The Art Of Story Telling (TV Commercials)
There is quite possibly nothing more focussed when it come to story telling than the traditional TV commercial. You have usually 30 to 60 seconds to capture your audience’s attention, tell your story and make them want to buy your product or service.
Studying TV commercials is a great way to learn how to tell a story in a focussed, relevant way.
One of the most interesting type of commercial is the tourist commercials of various countries. I have studied the recent commercials of India and Malaysia and I am struck by the way the creators of these commercials can tell their story in such a warm, emotive way and in such a short period of time.
Above is the advert from India, entitled “Incredible India”. Although this commercial is two minutes long, the story it tells is ‘incredible’. My guess is that most people’s perceptions of India is a large, dusty, polluted country with little or no beauty to see. Certainly not a country with amazing beaches, gorgeous mountains and fantastic beauty. There are no words as such, just images. These images tells the story of a young (ish) man, travelling round India experiencing the sites and sounds, and thinking about what to write in his post card home.
In two minutes, this commercial changed my idea of India, it brought some wonderful emotions to mind, and had me wanting more.
Above is Malaysia’s award winning advert from 2007. Here is another commercial that brings the emotions of spending a relaxing time with your family, with warm, sunny beaches, beautiful mountains and exquisite mountains to mind. Again, the story is simple, yet inspiring and there is no need for words as the images, together with the song convey the message the advertisers want.
And there is the point for us presenters. We often talk about the importance of telling stories in our presentations, yet the vast majority of presentations done around the world have no stories at all. Just facts and figures, and a lot of unnecessary words. What we can learn from these commercials is that our stories do not have to be complex or long, they just have to be simple and relevant to what we are talking about.
When we are presenting our latest product to our best customer, we need to show them how the product can change their lives, we can do that by telling stories, by ‘tapping’ in to their emotional side, and not just giving the numerical data, facts and figures. Numerical data, facts and figures have no emotion, in many ways they are not meaningful to us. By turning our data and numbers into relevant stories we can turn our presentations into powerful communication tools.