But Story Telling is Supposed to Make Sense
Storytelling, storytelling, storytelling. Everybody loves stories. We read books, we watch movies, we gossip with friends – we all love a good story. Good copywriters also know that stories are a powerful weapon to sell products.
But goodness gracious, our stories have to make sense!!
I just saw the movie Stay. This movie with Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor asked us to ask ourselves, “What is reality?” by presenting us with a story that made no sense, but had some pretty cool direction and decent acting. But the acting and direction couldn’t save this movie from being a total disgrace.
If you want some background on the story, read this review
Maybe as humans we like safety and we crave an explanation for everything. If these reviews written by movie-goers are any indication, I think that’s the case.
If we all have budgets with millions of dollars, I suppose we could alienate our audience like this. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have millions of dollars to throw around. I want to sell products, so when I tell a story it must make sense to my customer.
My husband is a big storytelling fan (a science fiction nut, in fact) and says the best stories allow you to temporarily suspend your disbelief (which Stay asks us to do), but it has to be based in some kind of logic and reality at the same time.
Truer words have never been spoken.
So, let’s relate this to your copywriting. Do your stories make sense? If you are selling a product in limited quantity, do you give a plausible reason why? If you tell your visitors that you’re a stay at home mom on your home page…is it actually important to selling your products? As we’ve learned in the past weeks, stories can provide a sort of social proof to our selling…but if we’re not making sense or aren’t relevant, we aren’t proving anything.
What makes a good story then? Well, every product is different, of course…so I can’t tell you what story to tell in your copy. But let’s take the stay at home mom example. If you sell candles, telling people you’re a stay at home mom trying to earn money to stay home with the kids probably isn’t going to help you much. But if you’re trying to get people to sign up for your candle-selling opportunity – then it would make great sense to talk about your being able to stay home with your kids.
If you sell an information product that teaches men how to pick up women, then it makes perfect sense to tell stories about your successes and failures in the dating world. And realize the successes are just as important as the failures – they allow your reader to relate to you and adds reality to your story. But if you’re selling an ebook on Forex trading…ummmm…don’t tell them about how you can pick a woman out of the crowd and then proceed to get her to give you her phone number. ;-)
And a final bit of advice, if you have an extra $10.95 to go see movie (that’s how much it costs around here)…don’t go see Stay. Argh!
But goodness gracious, our stories have to make sense!!
I just saw the movie Stay. This movie with Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor asked us to ask ourselves, “What is reality?” by presenting us with a story that made no sense, but had some pretty cool direction and decent acting. But the acting and direction couldn’t save this movie from being a total disgrace.
If you want some background on the story, read this review
Maybe as humans we like safety and we crave an explanation for everything. If these reviews written by movie-goers are any indication, I think that’s the case.
If we all have budgets with millions of dollars, I suppose we could alienate our audience like this. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have millions of dollars to throw around. I want to sell products, so when I tell a story it must make sense to my customer.
My husband is a big storytelling fan (a science fiction nut, in fact) and says the best stories allow you to temporarily suspend your disbelief (which Stay asks us to do), but it has to be based in some kind of logic and reality at the same time.
Truer words have never been spoken.
So, let’s relate this to your copywriting. Do your stories make sense? If you are selling a product in limited quantity, do you give a plausible reason why? If you tell your visitors that you’re a stay at home mom on your home page…is it actually important to selling your products? As we’ve learned in the past weeks, stories can provide a sort of social proof to our selling…but if we’re not making sense or aren’t relevant, we aren’t proving anything.
What makes a good story then? Well, every product is different, of course…so I can’t tell you what story to tell in your copy. But let’s take the stay at home mom example. If you sell candles, telling people you’re a stay at home mom trying to earn money to stay home with the kids probably isn’t going to help you much. But if you’re trying to get people to sign up for your candle-selling opportunity – then it would make great sense to talk about your being able to stay home with your kids.
If you sell an information product that teaches men how to pick up women, then it makes perfect sense to tell stories about your successes and failures in the dating world. And realize the successes are just as important as the failures – they allow your reader to relate to you and adds reality to your story. But if you’re selling an ebook on Forex trading…ummmm…don’t tell them about how you can pick a woman out of the crowd and then proceed to get her to give you her phone number. ;-)
And a final bit of advice, if you have an extra $10.95 to go see movie (that’s how much it costs around here)…don’t go see Stay. Argh!
2 Comments:
I saw the movie on the weekend and I have to agree with you. It was totally lazy storytelling. If you are going to tell a story, there must be some logic or reason to it. In other words, you have to be accountable to your viewers or readers. If there is no reason to believe your story (or in the case of Stay, if they can't even understand your story), you've lost.
I like how you tied this story into marketing. :)
outragiuos! waste of money and good talent. I want a refund....the end
of the the movie explains that the rest of the movie meant nothing...
great! what a waste of my time...i understand a movie is like a piece of art...it is what it is....well
this is the art you get from dropping ten gallons of paint out a window.....nice work!
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