Why AI Makes Storytelling a Bigger Moat

Chris DuBois0:00

Does AI make storytelling a commodity or just a bigger moat?

Park Howell0:56

Oh, it's not a commodity. I mean, storytelling in and of itself, takes skill. It takes human skill. It takes understanding to be able to evolve from being a iterative or what's the word I'm trying to say? Intuitive storyteller, which we all are, into an intentional storyteller. And why that's important is when you are an intuitive storyteller, you're kind of winging it. Some of your stories are going to land, others are not. But when you're intentional, following proven story frameworks, then you know you can win it every time with your story. So now, storytelling is what differentiates everyone. Human storytelling, AI, artificial intelligence, can help you scale your storytelling, but I prefer to think of AI as artful intelligence. When you bring your own humanity and your storytelling to it, collaborate with it, and then that gives you a decided advantage in the market. Right.

Chris DuBois2:00

The yeah. So with storytelling being a skill, so I like looking at all skills as either hard or soft. I think that's not like a unique idea for anyone. Hard skills are very easy to measure, right? Like we can, like I know I just have to do X or apply this input, and I'm going to get this output. Soft skills, it's like it. I don't know, you know. Like we're talking about feelings and emotions and all these other things, but realistically, if we break that soft skill down into a series of hard skills, then we can actually see what the influence is, right? Like stage, if we're on stage and we're presenting, it's like I can't just say get better at presenting on stage, but I can say, hey, smile more, be articulate, talk, like use certain hand gestures. Have these in your slides, and now it's like something. Oh, I can actually quantify these details. I guess if you were to take that approach to storytelling, what are the things you would be looking for that you could improve? You know, with the process.

Park Howell2:56

Yeah. Well, first, yeah, storytelling is people will throw under the bus and call it a soft skill, but it's about the hardest skill you were ever. No, no, no! And you're not alone in that. A lot of your listeners, viewers are probably thinking the same thing. But it's the hardest skill of all skills to try to develop and build. And the thing about storytelling is you can measure its impact. For instance, we redesigned the brand narrative for Adelante Healthcare in Arizona, and over the course of six years, as they followed their narrative playbook, what we call story ops, operationalize their brand story, they grew by 600% in a vince to take the four. the CEO at the time, credited the narrative, the storytelling for that growth. Let's move to Quebec, Canada. Prate Auto Partes, a used car dealership for credit, you know, unprime credit risk buyers, grew by 400% when we dialed in their brand story around this concept of your vehicle to financial freedom. I have a a SaaS company out of Denver, Trimble, who used our and but therefore framework, and we did an A/B testing in March and April of 2022 in five LinkedIn campaigns in five different countries in five different languages, and they saw an increase in engagement in April over March by 400 percent simply by using the story frameworks that we teach and we use in our own brand building, so when people say that it's a soft skill, they're looking at it wrong. They're not measuring it properly, and when you communicate correctly using story, you can absolutely see an ROI and measure a very definitive ROI. Using it,

Chris DuBois5:01

yeah. What are so? What are some of the the things you would look at improving to be able to measure

Park Howell5:08

for a story? So here's the first thing for like storytelling.

Park Howell5:12

Anybody watching, listening to this, here's the first thing. People often think, and you may fall into this trap because we all have at one point or other that you're telling a story when you're actually never getting out of exposition, and what I mean by that is you're never getting out of Act One. You're and and and anding your audience to death, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. That is going to flatline any sort of storytelling. So what I want you to do is use our framework and but therefore, the client wants this relative to our offering, and it's super important to them because of this. But here's the problem. Here's Act Two. Here's the conflict. No conflict. No story. But they're super frustrated because of this major problem, obstacle gap that they can't Overcome. Therefore, picture when you have what you want when you do this with us. Insert your call to action right there. Now, what you've done there, Chris, is you've used the three forces of story of agreement in your and statement of agreement, contradiction in your butt statement, and consequence. So, therefore, the way forward, and the reason why that works is it plays to our pattern seeking, problem solving, decision making, buying limbic brain, and when you are just communicating and and and and and to that brain, it gets bored because there's no problem to solve when you go and but therefore here's a way forward. It immediately clicks into action and goes, "Oh, I get you. You've created meaning for it. And it's like, "Okay, let's move forward. That's just one example of how to use a simple story structure, and then you can measure it. Right? Go go go on any of your social channels. Go to LinkedIn, write a post as you normally would, and then give it a day, and then rewrite that post as an and but therefore, and then at the end of the week, look at what your engagement rate is. And I guarantee you, it'll be two to three fold over the basic and and and and and that everybody writes in.

