Are you a Storymaker or a Storyteller?

Just finished reading Jonathan Gottschall’s book “The Storytelling Animal.” With all the hype these days about virtual reality – Consumer VR will grow from $1.6 billion last year to $11.5 billion in 2021, according to VR and AR revenue forecast by Artillery Intelligence.

I really liked Gottschall’s observation that at the end of the day our storytelling mind is the ultimate virtual reality technology that specializes in simulating human problems.

We do it by either consuming an active story in the present time and mirroring ourselves in the narrative – if the story is that good. Or by rewinding back a past event extracting meanings/lessons from that story about how to respond in future contexts.

From that perspective, VR today, like movies are is in essence, a pre-cooked meal using a richer medium that feeds you the visual narrative. Whereas books are like coming back from the grocery store and processing the ingredients into personal visual imagery. Every book reader will conjure her own imagery world based on her subjective experiences and beliefs – that form that individual “theater of the mind.”

But don’t worry, ‎visual storytelling vehicles like movies, AR/VR, infographics, videos, and images – even though they provide you with the producer’s visual universe where the story takes place in, our storytelling mind is still in control.

True, for every artistic choice; a close-up, color template, or soundtrack– there is always a personal story the marketer is leveraging in order to convey a genuine narrative. Yet, for us the audience who is watching the finished product (regardless of how immersive the medium is), this personal story is in most cases hidden. So we’re left with creating our own interpretations based on our prior personal experiences and beliefs.

This twilight zone between the visual content’s original message and our own experiences is the stage for a myriad of observations and alternate narrative universes [highlight to tweet].

Layering storytelling onto Schramm’s 1950’s classic model of Communication, we come up with:

It’s up to us as adept visual storymakers (aka marketers) to craft an engaging story by interpreting our personal field of experience that is comprised of our passions, subjective experiences, and beliefs. And as you can see from the above chart, the story needs to traverse the overcrowded “noise chasm,” overcoming competing stories and find a common ground where customers’ core problem and a business narrative overlap to create resonance.

To do it right, your story needs to carry a single message, attached to a vivid visual that will hit your audience’s emotional nerve – from the widest normative level down to personally meaningful sizzles. Identifying that emotional resonance with your audience is not easy, it takes careful research but once you hit it, you the savvy visual storymaker can transform your audiences into revved-up storytellers that will share your story on your behalf.

Furthermore, your audience by adding their personal voice to your story they become story makers by their own right – the hallmark of a successful viral story propagation.

So to answer this post’s title: Are you a Storymaker or a Storyteller? The answer is always BOTH. Our mind is constantly processing and broadcasting stories to make sense of the world around us [highlight to tweet].

Now that you understand the general mechanics of storytelling communication, are you ready to find and own your business story? Book a FREE appointment if you need help unleashing your business story.