Power of Stories

We’ve talked a couple of times in my current Comms 421 class about the power of stories to teach and motivate people to action. You know I’m a big story teller; not in the “liar” context, but in the sharing experiences context! But I’ve learned a lot in the past two years about making stories and experiences more powerful tools of education and persuasion. The most powerful teacher is personal experience — you can’t fully replicate the power of experiencing something first hand. An appropriate, well-told, connecting story, however, can provide a vicarious experience that is about the closest thing to a personal experience.

The June 2003 issue of Harvard Business Review has an interesting interview with Robert McKee, who has parlayed his background in screenwriting into coaching business leaders on how to effectively use stories to sell their companies and products. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an on-line link to this article; you may have to get it from a library if you want to read the whole thing. While I don’t agree with all of McKee’s assertions, it’s an interesting perspective. I do agree, however, that if you can position your organization, product or service in terms of how it has impacted one person in a way that people can look at and say, “Hey, that could work for me, too” then it’s a higher impact than telling numbers or facts.

At the risk of sounding promotional, let me share two examples from the new book “Influencer: The Power to Change Anything” from the authors of “Crucial Conversations” and “Crucial Confrontations.” A television producer in Mexico City was concerned about the problem of illiteracy in his country. The government created resources to increase literacy, but hardly anyone accessed those tools. The government advertised the availability of these resources but saw little increase in people accessing the materials. So this television producer built the issue of illiteracy into a television show, including the availability of materials for the characters in the show. Suddenly, people began clamoring for the materials on literacy. Why? Because through the vicarious experience of those materials working for people in the TV show, they were convinced it could also work for them.

The second example comes from Tanzania on the east coast of Africa (a place where I’ve actually been, but that’s a story for another day). The producers of a radio program decided to address the issue of HIV/AIDS transmission, which was rampant in the country, primarily through sexual transmission. One of the characters in the radio show was a flamboyant, macho truck driver who cheated on his wife, drank excessively and bragged about his escapades. The character became so real to people that when the actor went to local markets, people (particularly women) would throw stones at him! Eventually, this character contracts AIDS, transformed his lifestyle and became committed to his family. Eventually this character died as a result of the AIDS infection. The show talked about ways he could have avoided this fate. The results: one quarter of the population in the broadcast range of this show changed behaviors in ways to avoid AIDS and attributed their changes to this radio program.

Look for ways to powerfully tell your company or product story to prompt significant behavior change — which is what we always espouse in public relations in the first place! I’d love to hear any examples you have.

Live Your Language

After working intimately with the English language for awhile, you develop certain pet peeves about usage. They become “fingernails on the chalkboard” issues that grate on your nerves every time you hear them. I invite you to join my personal campaign to use English correctly — even though it is a weird language! Now, I know I use some slang as much as the next guy — well, maybe not quite as much. But here are a couple of issues that get under my skin:

Literally used figuratively. I hear this a lot. People say things like, “You could have literally knocked me over with a feather.” Or “If I eat one more potato chip, I’m literally going to explode.” Or “He was literally driving me insane.” Hmmm. I don’t think so. Those are all figurative expressions. This one figuratively really gets under my skin! Save “literally” when you use a literal expression. Now that I’ve brought this to your attention, I almost guarantee that you’ll hear it within the week!

“Ignert” for ignorant — and used to mean “rude” instead of “lacking knowledge.” This may be a Utah thing. I tend to hear it from long-time Utahans in sentences like, “She was so ingnert to me yesterday that I’m literally never speaking to her again.” When people use “ignert” like this, it literally shows their ignorance.

Agreement in plurality. Those of you who have had Comms 421 from me will recognize this pet peeve. I heard a television news anchor say, “The church held their annual celebration on Monday.” Aaaarrggghh! A “church” is not a “they.” Church is singular. Their is plural. This is seventh grade English, folks! This issue more particularly bothers me when coming from someone who makes a living communicating! He must be ignert or something!

What about you? Got any language pet peeves?

It’s a Global World

Apologies for my long gap in posts! I know this is NOT how to run a blog. I’ll try to do better. I’ve been busy with several Crucial Conversations classes. One that was particularly interesting to me was a trainer certification in St. Louis with Monsanto, a global agribusiness company. We certified 18 people to teach Crucial Conversations in Monsanto’s regional offices around the world. It was fascinating to work simultaneously with people from India, Switzerland, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, Mexico and the United States. I was tremendously impressed — and somewhat embarrassed — by how well these people from around the world spoke and understood English. And here I am, able to catch a few words of Spanish if they spoke VERY slowly. I think this is an area where the United States needs to catch up with other areas of the world. We need to focus more on being bi-lingual or better! I’m trying to learn Portuguese right now (mainly so my missionary son can’t say too many things behind my back when he gets back from Portugal in Jan. 2009), but I wish I’d had more foreign language experience earlier in life. Get this; one of the people we certified for Monsanto is a native of Columbia who is now living in Switzerland, where she primarily speaks French, and she’ll teach Crucial Conversations in English to people across Europe. We need more Americans who can do that! Your thoughts?

PR & New Media

We had a great presentation and discussion in my Comms 421 class last Monday. Kris Beldin, a survivor of one of my 421 classes and an account exec at Politis Communications, talked about the use of emerging media and technology in public relations. It was a good reminder for me of what I know….and what I don’t know! Kris made the great point that if we in public relations don’t fully understand how new media like blogs, social media, vlogs, social networking, etc. are used and how they work, we’re going to be left behind. Particularly with clients whose key publics include people under 30 years old, it’s increasingly important to use those new media sources to reach out to them. I’d love to hear from you about examples of how you’re using new media, or if you’re not using new media, why you’ve made the decision not to. Kris also made the point that one of our big challenges is to convince clients or management of the value of PR in new media. How are you doing that? What do you see as the great challenges going forward?