by Ron Ploof | Oct 8, 2018 | Proverbs
According to a 2016 study by Pew Research, 20% of Americans feel overwhelmed by the deluge of information that they face every day. A 2015 Microsoft® study revealed a side effect to this information overload—that the average human attention span has dropped from 12 to 8 seconds, making it shorter than that of a goldfish. And the problem is getting worse as our social networks ping us incessantly, Russian bots spread fake news, and machine learning gobbles up this content to create even more.
The problem? We are meaning-seeking beings paddling rudderless in a sea of non-contextualized information. We yearn to understand and to be understood. And yet, without an effective way to do so, we make snap judgments, adopt extreme political views, and ultimately pull our communities apart when we should be pulling them together. If we’re to extricate ourselves from this funk, we need less information and more meaning.
But how can we convey our thoughts succinctly? How can we fill this meaning-gap without contributing to the information overload problem? I began finding answers in a short, narrative story-form that humans have used since the invention of language: the proverb.
Proverbs are tiny linguistic devices that convey more meaning than the words used to construct them. They’re policies for making better life decisions, passed from the experienced to the inexperienced. The simplicity of their presentation lies in stark contrast to the complexity of their function. Proverbs are both objective and subjective and contain both premise and conclusion. They are accepted generally yet applied specifically. And since their power of persuasion comes from both logic and emotion, they wrap their inductive and deductive reasoning in literary devices such as symbolism, alliteration, rhyme, and rhythm.
I’ve learned much about these little powerhouses during my two years of collecting and studying them. For example, after running fifteen-hundred English proverbs through linguistic analyses, I found that proverbs are not only short (all 1,500 contain less than 129 characters), but they are also easy to read (4.75 grade reading level). In other words, proverbs are both tweetable and…wait for it…you don’t need to be smarter than a fifth-grader to understand them. Their dual ability to help proverb-speaker’s teach and proverb-listener’s learn is a testament to their immense power. And most importantly, proverbs are universally-human, as they’re found throughout history, across all languages, nationalities, cultures, and creeds. The Proverb Effect is the first book to define a simple and repeatable process to convey one’s deep meaning through self-created proverbs.
Wisdom is gained through experience and shared through proverbs.
by Ron Ploof | Sep 27, 2018 | Proverbs
Three years ago, I published a deck of playing cards that helps people apply storytelling to their business communications. The StoryHow™ PitchDeck is now being used by business storytellers in 24 countries. Today, I’m announcing a new addition to the StoryHow™ family of products–a book that teaches a deceptively-simple technique that great communicators have used since the invention of language. Some call them idioms or wise old sayings, but we’ll call them proverbs, like:
- Slow and steady wins the race (Aesop, ~550 BC)
- Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today (Chaucer, late 1300s)
- Stupid is as stupid does (Gump, 1994)
Proverbs are the ultimate long-stories short. They’re universally human, and thus effective across time, culture, and language. And while it’s tempting to dismiss them as droll or trite, doing so just underestimates the powerful roles they play in both human understanding and teaching. The Proverb Effect is the first book to define a repeatable process for conveying deep meaning through self-created proverbs.
I wrote The Proverb Effect to help you become a better writer, speaker, and teacher. Read it to learn:
- Why proverbs reign supreme over other message types
- What makes proverbs the triple-threat of communications: memorable, repeatable and most importantly, persuasive.
- A step-by-step methodology to apply the most powerful communications device in human history
Lastly, in addition to teaching people how to tell stories, I’m also a working storyteller. So, I wrote The Proverb Effect as a business fable. It’s the story of Samantha Kim, a young project manager whose disastrous presentation sets her on a journey to become a better communicator. She meets Tina, who teaches her how to convey deep meaning through studying everyday proverbs. When Sam’s company loses its largest client, the resulting financial crisis threatens her firm’s very existence. Can Sam learn enough from Tina to win back the client, save her company, and finally redeem herself from the disastrous presentation? The Proverb Effect has the answers.
I’m very excited about sharing this new project with you. Stay tuned for more information as we get closer to the release date.
by Ron Ploof | Sep 16, 2018 | Business Storytelling
In 1959, a group of advertising execs from Young and Rubicam visited a thirty-three-year-old radio and recording artist for help. Their client, Kaiser Aluminum Foil, remained stuck at five percent market share because by the time local grocers had stocked their shelves with foil from market leaders Reynolds and Alcoa, no room existed for Kaiser.
Y&R didn’t approach Stan Freberg for his expertise in selling thinly rolled metals. They sought the satirist who single-handedly turned Madison Avenue upside down with his outlandish idea that commercials could actually entertain audiences instead of simply assaulting them with hyperbole.
Freberg recommended a series of commercials that encouraged customers to ask their local grocers to carry Kaiser foil. The series would follow the trials of Clark, a down-in-his-luck Kaiser Aluminum Foil salesman, who battled grocers daily for shelf space. Here’s a script snippet from one of these commercials.1
The scene opens with Clark coming home after a hard day’s work. Soap opera music plays in the background as he describes his bad day to his wife.
WIFE: (SOB) Then this means I won’t be able to have my operation!
