Lessons from the film industry on brand storytelling | Sançar Sahin, Typeform | OnBrand '18

[Music] how could a movies how good a movies right movies have this amazing ability to to make us laugh to make a smile movies can make us dream about what's possible in the future they can give us this sense of childlike adventure they can scare us sorry for the nightmares they can make us cry the movies have this uncanny ability to be instantly recognizable even when you take it down to a smallest smallest fragment so I'm going to try and experiment with that now I'm gonna play just a few seconds of a song and in a minute I'm gonna ask you to tell me what the movie is that you're thinking about [Music] okay so please play along with me don't make me look like a pineapple up here please shout out I'm an introvert myself but bring out that extrovert side of you laughter three shout out what is the movie that is in your head right now one two three very good how amazing is that that three or four seconds of a song can instantly put the exact same image in all of your heads let's try it one more time so this time I'm gonna play you just four notes two unique notes before notes in in total I will I promise [Music] okay one two three okay thank you thanks for playing along I appreciate it that is the extent of the audience participation I I promise so movies have this amazing ability to captivate us and play with our emotions they take us on this roller coaster of emotions and they have this ability to control that and when we leave after having watched a movie we usually talk about it with our friends we debate about it and if it's a great movie it sticks in our mind and we we talk about eight years and years later but I think as brand storytellers this is everything we want to achieve as well I know as a brand storyteller this is the exact kind of ability that I would love to have and I would argue that some brands are already managing to do this so lesson one from the movie industry that I think all of us as brands storytellers can learn is that the strongest narrative wins so this is a guy called Todorov turner off was many things he was a philosopher sociologist and multiple other things and he came up with something that he called narrative theory so he argued that's oh sorry well yeah I've given the game away I might as well leave now you've got the teaser he argued that every good narrative can be broken down into five stages five narrative stages the first of those stages is the equilibrium the equilibrium is the status quo this is how things are right now it's our normality the second stage is the disequilibrium this is a disruption to the status quo this is when something usually goes wrong the third of the stages is recognition so group a group of people or a person recognize that there has been a disruption to the status quo and the fourth of the stages is attempt so somebody or a group of people attempt to restore the status quo to get us back to how things were and the fifth and final of the narrative stages is the new equilibrium so this is this is the new normal the new status quo things are not the same as they were before so to put narrative theory to the test I want to take you through these stages in one of my favorite movies which is this I think we can all agree that is one of the classics so let's let's go through these narrative stages and see if it holds up equilibrium John McClane he lives in New York his wife lives in Los Angeles they don't spend that much time together they don't have the best relationship it's not the perfect perfect status quo but it's their status quo he goes back to visit once in a while in this particular moment he's going back for Christmas the disequilibrium Hans Gruber the head of a terrorist terrorist cell takes over the Nakatomi towers in downtown downtown Los Angeles where Maclean's wife works this is not normal this doesn't happen every Christmas this is a disequilibrium this is a challenge to the status quo and the recognition is when McClane goes to visit and surprise his wife in the Nakatomi towers and he hears gunshots and he realizes that something is wrong something is is not normal and the attempt well there are many attempts the police and John McClane they they have multiple attempts to try and remove the terrorists from the Nakatomi towers a lot of failed attempts until at the end when John McClane successfully kills hands Gruber by dramatically dropping him from the I don't know the hundredth floor from the Nakatomi towers and in McClane and his wife kind of walk off into the sunset in fact they go off in a police car to live their new normal so because they've lived through these narrative stages they have a new status quo which is a slightly happier one because they've you know lots of people have died but they never really referenced that in the movie but somehow they are a lot happier from having gone through this rather traumatic experience so this event is called on-brand it's not called on movie so what about brands does this narrative theory stand up for brands well I would argue that yes it does so let's have a look for Spotify so the equilibrium in Spotify brand story is a time when we would all go to stores and we would buy physical music that's how we consumed music that this equilibrium so the disruption to the status quo is music went online and pirates water would download the music a lead I'm sure there's not a single person in this room who has done that nervous laughter recognition this isn't a real photograph taken from a Spotify riah I'm afraid I couldn't find one but it's a representation only showing this kind of tete-a-tete between the government's and the record labels and the Pirates heavy fines were given out and it was kind of considered to be this huge disruption to the to the music music industry the attempt was spot by themselves they launched Spotify the app where they allowed anybody to access thousands and thousands of songs at the touch of a button and then the new equilibrium is what we all know today our new normal the new status quo where any of us can access this music illegally rather not illegally legally at the touch of the button for 10 euros more or less a month so what about tie form this is my brand this is where I'm coming from so if you don't know tie form hopefully this narrative story tells you a little