Storytelling Tricks of 3 BIG companies explained (and 3 easy story formulas)
A 3,182 word guide to storytelling for marketing nerds
Big brands carefully craft stories in their advertising. You’re going to learn how they do it, why they do it, and how you can do it too.
First we’re going to look at some advertising campaigns — old and new. I’ll break these ads down and show you what techniques businesses like Coke, Dove, and Verizon use to get you to connect with their ads.
I’m going to break down the underlying concepts that are at play in each one of them. All along the way I’ll show you how to use these storytelling techniques to give your own ads a powerful sales punch.
Looking at some advertising campaigns…
1. Verizon — Dead Zones (Creepy Neighbor)
What happens: There’s a short pan over a house. There’s a moving van parked out front, and a mover can be seen unloading boxes. The camera cuts to a couple taking a vase out of one of their moving boxes.
They’re interrupted by a woman, presumably a neighbor as you can see the very corner of the house next door.
She basically says to them “I’m surprised you bought this old house… Even after what happened there.” She really lays it on too, you can feel the lightning strike and villainous laughter that could come after that…
The couple asks what happened, and she goes on to explain that “The last people who lived here went crazy because they couldn’t get cell phone service. It’s a dead zone.”
Both the husband and wife give her a quizzical look and one replies “Oh, well we have Verizon.”
The neighbor is taken aback, clearly Verizon users don’t have dead zones. She realizes her anecdote is now moot, and throws back “Well… The lawn is still bad” as she walks off.
Two storytelling concepts to know… The first is the concept of “a shared cultural experience”. The second concept involves the first line of dialogue… Can you figure it out? Hint: It goes back to what we were talking about in last week’s post about Storytelling.
What’s a “cultural experience” anyway? If you went to an American high school, and someone starts to tell a story about their prom night, you’d probably know what they’re talking about. You may have went to a prom of your own, or know people who did, or you have an opinion about proms. That’s a shared cultural experience.
Verizon chose “Moving into a home” as the cultural experience. Millions, if not billions, of Americans have moved into a house before. When you think about it, cell phones are a product that most people use (a mass market product), right? So picking an experience that at least 60% of the US population has had is a smart choice for Verizon.
But shared experience is even more powerful than that. You don’t necessarily need to share the exact experience, even something similar will do.
So not only does Verizon’s commercial resonate very strongly with the 60% of people in America who own a home — but also with people who have moved anywhere. To an apartment, to a dorm, doesn’t matter a lot of people know what moving is like.
Viewers already have an almost built in context for your commercial, so tapping into shared cultural experiences is an easy way to grab the attention of your target demographic.
What about the 1st line of dialogue?
It forces you to immediately ask a question! Questions are the tool that storytellers use to shape the story. You can learn more about using questions to shape the story arch here. The short version is that an unanswered question, basically, bothers you into being curious about “Why?”. All stories essentially answer the question “What happens next?”, until the end.
This doesn’t have to be a literal question (although it can be), it’s also arranging the dialogue to imply a question. When the creepy lady says “I’m surprised that you bought this house, especially after what happened there” the writers are setting YOU up to ask yourself “What happened there?”.
The first line of dialogue also does a great job of giving the reader other clues about the context of the story in a really short, efficient way. From one line of dialogue we learn:
- There was an incident here before
- It was bad
- It affected a whole family
- Whatever happened made them go crazy
How does Verizon use stories to sell? I would say that in this ad the writers created a story about the main product benefit. The story starts out by defining the pain point (people who live — or spend time in — places with bad reception), and positioning their brand as the solution (Verizon slays dead zones).
Let’s talk about the Michael Bay TV spot too.
At the time, tons of Michael Bay films like Transformers and Friday the 13th where doing well in the box office (lots of people have seen them? Check). A common criticism of anti-Bay film critics at the time was “Oh Michael just loves his explosions”, so there’s a lot of the ad’s plot sequence.
Verizon still presents a problem, and positions themselves as a solution. It happens pretty quick so if it doesn’t resonate you then you may miss it…
But Michael Bay is a film producer — and creatives who deal with huge files like that need a fast internet connection to perform at their jobs.
If you’re a creative who’s tired of slow internet, Verizon will give you the speed you need to be awesome.
2. Coke — Friendly Twist
What Happens: The video opens on some young adults sitting by themselves. There’s some slow guitars.
Overlaid text says you’re looking at the first day of college. It’s scary to meet new people and notice that no one is talking to each other. So good old Coke has a plan to help get students talking to each other.
Note that the music picks up, vocals appear for the first time mirroring what’s about to happen on screen…
Then there are some zoomed in shots of students grabbing coke out of a fridge. The video goes on to explain that you need someone else’s help to open to soda — only 2 bottle caps twisted together will open it.
