Class 02/09: How To Tell A Story

INTRO BY JENNIFER
- Email JD Schramm to meet with him for one hour
o if you would like his help extensively starting to build out story from data, meet at least 2 weeks in advance. If already have story and data then it is okay to meet for an hour about one week beforehand.
o Jennifer’s suggestion: to write down sub-lots before meet with JD (i.e. subplot can add to main plot)
1) Title
2) Something to talk about
3) Two discrete groups (ideal viral videos will speak to two discrete groups):
o Start writing down one- liners for your pod
o Can email Jennifer your pods’ one liners to be passed on to Oren, JD, etc.

- Building Your Personal Brand: class Jennifer will teach next semester.

How to Tell a Story Presentation
- Little stories should add up to one big story
- Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional --> great framework that make a story stick
- Think about arc
o Story climax that brings about absolute, irreversible change
o Story structure is critical in arousing emotions

OREN JACOB
- A silhouette factor
o Let’s you know what to cut from a program by judging the number of people that walk out of the show/room.
- Inciting incidence: characters at one point of story where they decide to take an action that will change the rest of their lives
o In Casablanca: 34 minutes into the film the (page 15 of the script).This is unusually late into the story.
o Ilsa walks in, Rick can no longer deny his past.
- Main story in Casablanca: Rick makes a decision to send Laslo and Ilsa to America after Ilsa says“I cannot decide. You decide for us”
- Subplot: often simplified plot; includes introduction, escalation, climax, resolution, but edits out the main part
o All 5 subplots reinforce the main plot in the film
o Can edit out main elements of the story arc, i.e. important actions can happen off-the screen
- Plot: series of choices and instances that occur in order
o Beginning, escalation and end --> characters come out as fundamentally different human beings
o In the beginning: Rick is neutral; at the end he completely changes: sends Ilsa off with Laslo, kills German general
- “If your characters don’t change, you’ve told no story, you’ve related the incidents.”

- Storytelling
- Start wide, cull many stories before cutting
o Interweave the many stories you come up with, and then boil down to the essence of each; that is, make sure the final product reveals the most important part of each character
o Everything else is superfluous or additive material
o Keep asking yourself: is this superfluous?
- Sometimes it is hard to cut something yourself, this is why it is good to have other people edit and cut for you

- Words: tiny change (3 words can change a character i.e. in “A Bug’s Life”)
- Know when to shut up
o Brevity makes the audience feel respected
o Brevity mystifies
- If you find your sub-plot becoming more important that your main plot, drop your main plot and elevate your subplot
“The power of one-liners”
- One-liners: lines communicate the souls of characters very efficiently – they are effective, terse. i.e. “Here’s looking at you kid” (there is weight in the context of the film)
o The craft of screenwriting is to communicate the feelings of the characters obtusely (around the issue).
o Screenwriters use words only to add to what the audience sees on the screen. There is no need to describe what the audience already saw.

JUSTINE JACOB
- Documentary film-maker
- Go into film with an idea, shoot many, many stories and then cut the extraneous materials
- www.paperorplasticmovie.com
- Commitment, passion and food and 3 people using chocolate to change the world.
- Characters: the more specific information that is given about a given character, the more general that character can become
o Make sure that you are not coming across in a way that you couldn’t predict
o Notes do matter when audience interprets something differently from what you intended.
o Always look before the note/comment was given.
- “Own your audience.”
- “The only time audience does not lie is when they are watching a movie.”
o Watch the audience watch your film / audio/visual work.
- Be careful about receiving feedback from the audience.
o There needs to be one person and/or one core group that has the vision for the project. You take all the notes and zero in only on the ones that make sense for your story.

- Practice distancing yourself from your project.

PODS THAT TELL STORY
- Story of Wendel – one face among many
o Feedback: powerful and dangerous thing to silence a room
o Which way will take the story? It starts down, if go up then story will be one directional. If down, it is a bit sad because we already start low.
o One liner intro was great: we went to a soup kitchen
o Physically be consistent with your story – i.e. physically do not talk. i.e. gag yourself and end PPT with “can we hear him?” --> engage the audience.
o You put audience into an emotional state, now make the audience take action.
- Viny Dotolo
o Opened school in Harlem to give students a chance
o Be careful if toggle between various versions mediums If have audio/video going in the background when you are talking, be very engaging
o Do not comment about your own story, just tell the story. Let audience come to that conclusion yourself; this respects the audience.
o Know your audience.
o Hand out information at the end.
o Can tell multiple stories: i.e. of both Vinny and the kids.
-
3 story telling tips:
- “A good story, well told.”
o A good story is not enough. It must be well told.
- “What happens is fact, not truth”
o Truth is what we think about what happens.
- “A story must somehow express everything you left out.”
o Let audience make inferences.

