Dave Trott recently had some harsh words to say about an aspiring creative who had come to interview him, and rather unwisely fell into a large bear-trap.
His first mistake was to utter the word "story-telling", which was already on the man's mind. His second was to be unable to articulate any convincing definition of the term. As a result, Mr Trott was moved to ask 2 questions:
1. What’s good about [storytelling]? What’s new about it?
Well there's a lot good about it, and some of it is new - though by no means all.
The simplest explanation I can muster is that having a narrative tends to be more memorable than just presenting information. It's why Jesus didn't just say "being good to people is more important than where you come from"; he told the story of the Good Samaritan instead.
So it certainly isn't a new invention, inside or outside advertising. But I think there has been a trend towards integrated campaigns that tell a story - sometimes one that requires active engagement across several forms of media to fully understand. The "Why So Serious?" campaign for The Dark Knight is probably the benchmark for such efforts.
And this is probably the reason for the vague response. No-one's quite sure whether they mean the general principle of memorable narratives, or the specific technique of telling a story across multiple media.
2. How come we are using words and phrases and expressions that we don’t know the meaning of?
Because there's an immense pressure upon students these days to impress their industry elders. Here I am, doing it in this blog, though hopefully with marginally more success than the sacrificial lamb in Mr Trott's office. In fact, much of this blog is my attempt to make sense of the half-formed thoughts and learnings bouncing around my head any given week.
We're constantly told that we need to stand out. That there's so much competition for every placement. That we need to know about the industry before we get into it. What are your favourite ads? What ads don't you like? Which agency made them? What kind of work do you want to produce? And the result is, a generation of students all talking confidently and knowingly about agencies they've never even seen the front door of.
In fact, the more I see of agencies, as I go around getting my beloved book looked at, the more I realise that the less I know. I've nearly finished my advertising course, but that's only a fraction of my learning.
All that matters is having a great book and the gumption to show it to the right people. The rest is just listening and learning. And if more students were taught that, the future of advertising might feel a little more secure.
24 May 2012
Have I got any fucking clue what I'm talking about?
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To both Martin and Dave: great debate. It's possible to genuinely believe in storytelling, in a quiet and careful way. Stephen King did, millions of writers do, and they spend years sweating blood and ink and wearing down keys on their macbooks to find a narrative that has a perfect hook, an arc that compels, a human truth behind the characters' motivations.
ReplyDeleteAnd finally, if they're very lucky, they find a sense of meaning to it all, and a point to make. This is all entirely possible. It's entirely possible in advertising too, and most of the people who have really, really thought about it all know that the technique is as old as boots. Think Small is a piece of story.
The tragedy is, as Martin says, when a creative (or a planner) is led up the garden path by the blogosphere. Remember than espousing a theory is always easier than proving it through work, and that the new is always more attractive than the old, and you understand why there's more Storytelling than people telling stories right now. It's up to the individual to understand what substance lies under the word - as it was for the word Digital, a few years ago.
For instance, there are plenty of strategic arguments for storytelling (depending on your definition of the word) - the power of salience, the need for a well-defined and therefore consistent brand, a competitive set that includes conventional entertainment (y'know, actual stories), media habits, and so on. And it's a shame that Dave's interview candidate hadn't considered them. Otherwise it's a bit like going into an interview and saying "I believe exclusively in the salvationary power of print, but I can't tell you why other than that's what I fancy making."
I don't think anyone in this debate meant to hate on storytelling as a practice. If they did, they would know that using Mad Men as a cultural reference would be a little like taking a 12-bore to one's own foot, what with being as famous and effective a metaphor as it is thanks to its storytelling.
Rather, it's a reminder to us all to start with business problems, to think a little more about craft and less about jargon, and to be real. Everyone agrees: in the end, good work will out.