21st Century Market Research: Storytelling

The Insights industry has a storytelling problem. I've written previously about how we need to start using different media when delivering insights to support a variety of use cases and learning styles.

But there is something more fundamental we must do first: use storytelling in the way we present information.

No matter what type of media we are creating, if the content doesn't feel like a story, then it will feel like what it is: a dry recitation of facts.

A Caveat

Before we get into the mechanics of storytelling, I want to make a quick caveat. By using the word "story" I don't mean that we should abandon truth and objectivity.

What I do mean is that, rather than organizing our reporting in a "just the facts" way, we should consider the implications and recommendations of the research as our destination and treat our deliverables as an opportunity to explain how we got there.

And we should use common storytelling techniques to keep our audience engaged while we do that.

How Stories Usually Work

As usual, the foundation of my thinking tends to go back to the central question of "how does this type of thing usually work?"

Like anything else, good stories tend to work in particular ways. While the effects of being exposed to good storytelling may feel like magic, there are a few "tricks" to how these effects are produced.

How do I know this? Because master storytellers and those who study them have been talking about these techniques for years.

The Mechanics of Storytelling

I would argue that the mechanics of storytelling come down to two things: narrative techniques and structure.

In this post, I'll cover narrative and leave structure for Part 2.

By "narrative techniques" I mean the things that storytellers do that aren't necessary to communicate the events of the story, but which make the story more engaging for the audience.

I used the word "tricks" above to describe these techniques, but I want to be clear that I'm using that word in a positive way, in the sense of practices and shortcuts used by professionals. As with anything, they can be used in a clumsy way, but they don't have to be.

So, what are these techniques?

Let's dive into a short list, including where each idea comes from and some ideas about how we can apply them in our work.

#1- Start as close to the end as possible

I got this one from Kurt Vonnegut. He created a list to provide advice to writers working on short stories, but it maps well to other contexts.

A report on a research project is, after all, a dip into an issue, a view of a particular topic and set of questions at a particular time. Very similar to a short story. Vonnegut is saying here: skip the backstory, limit the scene setting and get to the central action of the story. The thing that will keep the audience hooked in a fiction setting is how the main character navigates the central challenge of the story, not an extended description of the character's background.

In our terms this means we should start our deliverable by getting right to the central issues or objectives. Preliminary data or findings related to screening, demographics, channel or industry dynamics, etc. should be referenced only briefly and then put into an appendix unless they are in fact central to the objectives or play a significant role in our conclusions and recommendations.

#2- Select one pivotal event

The objective of telling a story is to communicate a central idea to the audience in a way that is clear and easy to understand. The data we rely on to do this, however, is often complex and requires careful analysis and interpretation.

When we are deep in analysis, we have to be aware of all the different aspects and angles of the data we are reporting on in order to fully understand the situation. But that doesn't mean we have to use all of them when telling the "story" of what we found.

In fact, we should not do that, as using many examples to make a single point reduces the impact of those examples. Joyce Carol Oates illustrates this by giving an example from her experience writing Blonde, a fictionalized biography of Marilyn Monroe.

There were a number of things in Monroe's biography that Oates felt had shaped Monroe, from multiple miscarriages to the experience of being in orphanages and foster homes as a child. To go into each of these in detail would start to feel like a recitation of facts and reduce the emotional power of any one of them.

Oates chose to include one event from each category in her book because this got across the effect on Monroe's character without diluting the impact of each by spreading it across multiple incidents.

In our context, we may feel that a certain insight becomes clear over the course of reviewing our data. To get this point across to your audience it would not be effective to go through every single data point that led to this insight. At some point, this will feel to your audience like a (you guessed it) "dry recitation of facts."

What would be effective is to make your point, support it with one (the best) example, and make clear that this is just one chosen from among many. You can always provide the other examples upon request or in the appendix.

#3- Chekhov's Gun

A common way to build tension and suspense in a story is to follow the principle of "Chekhov's gun," which states that if a gun is mentioned in the early act of a play it must go off in a later act of that play.

In general, this principle is taken to mean that any element introduced into a story should be connected to the events of the story and serve a purpose that will become apparent to the audience later. Otherwise, there is no point in mentioning it.

In our context, as we sift through and curate all of the data available to us for a report or presentation, we will inevitably need to make choices related to what we feature in our reporting outputs and what we leave out. Planting seeds throughout the story to which we we can later call back creates a more cohesive narrative for the audience.