How To Tell a Story - Class Feb 9

Since this represents the class’ midway point we began with a summary of what we have done so far. We have learned of the power of social technology and experimented with sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. We have done an ethnography of Entourage. We have been inspired by the stories of Sameer and Vinnay, and Kiva; and in the case of the former we have been heartbroken as well.

The lesson for today was to learn how to tell a story and our guests were Oren Jacob from Pixar and Justine Jacob, a former lawyer turned independent movie maker. Oren spoke first, besides having a really cool name he also spoke really fast because he had a lot to say in a relatively short amount of time.

We used Casablanca as a spring board to discuss effective story telling. Oren said that almost all movies begin by introducing us to the main characters and their world. Then an interceding event occurs which changes the world in which the characters live at which point our protagonists must address this change by taking some form of action. In most movies this interceding event occurs near the beginning. But in Casablanca this happens at the 34th minute mark when Ilsa reenters Rick’s life which leads to the famous line “of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine”. It is at this point that Rick’s world shifts, and he must now decide how he will respond.

We also discussed sub-plots and the idea that while the main plot must have all elements of a story, sub-plots can do away with certain segments of the story and let the viewer infer the remaining pieces.

Justine Jacob spoke next and told us a bit about her career, and how she shifted from a career in law to one making movies. Her movie “Paper or Plastic” (http://www.paperorplasticmovie.com) about the National Grocers Association’s Best Bagger competition was recently released and she is currently working on a new movie about how chocolate can change lives (shocking but true).

Finally we discussed three key insights to telling a story:

1. Arcs
- Story structure is critical but chronology does not matter (think Pulp Fiction). You just want your story to follow an interesting pattern.

2. Start wide, cull many stories before cutting
- Don’t bore your audience with superfluous information that doesn’t add to the story.

3. Know when to shut up
- Don’t explain everything. Let the audience draw their own conclusions and interpretations.

Class 9: PET Brainstorm: How to Inspire Others to Take Action

Introduction to Jamie Hartmann from Taproot: Pro Bono Action Tank
- Multiplier effect drives the organization

Call with Steve Knox, CEO of Tremor, at Procter and Gamble 31 years
- PG mission statement: “improving the lives of consumers”
- The most powerful way to market is friend-to-friend word of mouth: stories
- Social media does not equal digital media; #1 form of social media is face-to-face interaction (only 15% social media interaction is digital)
- Product Adoption curve: innovators --> early adopters --> early majority --> late majority --> laggards
- “Trend setter” pronoun is “I”. Once their idea is adopted, trend setters drop it.
- “Connectors”: very similar to regular consumers, they simply have a much larger social network (5-6 x larger than average peoples’). Connectors are “Trend Spreaders” – their pronoun is “we.”

- Word of Mouth: The Right Message
-- There is a message the consumer wants to HEAR (i.e. typically advertising message)
-- There is a message the consumer wants to SHARE
-- These two messages are always different
- Messages that consumers hear typically have 2 parts to them
1) Advocacy factors “Reasons to care”
2) Amplification factors “Reasons to share”
-- High Advocacy / High Amplification – High Word of Mouth potential
-- Low Advocacy / High Amplification – no effect on market share, waste of promotional funds (i.e. Office Max elf viral marketing, Budweiser “Wassup” commercial)
- People like to stay in psychological equilibrium; people talk if equilibrium is disrupted, talking helps return to equilibrium
- Consumers talk about brands for 2 reasons: 1) positively reflects on the consumer 2) consumer feels that he has something that will help someone else (altruism)
- Brand Congruency: information presented on brand must be congruent with foundational truth most of the time and incongruent some of the time
-- Brand Foundational Truth --> Disruptive Equilibrium -->“Buzz Tactics”
- Take-Away:
-- Connectors need to be scaled in the market place
-- Messages need to be rooted in foundational truth of the brand most of the time and need to be related to disruptive equilibrium only some of the time
- Q&A
- Can check out Vocalpointe.com to get a sense of screening questions that are asked of Connectors
- Measurement is very important
-- At Tremor, measure representative population to get measurements
- Connectors are not compensated monetarily

Jennifer Aaker’s Lecture:
- Critical Words (3 types; the exact words that you use)
-- Positive words: compel people forward
-- Neutral words
-- Negative words

- Q to class: What are the words that have traditionally been used with your pod/project?
-- Brainstorm other words you can use
-- In-class exercise: Write down 5 words that have traditionally been associated with your cause THEN reverse the words or use other more-positive words that you would like to be associated with your pod and cause. (i.e. on topic of privacy: “secretive” --> “selective”)
- Metaphor Model:
-- If start to develop a set of metaphors around a business model then can get people on board faster, or at least engage them to a greater degree

