Before the written word, before caveman art or the first alphabet—
all news, history, and wisdom worth “broadcasting” had to be told by the spoken
word alone. The Ancient— and we’re
really talking about pre-Ancient— art
and craft of story-telling was long ago the first and only “mass media.” Long before anyone scratched a stick figure
on the wall of a cave, humans communicated through who knows how many
generations simply by telling stories to their children.
I imagine that by a certain time, just before cave drawing
began, a person in the tribe who could remember and retell the tribe’s history
in such a way so that listeners would remember and retell it just as vividly themselves,
was an extremely important person. Of
necessity, these pre-Ancient storytellers had to be trusted, convincing, and
above-all, memorable. The evolution to
cave drawing and the invention of words and an alphabet came untold centuries later,
perhaps out of necessity; as tribes survived longer and grew larger, it became
impossible to remember everything without “written” notes.
In this sense, caveman art was our first “recording media,” preceding
writing on animal skins, parchment, the printing press, magnetic tape, computers,
CDs, flash drives and smart-phones. Yet,
the original human media— the telling of a memorable story— was never made
obsolete. As highly successful movie
producer, Peter Guber, writes in his book, “Tell to Win,” telling stories like
Aesop fables or Biblical miracles motivate people in ways ordinary management
dictates do not. Guber’s book is full of
stories about how telling a story is the one fool-proof way to communicate and
persuade.
Arguably, Guber’s thesis is rooted in human genetics and
evolution since the first two people met on Earth. That untold numbers of centuries before the
first attempt to write or draw were filled only by the spoken word, might explain
humans’ innate preference for the well-spoken story. Guber’s argument is compelling, too, because
the “information age” is chock-full of gibberish, words and snippets, so often
without meaning, “getting back to the story” makes practical sense.
Recently I met with a top-tier media relations group at a
major multibillion dollar company. The
company’s relationship with the public is critical to business operations and
public safety, to say nothing of its bottom line. So after a number of winded exchanges about “best
practices,” “reputation management,” and “audience,” I finally asked—“Ok, so what’s
your story?”
The blank stare and the long, unfilled silence were not
unexpected. But after a long pause and a
few sputtered thoughts, I realized that public relations and “corporate communications”
has become such a rigid profession that it no longer hears what it is saying or
how it is being heard.
Admittedly, my bias for the story and story-telling stems
from my observations of the movie industry which generates billions of dollars
out of thin air, simply by telling stories.
Before the TV rights, the DVD sales, before the box office, before the posters
and the hype, before computer-generated special effects, before actors said a
word, before the director, before the studio bought, before the producers lifted
a finger— there was just the story (in the form of something called a script). Everything in Hollywood happens because of the story. The story/script is the tiny seed from which
billion-dollar film franchises and other blockbusters bloom.
So if it’s good enough for pre-Ancient cavemen and
post-Industrial, information-age media moguls, why is the story so unworthy of effort these days?
The simple reason is that with literally almost a million
channels available now—from broadcast TV and radio to cable, to web sites, to
blogs and micro-blogs, twitter and text messages— there’s such a scramble for “attention,”
something that is too easily confused with “audience.” In other words, for advertisers, marketers,
and others desperate to break through the noise and back-scatter, the meaning
of a story counts for less than counting “hits” or “impressions.”
Ironically, it’s this scramble for attention that makes
telling a story that much more prescient.
With so many snippets and factoids zooming around, there’s a fresh
opportunity for those who can make interpretations, or in today’s political
vernacular, give “the narrative.” It’s
not strange to me that political pundits now refer constantly to a campaign’s
or a candidate’s “narrative,” when they attempt to interpret the election year
horse race. Listen to the commentators
talk about “the narrative for Rick, Newt, Ron, Mitt, Barack…”
If only the candidates themselves would tell their stories rather than let pundits interpret "the narrative."
Politics has long been called the “second-oldest
profession” after you-know-what. But
given the span of civilization and its love affair with story-telling and what
being the story-teller meant in societies and tribes for centuries before the
written word was invented, I simply disagree.