Chris DuBois7:23

I like that. The oh man, I got so many different thoughts. So like my mentioned right before this, right? My degrees in English, so like I love I love storytelling. I think at any given time I'm probably reading two different fiction books and then also two nonfiction to do the business stuff, but so like I'm sold on storytelling. Period. Like just right. I mean, I had even when I was still in the army, one of my one of my soldiers bought a a club cart, like a old golf cart that the post was doing like a sale, and he could not sell this thing, and his wife was very upset with him having it and having bought it in the first place. So he's like, "I gotta sell this thing. And so I did the copywriting for him, but instead of just doing the features and all that, I just told the story of like, "Hey, imagine you're riding on this this golf cart, like win through your hair, all this, and like just getting people like bought into that story. But then at the end, it was so why am I selling it for this cheap? Well, because it's still cheaper. It's better than paying for the divorce attorney, right? To make this happen, and it sold immediately for like 1000 bucks more than he was he had planned for it, and was just like, oh, that was when I started like, oh, there's like storytelling and marketing is like is a real thing, yeah, and and so that was a lot of fun for me. Well, you demonstrated

Park Howell8:44

something right there, Chris. Is people often brands and agencies and people selling something tell a story about what they made versus telling a story about what they actually make happen in someone's life, and so that's a really good example of it right there, and it's one of the paradoxes. It's one of the story rules that I live by. Your story is not about what you make, but what you make happen in your customer's life.

Chris DuBois9:14

Yeah, I like that. That quote. You go down on the quote board for that one. Okay. Can you dive into story ops? I'd love to hear more about this.

Park Howell9:25

Yeah, well, think about big enterprises. They have marketing ops, something that governs the marketing department and how they go to market. Right. They have sales ops, something that governs sales and how do they, you know, generate revenue? They have supply chain ops, HR ops, FinOps for their finances, but nobody and artificial intelligence is laying this bare. Nobody really has story ops, meaning when you have developed your. Brand story, your company story, your enterprise's story. Nobody is charged with the governance to make sure that everybody in the organization knows that story, knows how to use that story, even bringing their own personality into that story to stay on you know a coherent, compelling, consistent storytelling narrative path. I say, without story ops, you lead to narrative entropy, which means the decay of your differentiation in the marketplace because your story is completely fragmented. And artificial intelligence now, and their answer engines go and see all this disparate telling of your story, and then what do the AI bots do? They go out and flatten your story across the market because not even they really understand what your core positioning is or what your core story is. So we have been big proponents of this idea of story ops, operationalizing your story automatically through the tools your people are already using within your organization, so that everybody is telling the same compelling story about your brand, avoiding confusion, avoiding narrative entropy, and really scaling a sovereign story-the only story your brand can tell.

Chris DuBois11:27

What would you say is the hardest part about rolling that story out with a team?

Park Howell11:32

Nobody currently owns it, so they might look at. I heard someone just yesterday who was talking to a marketer said, "Oh, are you holding the story bag? He goes. Well, what do you mean by that? Are you the guy charged with the brand storytelling here? Yeah, that's me. Is anybody telling it the way you want them to tell it? No, they're not. It's marketing says one thing, sales says something else. HR is recruiting and trying to retain talent with a completely different story, and I have no way to bring that coherence together. So the first problem, Chris, is that nobody owns that story. Now the way to overcome that is with a tool that you collectively collaborate with to help build that story. And now that story-it's an AI-driven tool, but I call it artful intelligence because you have collaborated with it and built it. So now it is a brand brain that plays across the enterprise. And since so many of your viewers and listeners here are agency owners, this represents a tremendous new service offering for your company, you're not only coming in as the innovative thinkers, the trendsetters, taking advantage of markets and doing the creative development, whatever. But now you are tasked, and you get yourself embedded inside that client organization to help them deploy story ops, your brand storytelling across the enterprise, which will make you more successful. It'll build that bond, that relationship with your client, and it'll make your overall work more successful because everybody's working from the same single source of truth about that storytelling with both internal communications and external communications.