While that’s going on they show some thoughtful footage of the design, manufacturing, and all of the people behind this cap design.
How does Coke use stories to sell? Coke is the pioneer of emotional advertising. In the beginning Coke’s campaigns talked about the standard soda talking points…
It’s refreshing, it’s a high quality soda…
By the mid(ish)-1900’s Coke advertising took a different direction. Instead of talking about the boring soda stuff (whether it’s the best tasting or most refreshing), Coke positioned themselves as “the all American drink”.
Advertising from this time will feature Coke at the center of “America’s past time”.
Coke saw huge success with this strategy. Then they doubled down on it.
The 2000’s saw Coke build off of this platform as “American’s Soda”. 2000’s Coke isn’t just the coke for Americans like you and me, now Coke positions itself as the solution to a different kind of problem.
By centering its advertising around abstract concepts like “making friends” and “celebrating with family”, Coke is positioning itself as the soda that solves loneliness.
Do you want a soda that’s high quality and thirst quenching — or do you want a soda that gives you friends?
It sounds ridiculous, but clearly the concept resonates with people — this video has over 9 Million views.
Coke has been able to spin this feeling of loneliness and longing for connection into a variety of smash hit ad campaigns — including the famous “Share a Coke With…” In the campaign Coke replaces their logo with someone’s first name (and stuff like “Mom”, etc).
No other brand harnesses the power of the shared cultural experience better than Coke.
3. Dove — You’re More Beautiful Than You Think
What Happens: The ad opens on a dude sitting in a chair. He explains that he’s a forensic sketch artists.
The video cuts to a woman. She seems to be answering a question, she’s talking about what she experienced when she first walked into this studio. Dove then goes on to explain the gimmick of the movie by cutting between a few women.
They all showed up to this place that they had never been before, there was a dude sitting in a chair, you couldn’t see him (he was behind a sheet). He started asking questions. After a few questions, it became clear that he was drawing them.
Then there are some exchanges of the women answering questions about their appearance. You can feel their judgement as they talk about themselves.
They’re using words like “I have a big nose” or “I have a fat face”. You can hear their voices wavering, some women are wiping tears away from their eyes.
Then it’s revealed that the women had another task. When they first showed up, they were placed in a room with another woman and they were instructed to get to know each other.
For the second part of this exercise, the women describe the person they were partnered with. You can see an immediate difference in the way they’re describing themselves compared to how they’re describing someone else.
Finally, both portraits are revealed to the women. One was drawn based off of how they described themselves, the other was based off of how their partner described them. They are then shown both sketches, and they react to the differences in the two drawings.
Whew, so a LOT is going on there.
This is the longest video in the bunch, clocking in at 3 minutes. It is also the most watched video — at 66 million views.
You see how Dove is telling a story about a sequence of events, but the dialogue is split up among a bunch of different people? That’s a technique called a nested loop. There’s a core message that you’re trying to communicate in the center, and you kind of overlay a story, over a story, over a story. Like an onion.
At the center of all of those women’s’ stories is “You are more beautiful than you think.”
I want to show you really just how powerful emotion can be. This is by far the longest video out of the whole bunch, the subject matter is very specific (women talking about insecurity with their own beauty), the subject is also kind of a downer…
But in this internet age where supposedly “shorter is always better”, the longest and most emotional video is more outperformed the others by 2–3x.
Also notice that in this commercial Dove is positioning themselves as an advocate for their target audience (which at the same time separates them from other makeup companies).
In advertising stories the hero isn’t your product — it’s the viewer. Your product is what helps them triumph.
You are more beautiful than you think you are, and we here at Dove will show you. Trust us.
4. Barbie — Imagine the Possibilities
What Happens: Barbie asks “What happens when girls are free to believe they can be anything?”
The video opens up on college students filing into a classroom, only to find that their teacher is.. A little girl. She introduces herself, they laugh.
There are a few more situations set up like this. A man walks into a vet to find his doctor is a little girl. Men’s soccer team coach? A little girl. Business woman at the airport talking on her phone? A little girl.
Then Barbie takes us through some “Kids say the darndest things” jokes for the little scenarios they set up.
The video ends with the professor girl, as she’s lecturing her class the camera pans out and you see it’s not a class — she’s playing with her Barbies at home.
This is another good example of a nested loop.
You don’t just have to build up to an idea, in this case all of the synchronous overlapping of the girl’s stories built up to the big reveal — they’ve been playing with their Barbies all along!
Barbie is an entire brand based off of the invisible script that “Boys can be anything, girls have limited choices” (housewife or bust).
An invisible script is an unspoken idea that society has about stuff. Like taboos, or expectations (like everyone should go to college, that everyone should buy a house, etc).
Getting back to Barbie, in this ad the invisible script of “boys can be anything, girls are nurses, teachers, secretaries, or housewives” is actually being used as a shared cultural experience in this ad.