bit more about us so the equilibrium is when small businesses are small they can talk to people face-to-face they can talk to their employees they can talk to their customers they can ask for information they can ask for feedback if they've changed their branding they can say hey bill what do you think of my new branding bill says I hate it I think you should change it ok great let's change it so this is how small businesses can operate when having conversations they have the real-life face-to-face conversations but there is a disruption to that there's a disequilibrium and that's when businesses inevitably scale and they're forced to turn to traditional online forms that look a little bit like this when asking for that information asking for feedback and this is a very cold experience and how do I know it's a cold experience or is because of the recognition and the recognition is in the market where the industry average for completion rates of these forms and surveys is around 15% so think about that a hundred percent from a hundred percent of people to visit the forum only 15 percent actually gets at the end imagine if all of your conversations were like that you could be very insecure very quickly so the attempt is type form comes along and this should show you a little bit about Typhon [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] good luck getting that little tune out of your head tonight you're gonna be humming that in bed in two weeks time you like what Dell is that tune okay so type form next-generation forms it brings a conversational engaging and interactive edge to the online form space so that was our attempt at getting back to this kind of real-life conversations that we have as small businesses and then the new equilibrium is a time now where people consumers employees customers can complete online forms to give their information to give their opinion and not feel like they're just being given a laundry list of questions and being interrogated so is and I would argue that if you take some of the world's most renowned category owning brands you could apply the same narrative theory to these brands try it try it maybe I'm wrong but I really am no I'm joking I always am listen sue and this is my favor every interaction counts so this is Kuleshov Kuleshov was a soviet russian film maker and actually one of the founders of one of the first film schools in the world back in the early 1900s now Kuleshov believed the editing film editing held a lot of power so he believed so strongly in this idea that editing held a lot of power and you have to think this was a time when film was just getting started nobody was talking about this so he ran an experiment with his students he wanted to prove that editing had this power to play with our emotions and I'm gonna show you now the same experiment that he gave to his students basically what he did was he edited together three sequences of film each sequence with two scenes very very simple and then he played each scene sorry each sequence to his students and then he followed each one with a question so I'm gonna show you that same thing now please forgive the video quality you have to consider this was created at least 420 thousand years ago so I think I'm allowed a little bit of creative license here okay so this is the first sequence that Kuleshov showed to his students I know gripping stuff gripping gripping stuff so a bowl of soup first scene a bowl of soup second scene dis actor supposedly looking at the bowl of soup Kuleshov asked his students what is this actor trying to portray in his face you know what is he saying with his acting and all of the students unanimously said hunger he's trying to show hunger okay so Kuleshov went on to show the second sequence and this was it so this time a seemingly dead child in the first scene and in the second scene the same actor now supposedly looking at the at the child and Kuleshov went on to ask his students what is the actor trying to portray in his facial expressions now what is he trying to say and they all unanimously said sadness remorse and Kuleshov played them the third and final sequence which went like this I heard that whistle this was for me not for the girl so in this sequence a beautiful young lady laying on a shade long and now the actor supposedly looking at the at the lady Kuleshov predictably asked his students what is the act of trying to portray now and they all said desire lust the interesting thing is at the time apparently the students all commended the actor for his amazing ability to express such subtle emotions without moving so this you know they really applauded this guy now of course what I imagine all of us know and what Kuleshov knew at the time is that the only scene that are changed in each of the sequences was the first scene so the first scene changed in the second scene was exactly the same so what was happening meaning and emotion was being taken that's a little bit broken but it doesn't matter I'll just say it meaning and emotion was being taken from one scene and being dragged to the other by the audience so feeling from the first scene was being implied on the second scene this became known as the Kuleshov effect so I want you to think about your ideal customer and I want you to imagine her as the audience member of a movie but instead of a movie it's your brand narrative it's your brand story but you're telling them that you're presenting in front of this ideal customer as brand storytellers we have this power remember editing has a power to take people all the way up to pure delight or all the way down to pure disgust and there's a whole range of emotions in between this an average brand a mediocre brand might achieve something like this when editing together their brand their brand story a deplorable brand Chand administration excuse me excuse me I've had a code at the pourable brand might achieve something a little bit like this so as they edit together their brand interactions and think brand interactions are everything you put out there publicly absolutely everything your support tickets your campaigns tweets that other people make about your brand all of this is part of your brand story a great brand and one I imagine we all aspire to to be would probably achieve something like this but it's important to say the brand's can do something a little bit like