Chris DuBois13:21

Yeah, which I think is the dream for any company. Hey, look, everyone's actually saying the same thing. Let's walk through then finding and kind of crafting this story. Like, so let's say new agency comes in; they have never spent time working on this. What's step one?

Park Howell13:41

All right. Well, step one is for themselves, and just for a point of clarification, Chris, are you talking about the agency doing it for itself, or for understanding StoryOps for doing it for a customer?

Chris DuBois13:53

Let's say for themselves. Okay,

Park Howell13:55

great way to start because then they can model the behavior that they will then sell as a new service offering into their customers. So the first thing they do is they define their own agency's brand story. What do they stand for that makes them stand out? I call it story sovereignty, meaning what is the only story your brand can tell and own that nobody else can touch. And since you're a big positioning guy, you know the importance of that of being then the position category king leader in that area. I created our story cycle system, a 10 step narrative brand narrative development process over 20 years ago. It's the process that we use when I talked about clinic Adelant to Adelant to Healthcare, Pradeau, Partes, and ever you know other brands have grown by 600% So the idea first is to truly understand who your audience is, what do they care about relative to your offering, then the but the big problem, what is that single. Problem you help them solve better than anybody else. Therefore, here's the way forward. Now, the first thing I would do is ask anybody watching this: is get five, 710, of your leaders in a room and ask them to write an "and but therefore" statement about your current agency brand, they all write it separately, and then compare notes. And what recent research has found, especially by Elliot Rayner's research that just came out, he said only one out of five of those people will know how to tell that story, and here's the quick ABT. I'll give you a quick little exercise here. Name your number one audience. Who is your number one client persona? It's the Pareto principle that one persona makes up 80% of your income. Write what do they want relative to your agency's offering, even if they don't know what your agency's offering is yet, but you do. You know what you're going to be selling to them, so you're foreshadowing your CTA. Who's your audience? What do they want? And why is that important to them? Paint the rosiest, most aspirational picture you can imagine for that audience. Now you're going to insert the but statement of contradiction. The problem you're going to solve for, but name a negative emotion. What are they currently feeling? Are they frustrated? Are they overwhelmed? Are they discouraged? What is a major emotion? Add the conjunction word of because of this problem, state the problem that is keeping them from getting what they want. That your agency is ultimately going to help them overcome. Then move to the therefore statement. Therefore, describe the vision. Describe the future. What does that bright future look like if they overcome that problem, and then in the second clause of the therefore statement, put in your CTA. When you do this with X Y Z agency, the only agency that can do this for you because of this set up problem resolution using the three forces of story of agreement, contradiction, consequence, that actually builds trust in your audience because you are demonstrating that you understand who they are, you appreciate what they want, and you empathize with why they don't have it. Therefore, I'm going to help you get it by doing this. Have your leaders write an ABT for your agency, and then review it in the room. And you're going to find maybe one out of five are going to really understand your story. This is the starting point for you to write to collectively your own, and but therefore for the positioning of your agency, which is by a fantastic tool as well for your customers, your clients, ABT framework is at the core of our story cycle genie, which I know we'll talk a bit in a minute. But that is the first place I'd start. How far apart? How much narrative entropy do you currently have in your agency? And I'll show you how to fix that.

Chris DuBois18:23

Awesome. So yeah, let's get into StoryCycle Genie. And yeah, so we give me a once over.