How does Barbie use stories to sell? Barbie is using the appeal of children to emphasize the human element of their product. Another interesting concept that’s at play is people’s attention. Attention can be attracted pretty reliably through a couple of ways, marketers like John Caples discovered this a long time ago.
John Caples was a copywriter at BBDO, and there he spent millions of other people’s dollars on their advertising. He was obsessed with analyzing the results. One day while he was checking out results from their magazine ads, he noticed something — certain photographic subjects more reliably draw attention (measured by mail order postcard returns) than others.
These observations are things like “Food advertisements sell more when the picture is of a finished dish, instead of raw ingredients”.
This Barbie TV spot just so happens to use 2 of these guidelines, making it a prime candidate for virality:
- People’s attention is drawn to odd situations. David Ogilvy (another famous copywriter and founder of Ogilvy & Mather) famously used a man in an eyepatch to sell boatloads of shirts. A little girl coaching a professional men’s soccer team is pretty noticeable, don’t you think?
- People’s attention is drawn to photos of babies and children.
Regarding number one, David Ogilvy created an incredibly successful campaign based around “a dude in an eyepatch”. Don’t discount the power of odd.
3 Frameworks to Telling Better Stories
So how can you apply these concepts in your own marketing? I’ve put together some valuable formulas and examples to help you along the way.
Don’t get me wrong, you’re still going to have to put in the work to create a story that’s truly special. It takes a lot to find the real drama in a product. And it takes a lot of research to figure out what the best appeal is for your best customers.
But these are some time tested frameworks you can try plugging your product into. Taking your product through a few of these should be more than enough to jump start a great concept for any advertising campaign.
Here’s the basic skeleton of lots of Verizon ads:
Hi I’m [someone who’s your target market]. Aren’t you tired of [this infuriating pain point]? Get [the opposite of the bad thing] with [ your brand].
The Michael Bay formula follows this format to the letter.
Verizon has him point out he’s a producer because professionals in those fields know how annoying it is to deal with huge files. And slow internet.
There’s a point to identifying the speaker as part of the target demographic. The point is that those viewers will think to themselves “He’s someone who gets it.”
They gloss over the second part. It’s more of an off the cuff remark about how slow internet sucks, you don’t want that. But in the deadzone ad Verizon twists the knife with their exaggerated horror movie sketch. Yeah, dead zones drive me crazy too.
You’ll notice that in the dead zone commercial they don’t explicitly spell out the first part of the formula — although it is there. In Dead Zone the first part of the formula (“I’m the target audience just like you”) comes from the story giving us context.
And both commercials end at the same point, although in different ways. Solve your annoying problem with Verizon. The Dead Zone ad finds the humor in the situation, it’s absurd that hundreds of people would just pour out of that house. The Michael Bay ad hammers that CTA home with his personal endorsement of Verizon.
How a Vermont store sold with story in an unexpected way…
Last week my girlfriend and I went to visit my parents in Vermont. One night we were all driving together to dinner. My parents were listening to the radio on the way.
One of the ads really jumped out at me.
The first thing I’d like to point out is that when the dialogue kicked off there wasn’t any indication that it was an ad. It started with a human interest piece. 2 women were talking to each other…
Woman 1: Thanks so much for letting us use your house for yoga group this week, Lauren! But I have to tell you, your floors smell funky.
Host: I know. My boy cat has been getting excited and spraying all over the place lately. It’s so gross.
Woman 1: You know, my husband and I just had our floors redone…
And then she goes on to explain the store’s USP (unique selling proposition, what made them the best choice).
By niching down and targeting their marketing to one kind of person, it really stands out more. Again you don’t even need to hit all of their demographics.
I adopted a puppy this year, so I know what it’s like cleaning up after a pet. I’m a woman, the actors sounded like younger people (it was a radio ad). It really stood out to me.
Don’t underestimate the power of being able to get people to put themselves in your ad.
When it doubt, grind it out.
Finally, when you’re truly stumped for a concept you can always try brute force. You’ll need something to write with and a quiet place to think. I’ll show you how you can take a heap of boring facts and use it to find story and drama in your product (or whatever you’re advertising).
What you’re going to do is brain-dump everything you know about your subject. Think about your founding story. If it’s a product, write out the various steps of manufacturing. If you can, find out the exact measurements or specific materials used to make your product.
Nothing is too boring to become interesting.
David Ogilvy made a great performing campaign for Lands End, centered around a seemingly simple fact…
You can tell a story packed with selling points if you aim to discuss at least 12 facts about what you’re advertising in the copy. You may also find that one aspect of your product sticks out as the most interesting, or somehow covers a large portion of your existing customer’s needs. It could uncover a new, better way for you to positioning your advertising.