman. We are
all constantly selling whether we are aware of it or not. You had to
sell yourself to your 'significant other' and if you have children you
are continuously selling them on how they should behave. At the office,
even if you aren't in sales, you are forever selling your ideas to
colleagues or trying to convince staff to get the job done the way you
want it done. We are all salesman, all the time.
If you have been in business as long as I have you will have
written your share of business plans, mission statements and all. You
present your plan to 'The Man' and the first thing he or she does is
flip to the last page of your beautiful thirty page color laser printed
document to look at the projected financial statements. Why ask for a
business plan if you're not going to read it? As far as the ubiquitous
Missions Statement is concerned, for most businesses it has become
nothing more than a platitude-laden piece of gobbledygook.
Because we live in such a fast paced world, our sales techniques
have to be efficient, engaging, and effective. As we stated earlier
business executives can learn a lot from successful screenwriters like
Blake Snyder.
Snyder talks a lot about 'loglines', which are short one or two
sentence synopses of movie or television concepts. They appear on the
surface to sound a lot like 'mission statements' but they may provide a
slightly different perspective on what has become an exercise in
b-school-jargon mumbo jumbo.
Whether you are developing a new Web-marketing campaign for your
company or a complete new website, you could do worse than start with a
well-defined logline and title. It will put the entire project into
focus, provide a reference so you don't get sidetracked, and it will
provide a great 'elevator pitch' when you need to deliver the essence
of your business in thirty-seconds. Believe it or not, fifty million
dollar movie concepts are sold on the basis of a logline and movie
title. They are in short, everything that you need to sell an idea and
they are only one or two sentences long.
What's A Logline?
A website, or marketing campaign logline is your company's 'high
concept' idea. It is a one or two line statement that answers specific
questions. It should also be accompanied by a project title, and if you
really want to get fancy, you can add what the 'old-timers' used to
call a "One-Sheet" or movie poster style visual or video trailer for
the campaign.
To find out what your high concept is, answer these questions, and if you can't, then maybe it's back to the drawing board:
1. What is your project, website, or ad campaign all about: what is its purpose?
2. Who is the audience for this presentation?
3. How will your audience be emotionally affected?
4. What personal or business conflict does your product or service resolve?
5. Do your words paint a memorable mental image?
6. Does the project title capture the audience's attention with an engaging hook?
A good campaign logline will help you maintain focus so your project
will be fine-tuned to achieve its purpose. Even if the project does not
meet expectations, by keeping on track, you will be able to analysis
what went wrong and learn how to improve the next campaign.
About The Author
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Distributed by Hasan Shrek, independence blogger. Also run
online business ,matrix,internet marketing solution ,online store script .
Beside he is writing some others blogs for notebook computer ,computer training ,computer software andpersonal computer,Cyber Forest,internet weapon,talk about business ,business is my blood ,hasan's blog ,cyber business
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