Storytelling: Super Bowl 2010 Commercials

by Terry Gault

We saw some great Super Bowl commercials this year!  My personal favorite was the Google Parisian Love Story ad.  Google nailed it – telling a powerful and moving story with video screen captures entirely with the Google search platform and simple music and sound effects.

This endearing video was actually about Google's products and users, and how they interact, but it won hearts through elements of storytelling.

Elements of Effective Stories

• Reveal something personal about yourself, the presenter. What are you really like? What is the company really like?
• Use humility and vulnerability to build empathy. Don’t relate a personal success; instead, describe a personal difficulty so the audience will empathize with you.
• Choose an incident or emotional experience – a common reference point – with which the audience can identify.
• Develop characters for your story and make them come to life. Let the audience see the emotions of the characters in your story.
• Use archetypes — universal symbols like a mother, teacher, fool, powerful leader – to reel in your audience and help them relate to your story on a deeper level.
• Use details to hook the audience. Stimulate their imagination by using exact times, dates, what others looked like. Create relevant details and visual images.
• Conflict is at the heart of any good story. Describe a struggle. People understand struggles between opposing people or forces as well as in themselves.
• Create dialogue for your characters. Use specific quotations and different voices so the audience feels they are there, eavesdropping on the conversation.

Creating a Story

1. Opening: A story is anchored in time and space. For example: "Last night I was describing this workshop to my spouse and…"
2. Body: Build your story with significant personal events, vivid details and clearly drawn characters. Add depth and dramatic impact with conflict, archetypes, vulnerability and dialogue. Make sure to include a common reference point. Connect with your audience and build trust.
3. Conclusion: End strongly and segue to a relevant point. Build a transitional bridge from your story back to a pertinent topic in your presentation.

Personal stories will help you gain empathy and get the audience rooting for you.  Come up with 2 – 3 stories that you can develop and plug into different presentations. 

I GUARANTEE that you will find that storytelling will transform your professional and personal communications in powerful and pleasurable ways.

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