- Keep in mind:
-- The words that you choose will be influenced by your pod members
-- Words mean different things when different people say them (i.e. some may say certain words in more authentic ways than others)

- GET Framework
- “Get Attention”
-- Aesthetics (that get attention i.e. bring green color, pleasant design)
-- Personal connection (i.e. joke, humor, something that resonates)
-- Surprise (“sticky ideas”)
- “Engage”
-- Fall in love (think in the context of our brands, pods)
- "Take action”
-- Emotional circumflex (?)
--- Negative emotions are highly motivating, but not as sticky or long-lasting as positive emotions are.
----> Fear
----> Anger
----> Guilt
--- Positive emotions also motivate, but do not drive action as much as negative emotions do. Compared to negative emotions, positive emotions are more sticky and long-lasting.
----> Empathy
----> Happiness
--- Powerful use of negative emotions in the right context is very important for your pod. This class is focused on getting others to take action, negative emotions are extremely effective at this.
--- The combined use of negative and positive words is very effective. For example, two words that are not aligned are at times very powerful (“i.e. peaceful energy”)

Friday is offsite, watch Casablanca
- Watch or read screenplay

Take Action Assignment (due this Wed 02/04 7pm):
- create some sort of action/message/ video/ etc that inspires people to take action.
-- For example: Do two things and write-up a one page that explains each item: 1) inspired people to take action b/c [look for metrics, use experimentation] and 2) another did not inspire people to take action b/c [look for metrics, use experimentation]
-- Keep in mind that this assignment is not limited to digital technology; just make sure to keep the right metrics in place.

Word of Mouth Spread - February 2nd Class

Hello everyone, here are my notes for today's class.

Today we had Steve Knox from Procter and Gamble’s Tremor division talk to us about Word of Mouth Advocacy over conference call. Steve has worked there for 31 years and ran Tremor for 8 years. Tremor is the world’s largest consumer research division in the world.

There is a misperception about where social word of mouth is taking place.

Actually, only 15% of conversations are happening digitally (digital is a small portion of social media), 85% of conversations are conversations, phone calls etc. I found this to be an eye opening statistic as I believed most conversations now happen over text, emails, and online websites such as Facebook. This made me realize that for our group projects, we need to do more than just set up Facebook groups, or send out emails.

Steve also talked about the product adoption curve which shows different groups of users ranging from innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards. P&G targets “Connectors” (10%-15% of consumers) who are trend spreaders which is different from trend setters. Spreaders tend to use the keyword “we” and setters use “I”. A connector talks to 20 to 25 people daily vs. 5 people on average.

You can identify connectors through research in usage behaviors, and demographics.

There is also a difference between the messages consumer wants to hear vs. share. These two are ALWAYS different.

Buzz Marketing (amplification without advocacy) does not drive business results. Advocacy (need to use) vs. Amplification (easy to talk about) and you need advocacy to have effective advertising.

So when do we share ideas? When there is a “disruptive equilibrium” (this razor is so good, I don’t need lotion – Venus Breeze). Consumers talk about brands two reasons:

1. It’s cool

2. I have information that can help you

To spread word of mouth advocacy, Brand Foundational Truth, Disruptive Equilibrium and Buzz Tactics must all be connected.

For more please visit: http://tremor.com or http://site.vocalpoint.com

Next, we talked about word associations and how we can redefine “negative” words associated with our cause. An example would be changing the word “death” to “end of life” or “peaceful journey”.

Strategically, this allows people to freely spread ideas and be more comfortable listening and talking about subjects which may make some feel guilty.

Most people who want to “do something” are associated with anger. Fear, Anger, Guilt, Empathy, or Happiness are drivers for action (in that order).

Rest of the class, we met with our PODs for PET Labs to discuss how we can encourage action and word of mouth spread for our causes.

Falling in Love – Class January 23rd

(Hi all - I finally figured out how to post! Yes, I am that naive about social technology. Apologies for this going up so late!)

“Losing control. Emotions take over, and you have to go along with it.”
“Everything else falls away.”
“You feel like you have the strength to do anything, no barriers can get in your way.”
“You can’t imagine life without that person.”
“It’s losing yourself. It’s not a moment, it’s a whole nebulous thing in here. You lose yourself.”
“Total inability to express in words.”

These are just a few of the snippets I wrote down as people in class answered the question, “What does falling in love mean to you?” (who thought we would ever be quasi-cold-called to answer this question in a GSB class?). In Friday’s class, we talked about what it means to get people to truly engage with your cause or idea . . . how do you get people to “fall in love” with it? In the grab attention, engage, and take action framework, engaging requires that your idea becomes personally meaningful to your audience. It evokes emotion. When people are personally captivated by your cause, they are excited enough to share it with others and use their own networks to draw a wider circle of people to your cause.

