How to turn yourself into a thought leadership Top Gun
Take a lesson from the King of Cinematic Sequels: 'good enough is what gets people into trouble'
This is a story about what Hollywood can teach us about better business communications.
‘You have to have something unique to sell, even if it feels like the same thing…you need to push ever harder to reach your audience. Good enough is what gets people into trouble.’
Here’s a brilliant description of what’s wrong with so much of corporate narratives, LinkedIn thought leadership and internal comms. Content is bland, safe, too vanilla, says the same thing over and over without making an original point. It’s all fine, good enough but – well – the audience you want to reach will just end up clicking through, scrolling down and forgetting it instantly. And the more we rely on AI to create, the worse it's going to get.
The above quote comes from a new interview with Jerry Bruckheimer, one of Hollywood’s most shameless producers. I say shameless because he’s made the same bombastic films over and over again, trying to persuade the audience he’s got something new to tell them. Pretty successfully it turns out because his estimated net worth is $1billion after franchises like Top Gun, Bad Boys, Pirates of the Caribbean, CSI and Beverly Hills Cop, the latest sequel of which, Axel F, is now on Netflix.
What he’s got right is what so many communicators get wrong. You’ve got to try and find a new hook or headline or reason to believe. And that takes time and a lot of effort.
One of the techniques I teach in our storytelling masterclasses is inspired by the first half of the day I spent in newsrooms, trying to find that reason to believe. It went like this…
9am – noon: Read, watch, listen to every piece of media and submission you can, to find a new hook for something and sell it to your colleagues in a single sentence. Really push hard to make it unique. Convince and argue with each other, talk about it, push back on it, pivot when someone has a better idea.
Noon-1.30pm: Now try and sell all the best ideas to the Editor. After three hours of thinking you should have 10 decent ones. If you get three of those nodded through, that’s pretty good going. More importantly, the hook, headline, reason to believe will be pushed even harder by him or her in a bruising period of creativity. What you already thought was good will invariably get even better.
Jerry would have made a great editor. Because journalism like most business content is, by and large, the same stuff every day. The difference is that journalists are skilled in making it shine because they understand that facts alone aren’t good enough. You have to be able to tell a compelling story that feels original (even if it isn’t) by making the data work harder.
The secret of great B2B material is to spend half of your time thinking, planning, ideating, crossing out and starting again, finding the story and then starting to make it. Don’t even think about telling the story yet. Just find it and keep polishing it until it feels different.
Today, business storytelling is more valuable than ever. There are more platforms, more people who want the limelight, more companies that believe great storytelling can give them rapid growth, more leaders looking for new roles. And yet everyone is saying the same thing with the same buzzwords.
An holistic, purpose-driven north star that’s people-centric… or whatever.
You need to push your ideas harder to make them stand out. Think like Jerry and – here’s my advice - come up with at least two sequels.
In my experience, the third idea is nearly always the winner. Your first idea is fine. Nothing wrong with it but it’s probably pretty samey. Push it harder. The second will be worse than the first. You’ve missed the point, veered off-piste, lost the clarity you had to start with. The third one, however. That’s closer to where you need to be.
So next time you hear someone tell you they’re really good at storytelling, ask them if they’re also any good at storyfinding and storymaking. Because if you don’t bring all three together, you’ll just be creating the same content as everyone else.
Push harder.
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I stumbled on this bit of visual storytelling and absolutely love it. Discussions between the owner of a Californian fashion store and his customers that have been turned into a wonderful animation. There’s something very revealing and witty by Ryan Mesi’s Sankofa and as instructive about consumer shopping habits as a 96-slide market research presentation.
LISTEN TO THIS
What does the sound of 10,000 Monarch butterflies all flapping at once sound like? That’s one of the unforgettable moments of this wonderful 15-minute BBC radio documentary about one woman’s quest to cycle the exact 10,000-mile route of the migrating Monarch butterflies. I know you won’t think this would make for great storytelling but trust me. Sara Dykman’s obsessive journey – from the mountains of central Mexico, through America and into Canada - is not just about butterflies, it’s about her. It’s her story and it’s surprisingly emotional.
AND BUY THIS
I’m staging a special day-long storytelling workshop at Soho House later this year. If you want to be a better leader, elevate your influence and powers of persuasion, perfect your personal narrative and that of the company you work for, this is for you. It’ll be for a small group of people, so book ahead. I look forward to seeing you there. Email me at grant@everyrung.com for more details and to reserve a place.