Gail Cohen IPRA Communications and Marketing Manager

CREATIVE IDEAS FOR MARKETING, PUBLIC RELATIONS AND WORKING WITH THE MEDIA What's Your Story?

"It was a perfect December morning: Sugar-white snow. Picture postcard sky. If the thermometer didn't tell the tale, you'd be ready to bolt without a coat. Unfortunately, Superintendent of Recreation Rich Bauer had too much on his mind to consider pristine views. A child had been severely injured at the agency's hockey rink the day before and every time the phone rang, he was certain it was bad news from the hospital, the media — or the worst possible caller — agency counsel..."

Want to know more? So will your readers — if you take an old approach to communicating with your staff, your public and especially the media. Tell a story. Tell it from the heart. Insinuate your story into the heads of the people you're trying to influence and victory — on more levels than you can imagine — will be yours.

How can we resist them? Stories have fascinated us since we were kids. "Stories simplify complex concepts and events," said Pam Greenberg, owner of the Denver-based Marketing for Hire. Her approach is as old as the Greeks but as new and fresh as the 21st century. In ancient times, the Greeks used stories to explain everything from catastrophes to the changing seasons.

"Today's companies face challenges no less Herculean as they try to explain management direction and [program and] product benefits" to boards, employees and customers, Greenberg explains. Is it any wonder many of us feel as though we'd have more success speaking Greek than trying to explain to our patrons (yet again and in English) why we need that referendum passed?

If you've been looking for a new way to approach your communications efforts, give this one a try. Story-based marketing programs make sense, feel comfortable and in many cases, are effortless. "Focus on reality and details," says Greenberg. "Specifics make a story strong; generic language makes it weak. Use real people doing real things to illustrate points you want to communicate. Describe situations, real-world business problems, including places and time frames."

Need an example? Consider this. A local agency desperately needs an infusion of cash to renovate the infrastructure of an aging swimming pool. Once upon a time, the marketing professional might have been compelled to produce a flyer giving constituents the skinny on why the pool needed the fix-up so desperately, using bullet-pointed facts, a photo of the pool spotlighting the objective and a call to action buried somewhere on the sheet.

Whoa. What's to impel anyone (especially a mom rushing kids to Scouts in between work, the grocery store and a parent-teacher conference) to stop and read your plea?

"I'm struck again and again by the challenges people face when they try to convince people to support a cause," laments Joel ben Izzy, a professional storyteller based in California. "It often comes down to what is known as 'the cold, dead fish' problem," ben Izzy says. "If sushi were advertised as cold, dead fish, it's likely the food craze would never have left Japan."

You've got to tell the story, he insists.

OK — so we've convinced you that trying a new way of generating the support you need on the pool repair issue is worth a try, but where to start? Try making a list using ben Izzy's eight types of story categories

36 Illinois Porks and Recreation

and work from there: Impact, folk history, values, slogans and themes, folk tales, quotes, metaphors and vision. Here's a little detail on each:

1.Impact!

Find a story that has heart appeal. Emotion. Power. A swimmer whose ability to use your pool to rehabilitate himself from an injury or a kid who made the Special Olympics because your pool gave her a place to train is all you need to launch the effort.

2.Folk history.

Ever take an anthropology class? If you did, you know that every society has an origin myth. So can that pool. Consider Hewlett Packard's modest start-up venue: the small California garage that launched an ad campaign. Your pool's folk history might require digging, but there's a story somewhere. Find it.

3.Values.

The word gets bandied about regularly during election time, but in reality these "messages imbedded in stories" are good ways to sell a cause. Figure out the value of that pool to others and wrap a good story around it to achieve your goal.

4.Slogans/themes.

Did you know poems and song lyrics are stored in a separate part of the brain removed from language centers? That's why we can retrieve them so easily. Coming up with a slogan or theme has plenty of merit and can go a long way to persuading your audience to take your side. Pools are cool. 'Nuf said?

5.Folk tales.

Vignettes and jokes come under this storytelling category and explain why political cartoons resonate so much when we get their point. Limited room. Big story. Come up with one to convey your need and you'll make inroads.

6.Quotes.

Ask ER's Noah Wylie how many people approach him on the street for a diagnosis and you know how powerful spokespeople can be. Even folks making commercials have credibility. Enlist credible community spokespeople who have relied upon the pool's existence to sell the cause and your story will be heard loud and clear.

7.Metaphors.

The right metaphor can make things crystal clear for your readers and listeners. Draw on metaphor-rich sources, urges ben Izzy, to make your story sparkle when you tell it. Use phrases like "launching new community aquatic stars," "getting teams into the swim," making renovations "a smooth sail." Once you start to conjure them, it's likely you'll build a solid list and use them often.

8. Vision.

Everyone dreams. In this case, our dream is to fix up that pool so memories can be made. Choose a person to represent this goal and use him or her to tell the story.

Techniques like this — and the others listed here — can and will do the job. "The people you want to influence don't want any more information," writes Annette Simmons in her book The Story Factor: Inspiration, Influence and Persuasion Through the Art of Storytelling. "In a complex environment, people listen to whoever makes the most sense — whoever tells the best story. If you tell a story that makes better sense to them, you can reframe the way they organize their thoughts, the meanings they draw and thus the action they take."

"Stories influence long after you leave the room," concludes Ann Oliveri, CAE of Executive IdeaLink. "Genuine influence goes deeper than getting people to do what you want them to do. It means people pick up where you left off because they believe. Story is the path to creating faith."

And in our case, using the story approach may just trigger a journey to a freshly renovated swimming pool built on a charming and compelling story that threads its way into the collective heart of the community.

"Genuine influence goes deeper than getting people to do what you want them to do. It means people pick up where you left off because they believe. Story is the path to creating faith." Ann Oliveri, CAE of Executive Ideal-ink.

May/June 2004 ¦ 37