And, pointing out that we are doing so at the time ("we'll come back to that later," etc.) creates tension and interest.

For example, we may want to base a recommendation on the combination or intersection of two different factors. To build toward this, we can mention the first finding in its natural place in the narrative, and note that the audience should remember it or that we will return to it.

This builds tension that will eventually be resolved when we bring up the second finding and explain how the two combine to form the insight we are featuring.

This does not mean that we never mention confusing, disconfirming or contradictory data, as doing so can also be used to heighten audience interest. However, it does mean that if we do so, we make sure to revisit this data in a way that resolves any uncertainty around the conclusions to which it leads (more on this below).

#4- Identify the Stakes

A prerequisite for creating compelling narratives is the idea of there are "stakes" involved in the outcomes of the story. If it doesn't matter how the story turns out, then it's unlikely that the audience will stick around to find out what happens.

This is true in business storytelling as well as in fiction.

Think about it this way: the client has allocated budget and time to hire us as researchers to find out information they need in order to make decisions that will allow them to succeed. In this context, the stakes are what could happen if they fail. In a fiction context, this has been defined by Story Grid as "the potential consequences or outcomes that hinge on the protagonist's decisions and actions within the story." They further break the concept of "stakes" down into three elements in a YouTube video:

• Time- the timeline within which decisions need to be made

• Kind- the specific nature of the decision and the "crisis" it is intended to resolve

• Degree- the consequences of the decision

From a narrative perspective, the objective is to increase "pressure" on all three of these elements at the same time in order to create tension and momentum. In fiction and film, this is often done by "catastrophizing."

For example, the world will end (degree) by Friday (time) if the code is not cracked (kind), etc.

But creating that level of urgency is generally not warranted (or welcomed) in a business context.

When delivering research results, it's important not to overstep the bounds of what we know about the client's situation or try to create a heightened sense of urgency that may ring false. When providing data-based guidance we should ground our framing in the strategic context that drove the research and the implications for that strategy.

For example, a bad way of creating stakes would be to use the three elements to frame, for example, a product optimization study as being necessary in order to launch a revamped offering (kind) in the next 6 months (time) in order to avoid a decline in revenue that will lead to layoffs (degree).

Assuming the client hasn't told you explicitly that the above summary is the objective, a better way to frame this would be to say that the objective is to optimize the product offering prior to a planned relaunch in order to drive new sales and increase market share. Still true, but focused on the upside.

In this scenario the potential downsides of revenue decline and layoffs are present by implication and understood by all. They don't need to be stated directly. The stakes here are the successful execution of the growth strategy.

#5- The Path Not Taken

One of the most common techniques used in fictional narratives is to create "crisis points," both for the overall story as well as within individual chapters and scenes. In narrative terms, a crisis is simply a situation where a character is confronted with two options, a fork in the road, so to speak, and is forced to make a choice. The purpose this serves in a story is to build up tension as the potential options are revealed, and then to release that tension by choosing one of the options.

There are two advantages to this doing this in a reporting scenario.

First, it provides "tension and release" that holds the audience's interest, just like in fiction.

Second, it allows us to walk the audience through our thought process for the analysis. This is a key element to turning our report away from being a "dry recitation of facts" and demonstrating the value of our analysis.

But here is the warning that should be familiar by now- the way we implement this technique is critical to its success. I'm not advocating movie-style "plot twists" that come out of nowhere. What I am advocating is determining where the critical turning points of the story you are telling are and thinking about the data points that don't support or fit into your conclusions.

For example, let's assume we are reporting on a concept test where we have multiple concepts that perform well but feel there is a clear winner. In order to determine that one concept outperforms the others we will have had to analyze the available data for all the concepts and made that determination.

What I am suggesting is that we work that process of analysis and determination of the "path not taken"into the reporting narrative. And, further, that we do it by using the "Chekhov's gun" technique: mention of data points that support the "path not taken" in the report so that, at the appropriate moment, you can present a fork in the road and demonstrate why you have chosen one path over another. Final Thoughts

To sum up: if we as researchers want our findings and recommendations to drive client decision-making, we need to treat our findings as a story to be told, and to use techniques learned from master storytellers to heighten their impact.

And in doing so, we need to remember that these technique are options that we can choose from, not requirements. We don't need to use all of them or to use them all the time simply for the sake of doing so.

As with many things, less is often more.