Dave Harries: Grant, I want to touch on narrative now, in terms of content and how we create it, and the importance of stories. Talk to me a little bit about that.
Grant Leboff: Yeah, so this is vital. At the end of the day, we live in a world where people own media channels. Whether it’s an individual and a salesperson exploiting it, or whether it’s a business, and in media we tell stories. People say they don’t like the soap opera politics, they just want the facts. That’s not true, is it? If someone produced a program, here’s all the 20 facts you need to know for this election, no one would watch. What people like is the soap opera.
It’s the personalities, it’s the I know he doesn’t like her, or she doesn’t like him. It’s the story that makes things come to life. Even something like a football match, what brings it to life is when a team plays each other and you know there’s blah blah between that defender and that striker, or that referee sent that player off one time before. It’s the background story that brings things to life, it’s the narrative. You know, the biggest selling book of all time is the bible. The thing about the bible is, essentially it’s a book of morals and law. If it was just a long list of do this and don’t do that, probably no one would have ever read it.
The fact is, it has some of the greatest stories ever told in it, and it’s those stories that bring things to life. It’s very, very important when you’re creating content, when you’re a salesperson and you’re talking to a customer, you think in terms of narrative, you think in terms of story, because that helps you bring things to life. It actually makes your message more memorable, it makes it stickier, if you like, and it makes it easier, by the way.
When you’re a salesperson, you have a decision making unit that you’re selling to. In other words, there’s more than one decision maker, but you don’t necessarily have access to them all. It allows you sometimes, to make sure or help make sure that the person you’re selling to, sells you better others. People remember stories, and they’ll tell stories, and stories resonate.
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