Even the most sanitized business employs real people solving thorny problems for appreciative customers. Tell us more!
By Roy Harryman
On one hand, we don’t want drama. But on the other hand, we actually do.
The entire entertainment-industrial complex is built around our desire for things to “splode” – whether in a rom-com, sci-fi or whodunnit?
True, we don’t want drama from our kids or colleagues, but we seem to dig it everywhere else.
Why is this? I’m not a neuroscientist, but I’ve heard enough of them say we’re wired for stories that I’ll go ahead and repeat it: We’re wired for stories.
Not sure? Say you’ve watched an entire season of a dramatic series and are on the edge of your chair during the finale. Then some dunderheaded weatherperson breaks in with news about a microburst in Iola. To say you would be disappointed would be putting it mildly.
Switching to work mode
But work, well that’s another story isn’t it? Or is it? It's easy to say our industry is boring and to settle for churning out unintelligible blog or social posts full of gobbledygook. This is what most everybody does, and the boss is probably happy with it. It’s sanitized and indecipherable. Who can complain?
Picture me, waiving my hand wildly right now. That’s me complaining. And here is a grievance. I was (thankfully) hired to write a B2B paper on several industry trends. While the core content (the trends) would have been mildly interesting to insiders, it could easily start to veer toward “meh” territory for prospects and clients. Therefore, I went to great pains to illustrate each point with a problem-solution, real-life story from the news. The goal was for the stories to keep propelling the reader on to the next point, and ultimately the call to action.
My work was accepted and I was paid (hooray!). I learned later, however, that the publisher removed all the stories and just left the skeleton. It boggles the mind. Don’t we want to engage our prospects in a way that they might possibly read something we create for them?
What’s happening here?
I believe things break down when we stop viewing our work through the lens of the intended reader (or viewer). We forget that people love drama, problem-resolution, tension-and-release, heroes and villains.
““In business, we can get stuck in a mutually reinforcing feedback loop of jargon and gibberish. ‘Hey, be sure to include ‘leverage’ and ‘collateral’ in their a few more times. The CFO will love that!’””
Yet if we can step back from the machine ever so slightly, we can unearth compelling stories about our brand.
My experience
I’ve had the privilege of writing for a B2B insurance broker for a few years now. Insurance? That’s lame right? Actually no. When you get to the core of it, insurance is about crisis. And crisis is drama:
A roof blows off of a school after hours – where will the kids go?!
A church building suffers a debilitating fire – what will the congregation do?
An accounting manager is caught stealing from the nonprofit cookie jar – true crime!
There is no shortage of real-life ways to illustrate the good that insurance coverage can do. While few people have an innate interest in insurance, everyone wants to know how the accountant got away with bilking the food bank. And they want to protect themselves from other potential ne’er-do-wells. “Are you familiar with financial bonding (embezzlement) insurance?”
So what can we do?
Where to begin? Start by identifying the problems our product or service is created to solve. Then find examples of this problem hitting people where they live. The stories could come from interviews with actual customers or news articles. Or both. When writing, we can tactfully and creatively match our “fix” to the customers’ point of pain. In doing so, we can demonstrate relevance while avoiding opaque corporate-speak and other mind-numbing verbiage.
So bring the drama to work. Then pass it on to your customers and prospects. When you capture their attention, the good guys win, the couple gets hitched and the evil nemesis (the competition) is banished.
Roy Harryman is the owner of Roy Harryman Marketing Communications and loves a great story, usually of the non-fiction variety.