“You don’t see any of the negatives.”
“Scary. Vulnerable.”
“Irrational.”

We also discussed the importance of authenticity when you are asking people to engage. If you are successful in grabbing attention and enticing people to become personally vested in your cause, the consequences of disappointing these people are significant. It can be dangerous to get people excited about an idea that isn’t authentic, or with promises that cannot be met. (I like to think about this in terms of having a hook - it’s great to have sexy hook that grabs attention, but if your hook isn’t attached to a fish, then you will quickly lose the affinity of your audience.). We talked about the Dove self-esteem campaign and how social technology can play a role in keeping companies (like Dove’s parent company, Unilever) and individuals honest.

“The process is different between falling in love and being in love.”
“You just feel really happy with that person. Pure and calm.”
“Nervous energy combined with a calming, grounding feeling.”

Once you have people engaged, another piece of getting people to stay in love with your cause is to listen. What do people want? What do they care about? What does this issue mean to them? How do you acknowledge peoples’ voices so that they can continue to believe in your idea and remain personally engaged? Jennifer shared a great tidbit about how simply acknowledging what you have heard from others and confirming their feelings can defuse anger and calm them down. This leaves room for people to problem-solve on their own.

“It’s like a pot of bubbling water with the lid on.”
“Intrigued. You want to learn more, go deeper.”
“You start to think bigger than yourself.”

I think a key to getting people to both fall in love and stay in love with your issue is to make sure you have a quick 1-2-3 punch with grabbing attention, engaging, and taking action. After they have turned their attention to your cause, people need a way to immediately connect to your idea in a personally meaningful way (it’s interesting, but why does it matter to them?). And once you’ve drawn them in, then you have to think about how and when to continue to keep them engaged. This naturally leads to the need to provide ways that people can turn their new energy around your topic into taking action.

Class on Friday, 1/30

Pat Christian from Hopelab came in today, and had some great tips on how in situ ethnographies could be used in effective product development--in her organization's case, video games that empower children with cancer. Her guidance was powerful for its simplicity: she advised us to be humble and respectful to our subjects, and to be mindful of who does most of the talking when we approach subjects for our ethnographies.

She gave us a really instructive tutorial in those listening techniques, simply by being on listening end of our pod project ethnographies. In response to the team working on privacy issues, and on debunking the myth that private people are anti-social, she asked an interesting questions about private people's social networks, and whether they were linked to others who consider themselves private. It was a question that was, in itself, illustrative of the potential of the team's project of connecting individuals who might not want to broadcast their lives online.

The team focused on boosting adolescent girls' self-esteem gave us a great montage of photos, quotes and music--I myself am a sucker for the great KT Tunstall--and a good example of how open-ended questioning can lead to great insights. When they talked with girls in East Palo Alto, they'd simply asked them about their passions, and from there, realized that these girls didn't always have access to the things they loved doing.

Team College Football Reform had some great anecdotes about dietary-profiling their rabid football fan subject by bringing him donuts, only to discover that he lived more of a smoothie lifestyle. Their presentation, I thought, was particularly interesting that they juxtaposed their preconceived notions about football fans' opinions of the BCS with his actual thoughts on that much-maligned insitution. Pat offered some great tactical tips about how to mobilize fans against an undefined foe (the BCS), and how to leverage their anger in support of underdog players and teams--sentiments that could go far in the current economic environment.

The organ donation team gave us some really interesting information on what the problems facing transplant doctors really are; their interviews must have been very thorough. The deceased's families, they discovered, were really the critical decision-makers--not, as I'd thought, the would-be donors themselves. They gave a great presentation, giving us not only tons of information about the problem, but exploring ways to change the behavior of the key target, families in the position of deciding whether to donate the organs of their loved ones or not.

The group focusing on yoga classes for girls in juvenile detention offered up some powerful images that the girls had made themselves; Pat noted that those images could be very effective in marketing their cause. And the team focusing on education inequality gave the class a great example of something I think of as the "zoom-lens" approach that this class has us taking. Their cause, education inequality, is a huge one, but through talking with the principal of an East Palo Alto Charter school, they were able to zoom in on the small ways change could be enacted, such as bringing students to a university class, or providing money for books.

What organ donations have to do with picking up women?!

Hey Guys,

the first "Donors are sexy" campaign video is online!

It has the title "How to pick up beautiful women - 7 golden rules and 3 deadly mistakes"
and features Hilary and Alexander Salazar from our class as actors.

Have a look at it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJcmETPf3sY) and tell us what you think!

See you tomorrow!
Alexander