It’s been shown that people respond to stories – not data.
When information is put into a story that elicits an emotional response, it has more impact. That’s why companies go beyond product placement, preferring to have their products be part of the story on successful TV shows. On “Modern Family” an entire episode revolved around TV dad, Phil, wanting to get an iPad for his birthday. The show aired two days prior to the release of the iPad. We all related to Phil’s pursuit of the uber-cool iPad, surely a factor in it becoming the “I’ve-got-to-have-it” product of the year. It cost the company nothing and Apple got a formidable amount of bites.
Note to Apple: Send
Judy Carter an iPad and she’ll work you into her life story.
Stories are a
powerful tool for marketing your products. And you need not be Apple to use
them. As a motivational speaker, my Back
of the Room (BOR) sales exploded when, rather than simply announcing that I
would be SELLING my book, I told a STORY about my book.
Marketing Through
Storytelling
Basic Story Structure
is this -- a hero starts with a MESS and ends in SUCCESS. It may not be the success
he or she had in mind, but in all effective stories, our hero learns something
and benefits.
The story of my first book, Stand-Up Comedy: The Book starts with how I lost my way after my mom died. I quit
working comedy clubs and wrote a book on how
to do stand-up. It was widely read – by 59 book agents, all of whom rejected
it. The story got more miserable as I made one last attempt to get a role on a
sitcom and found out at the airport that the flight I’d booked to get to the
audition had been cancelled. Watching a long line of angry people mouthing off
at the United Airlines agent, I made a choice to express compassion and
appreciation. As I say in my speech on “Laughing Your Way out of Stress:”
“No one can MAKE you
angry. Someone can MAKE you a Daiquiri. Someone can MAKE you pregnant… in that
order. But, no one can MAKE you angry. You can MAKE a humor choice.”
Because I connected with the gate attendant and gave him the
only laugh he probably had that day, he put me in First Class. As I was
unfolding my linen napkin, I found out I was sitting next to a literary agent,
one of the few who HADN’T rejected me. She offered to read my book. Random
House liked it. So did Oprah. The rest is history. The sitcom I never
auditioned for was “Go Bananas.” It didn’t go
anywhere, but my career did. I became a best-selling author with a speaking
career.
That’s when I hold up my book, and now it’s no longer just a
book, but a success story that they want to be a part of.
Thank you, again, Judy, for keeping me tied in my chair as I write "My Story." The dynamics between the divorced Mother, divorced sisters, and the young up-and-coming entrepreneur daughter, who is shacking up unsuccessfully, is making ME laugh!
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