One of Clark’s children overhears the conversation and interjects:
CHILD: (IN A SMALL WISTFUL VOICE) Did you bring me some new shoesies, Daddy?”
CLARK: Ummm…Daddy doesn’t have any money for shoesies these days…because the mean old grocers won’t stock Daddy’s foil.
When Freberg finished pitching the script, a few chuckles were drowned out by protests. Some Y&R execs worried about offending local grocers while others questioned a commercial that openly branded Kaiser as an underdog.
“You didn’t go to the Harvard Business School, did you?”2 one of the execs asked.
Freberg hadn’t.
“Well I was sure of that,” the executive snorted. “If you had, they would have taught you one of the primary rules of marketing: Advertising cannot force distribution.”3
History always repeats itself. There was a time when we knew with certainty that the world was flat, the sun revolved around the earth, and advertising couldn’t force distribution. But we also know that testing old rules frequently leads to new ones. Kaiser Aluminum Foil authorized the series, the company added 43,000 new distribution outlets, and Harvard Business School was forced to revise its curriculum.
The best storytellers break the rules. What rules can you break today?
Photo Credit: Publicity photo of American satirist Stan Freberg. Public Domain
Notes:
- Stan Freberg, The It Only Hurts When I Laugh (New York: Times Books, 1988), p.159.
- It only hurts when I laugh, p. 162
- It only hurts when I laugh, p. 162
by Ron Ploof | Sep 10, 2018 | Business Storytelling
To most, storytelling is a job or a hobby. To others, it’s a vocation. While all three come with benefits, vocational storytellers sacrifice the most to hone their craft. They trade living-in-the-moment for the acuity to capture that moment. In other words, vocational storytellers remove themselves from active participation in an event to observe it passively. And while being a vocational storyteller has made me a better communicator, I frequently find myself as more of a student of life as opposed to a participant in it. As a result, it’s hard to lose myself in any moment because I fear missing an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of it.
About ten years ago, my wife and two teenage children were sitting at a sidewalk restaurant table. As happens all too frequently, my mind wandered away from the conversation and to a small bird walking on the concrete. Something about the way the bird’s head rocked back and forth caught my attention, and after careful study, I realized that its head bobbed twice for every step it took. For example, if the bird’s head came forward as it planted its left foot, it would rock back then return just as its right foot hit the ground. The bird’s head bobbed twice for every step it took.
That’s when I heard my family snickering. “Earth to Dad,” my daughter said, interrupting my daydream. Luckily, I’ve been blessed with a family that accepts my peculiarities and can keep me grounded through some good-natured ribbing– so much so that, to this day, every time they catch me living out-of-the-moment, they drag me back in by referring to the incident. “Dad, are you trying to figure out how birds walk again?”
So, you wanna be a storyteller? Excellent. I welcome you to one of the world’s most eclectic groups. Now you have a decision to make. Which subgroup will you choose: hobby, job, or vocation? There’s no wrong answer. All can be excellent communicators. Just understand that if you choose to take the sacred vows of vocation, you’ll need to make sacrifices to reap its vast rewards. You’ll need to trade living life in-the-moment for the deep focus required to describe it.
But, before I scare you off, know that with great sacrifice comes great benefits. A well-written story will warm your soul like nothing else can…well, at least until you start writing the next one.
Photo Credit: Detroit Publishing Co., Copyright Claimant, and Publisher Detroit Publishing Co. Feeding the pigeons, Boston Common. Boston Boston. Massachusetts United States, None. [Circa between 1910 and 1920] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2016812264/.
by Ron Ploof | Aug 20, 2018 | Storytelling
I’ve been reading about “deep learning,” the subset of artificial intelligence and machine learning that uses neural networks. The more I learn, the more I see a direct relationship between deep learning and storytelling.
Deep learning is split into two steps: training and inference. Have you ever wondered how Facebook knows that you’re in an untagged picture? Essentially, it has trained a neural network model to do so by showing it hundreds of pictures already tagged with your name. Over time, the model starts to “recognize” patterns in this training set. Finally, once the model has been trained to recognize you, Facebook shows it untagged pictures. If the model has been trained well enough, it can infer whether you’re in that untagged picture or not.
I’ve found that this learn-and-infer process also has deep roots in good storytelling.
The best storytellers base their work in inference. They’re masters at delivering just enough facts for us to infer the meaning of them.
For example, storytellers will show us:
- darkness and make a noise come from it
- a young couple in one car while the driver of an oncoming car is texting
- someone about to deliver ice cream and balloons to a sad friend
Storytellers show us these things because of our innate abilities to infer meaning from them.
- Darkness is a metaphor for the unknown. A sound that comes it is always viewed as a threat
- Texting and driving is dangerous, and so we fear for the safety of the young couple
- It’s hard to be sad around ice cream and balloons
Great storytellers say more with less by allowing us to infer from what we already know. Bad storytellers spend too much time teaching us new things.
In other words, bad storytellers describe meaning explicitly. Great storytellers allow their audiences to infer it themselves.
Image Credit: Sperry, R. T., Artist. Homeless and friendless / R.T. Sperry. New York, 1891. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2012647169/.