Park Howell18:31

We took my process, the the StoryCycle system. I wrote a book on it called the Brand Bewitchery. Came out five seven years ago now, I guess. Man, time flies, and it takes you through the 10-step narrative crafting process that I call the story cycle system. And I've been using it for 20 years. Well, we took that IP using artificial intelligence. We spent two years building out the story cycle genie. So what once used to take three to four months to actually go through and do to come up with a really powerful brand narrative strategy, you can now do in about two hours, and it's all following our story cycle system, and it creates that sovereign brand story for you. That story only you can own and tell. In fact, we ran one for you, Chris. I know you haven't had a chance to go through it, but you're going to see a brand assessment, and then a basic brand narrative strategy on that. So that is the first place to start for agencies, and then from that we call it building the brand brain. You can build all of your strategy, all of your content creation. It's always going to be on brand because it's always pulling from that brand brain. Now let's move this into client acquisition. So say you're going to go out and pitch somebody. Most agencies show up, and Chris, you had mentioned this earlier when you were scanning some other agency websites, and they all say the same thing: a trusted team, innovative thinkers, blah blah blah. There's no differentiation with it. Well, the story cycle genie will. Absolutely, not only help you differentiate your agency, but think about if you're going to go in and you know present to some some prospect, and there's probably three or four other agencies you're competing against, and industry averages will be you might win 20% of those bids, despite all the hours and all the effort and all the money you spend on it, because agencies are showing up, pitching capabilities. When I want you to show to demonstrate your ability, so imagine taking that prospect, put it into the story cycle genie. Unbeknownst to them, it gives you a brand assessment. It even gives you a brand narrative strategy, and you go in and you present that brand narrative strategy to them, and you say, "This isn't the end all, but this is our foundational work. We don't even have your business yet, but we've already done this for you. Now we can work with you to really refine it. We can get you to market nine times faster than the old way of doing it at way less cost to you, and oh by the way, the agency can increase their margins because they have fewer people working on this, and you are expediting the process. So what you did for your agency, you are now doing for your customers. You run them their brand through the brand brain, and then you create your strategy and your content always on brand through the genie with them. That's where circling way back to your first question about is AI making storytelling a commodity? No, because you are a unique human with a unique storytelling skill set that AI will never have. You bring your lived experience to it, and now you collaborate with it to create artful intelligence that differentiates your agency from all the rest.

Chris DuBois21:50

Yeah, could I? I want to challenge one idea on that, rather than the commodity piece, because I think because I think the way you're doing it, it gives a definite moat. I think most most of the content I see on like LinkedIn is like they're just trying to let AI do the storytelling. Oh yeah, and so they yeah right. This this is so just spending the time to think through like and but therefore is like you're already going to be 10x better with your stories than anything that AI is just putting out. So, like, I would argue that it actually is giving you a moat because right now people are following the path of least resistance and just saying AI make me this, not using it. Oh, that's your opportunity. That's your opportunity.

Park Howell22:36

You're going to find 80% of the agencies out there doing what you just said right there, AI just do this for me. Let's get out there. If you come in and bring your own storytelling skills, and then like use something like the Story Cycle Genie, which has the ABT already built in the heart of it, so everything it writes on your behalf is already following that structure. It's all guided by the Story Cycle system, so it's following that larger narrative arc, and everything you you do from campaign planning to content calendar creation to the actual writing of thought leadership pieces, websites, whatever, and that's what differentiates you. Going back, remember when we were talking about brands get caught up in telling the story about what they make versus what they make happen. Here's a really good example of it. So, artificial intelligence probably the most stellar technological innovation of our marketing career lifetime, and it's got the worst branded name ever: artificial intelligence. It's scary. It's annoying. It's ignorant in a lot of ways. It's weird. Well, that's what they made. They made all these bots that are using artificial intelligence to try to be intelligent. But what do they actually make happen in your life when used right? That's where my artful intelligence comes in, because we all want to be artful in our communication, be way more impactful. Artificial intelligence can help you do that, but not if you just throw it into the artificial intelligence slop bucket and then throw it over the side of the gunwales. You know, bring your wisdom, bring your market knowledge, your client understanding, your own storytelling skills, and use a tool like the StoryCycle Genie to bring your artful intelligence to life at scale.

Chris DuBois24:26

Yeah. So I guess what let's say we do get someone to start creating their story, where do they often kind of get it wrong after that?

Park Howell24:38

Oh, yeah. The first number one, and you hear this a lot. I'm not the only one that preaches this, but when they're telling their stories, they're telling it, making it all about them, making it all about the brand. When you need to not do that, make it about your audience. Place them at the center of your story, and you've heard this at. 1000 times, they are always the hero of the journey. You are simply their mentor guide. That's why the and but therefore always starts with you specifically describing who the audience is for this particular message, because it makes your brain make that shift of like, oh, that's why this isn't about me. In fact, I don't even get to talk to me about me until the second clause of the therefore statement of consequence. I'm the very last line item in this story, as you should be, because you want to make it about your audience, because you are speaking to their survival center in that primal limbic brain. So deliver it meaning in the way it wants to receive it. Who's your audience? Where they want? Why is it important to them? But why don't they have it? Therefore, how are you uniquely equipped to help them get

Chris DuBois25:52

it? I think it was a Jay Abraham had a quote around like if you if you know their problem deeper than they do, they're going to assume you have the solution, yeah. And so, like this, this model gives sets it up right. Like, if you can be talking about them in the story, showing that you understand this problem, it's not just I'm throwing some words at you. It's like, no, no, you get it. Like, when I say this word, you felt something inside because you've stayed up late at the kitchen table wondering if you're going to be able to make payroll this month and like all these different things, and then when we get to the end, it's like I don't even need to sell you now. I just need to like I pre-sold you by showing I understand all these things. So when we get to the therefore being able to just mention the solution, it's like that glimpse of hope for someone to be able to say like, yeah, I need to learn more. Like sign me up. Yeah, three words describe what you just did a wonderful job of explaining right there. You get me, you get me. I don't have to worry about anything else. I trust you because you get me. You understand who I am, appreciate what I want, empathize with why I don't have it, have built the trust because you get me. Yep, there was a a website when I was running an agency. It was a website I sold. It was to a bigger name person who I won't mention just on the podcast. But he, we had a 30 minute call. I kind of learned everything about him, and then I said it was a simple website bill, but it was probably 20 ish $1,000 to make this happen. So when I recorded the video for him, I opened with, "Hey, let me just state back the problem I think you're having, and and then I said, "All right, this is what I think we want to build towards. Now let me show you how we want to actually do this. And when I when he got back to me after I sent this video over, he said he stopped actually watching after I recited the problem back to him and said, "You got it. Like I knew, just give me send over the invoice. We can do it. And it was like, oh, like a light bulb went off. Of like, if you if you truly do understand the problem, they they get it. And like that was the fastest sales process I've ever done. That's beautiful. Nobody

Park Howell27:56

buys a solution unless they have an effing problem. That's what Christopher Lockhead, legendary Silicon marketer, Valley marketer, told me on my podcast.

Chris DuBois28:07

Yeah, no, he he's great guy to to follow for this stuff too. Awesome. So someone needs to start this today. Where do you recommend they go?

Park Howell28:20

Yeah, well, they could start it for free. I mean, absolutely, go to StoryCycleGenie AI. At the top of the homepage, there's a red button there that says "Get you free brand story assessment. Click on that, put in your name, your email, and the URL that you want it to assess. It could be your website, it could be a client's website, it could be a competitor's website. You use as many times as you like, and in about a minute, it's going to run through our complete story cycle system. It'll give you a grade on how well you are telling your story from an A plus to an F minus, and it's going to give you a 14 point storytelling assessment so that you can see this isn't subjective; it's very objective, based on what we know about storytelling and the impact that you can have, and the real ROI you can create telling this story properly. It'll give you a 14-point assessment, validating what you're doing well already, revealing gaps that you can quickly fix, and even inspire you with new ways to think about how to tell your brand story, so you can go and do that right now. And then, if you want to start working and tweaking your brand story, start building the brand brain. Well, of course, you can subscribe to the Genie right there and start working to really refine your brand story.

Chris DuBois29:36

Awesome. All right, Ferg, I got two more questions for you. The first one being, what book do you recommend every agency owner should read?

Park Howell29:45

Well, of course, I got to have you read Brand Bewitchery. But besides that self promotion, I would if you really want to learn and think in storytelling for your agency, boy, there's no book better than Christopher Vogel. The writer's journey, and it takes you through the hero's journey through movie making, and it's not too much of a leap for you to be able to go. Oh, I can do that with this campaign. I can do this with my own agency positioning, and it is a brilliant instructional manual. I think it's man, it's been five different editions. It's been around for a long time on how how Hollywood tells a story, and then you can connect it on how to use it. That's essentially what I did when I created my 10 step story cycle system, based off the hero's journey, but mapped to business and brand building. So Christopher Vogler's The Hero's Journey is a fantastic boy.

Chris DuBois30:42

Yeah, that's a good one. And the last question: Where can people find you if they want to learn more?

Park Howell30:47

Yeah, come on over to thebusinessofstory.com. Track me down on LinkedIn. Let me know you heard me on Chris's show and reach out. Let's connect there. I think I'm the only Park Howell on LinkedIn, so I'm pretty easy to find there, and then of course I've got my podcast that I've been doing for 12 years, nearing 600 episodes, and every Monday I bring a new story artist to the show from around the world, and that's just simply called the business of story.

Chris DuBois31:17

Awesome! Thanks, thanks again for joining. This is this is awesome.

Park Howell31:21

Oh well, thank you, Chris. I really appreciate it.