this and I'm gonna show you an example of that now miracle mattress you may or may not have heard about this but I would imagine that if they didn't do what I'm just about to show you that they did you almost definitely wouldn't have heard about them and actually lived in wherever this tiny little place is in Texas anyone from Texas no okay so I think that holds true miracle mattress a small family-run company that sells mattresses in a local town in Texas everything's going well for them I want you to imagine that this is the first or the 40th for the for thousands 5,000th brand interaction that you have had with this brand so this is pretty good it's a headline online arts all saying miracle mattress delivers miracles says something about how they delivered a hundred mattresses the children need pretty good a good solid brand interaction you look at that and you're going to take all of that emotional meaning and take it to your next brand interaction with them thinking this is a great brand so the second interaction might look a little bit something a little bit like this pretty good review great customer service better than Billy Bob's I think the name is and great names for businesses in Texas so pretty good brand interaction and if you've taken all of that emotion of meaning from the brand interaction before and then you you're hit with this brand interaction you're just building up you're getting more positive emotion and meaning but what if the next brand interaction that you come across is this exactly so all of that great feeling and emotion that they've successfully built up with these great brand interactions that reaction crashing down to earth so someone's going to take that to their next brand interaction they might take to a to a review site for example so they say honestly I can't respect the place who uses terrorism as a sales pitch pretty fair reviewer can't argue with that not a great brand interaction so if you've seen that video and then you've seen this your positive emotion I'm feeling as a potential consumer for this brand is getting sapped away so they want to take control of their brand interactions right they want to try and edit something back into their brand story that says something good about them and that's a good thing if we don't all get it right as brands we all make mistakes but what's important is that we take back control of our brand story so this is them trying to do that so an apology so they go onto TV they make an apology seems pretty sincere so okay great they've taken control of their brand's story they've edited something back into their story but they've got control of having made a mistake is it enough to save their narrative to get us to the end of their movie the answer is no that one bad piece of editing that bad scene that they edited into their brand story closed their business so of course there are lots of examples of this of bad editing United very very very very good at bad brand story editing this was a story when they famously dragged off a passenger from their plane and pretty much beat him up so that wasn't great editing in terms of putting their brand story together dov created this questionable advert was accused of being racist and later had to apologize for it not great brand editing of United again ran out of toilet roll on one of their long-haul flights and you're thought Ryanair and easyJet were bad I'm very glad I wasn't on that plane Ford Ford created this really questionable campaign where they depicted women tied up in the back of one of their cars right in the middle of the me2 movement when when editing your brand's look a little bit outside of your own world and see what's going on and make decisions accordingly more examples Oh United again they kill another pet don't take your pets on the United so plenty and plenty of examples all about - what type form we are passionate about brand we strongly believe that if we create an amazing beautiful and useful product and surround it with a good brand narrative and constantly edit our narrative so we're putting our best foot forward we believe that will resonate with people so do we always get it right no we don't always get it right so I went on to one of the review websites one of the popular ones I pretty quickly found this negative review somebody basically saying the type form isn't very powerful it doesn't really do everything they wanted to do this is our failure so as brands storytellers this is our failure because actually type form is quite powerful but we've just not explained it very well or well enough and therefore this scene has been edited into our brand story and to remain there forever that's now part of our brand story people will come across this a lot more seriously than this earlier this year we had a data breach somebody hacked into our a part of our servers and accessed some of our customers respondents information luckily no credit card details or anything like that but still very very serious and now this is permanently into a brand story this is not good editing I would not have chosen to do this it was a very intense week of my life but this happened luckily we have very loyal and understanding customers so this person said so tie form has had a breach the brief disclosure is best I've ever seen you can read right I don't need to read this you can read just study or reading slides kind of makes me pointless so they tweeted this and we got a lot of tweets like this after having sent the communication explaining what had happened so yes something had happened that negatively impacted our brand story and took our narrative in the way we didn't want it to go but it was important for us to edit something back in that we did have control of and that was a transparent and honest communication about about the issue so what about things like this so last year we raised our series beef funding which is great TechCrunch kindly wanted to write about the the announcement five minutes before publishing the article they sent us this and they said hey guys just an FYI we're gonna publish this in a few minutes but this causes a survey platform and Typhon we've been working really hard not to be considered as just a survey platform because actually surveys is a very small part of what you can do with typeform so we've been trying to take control of our brand story our brand narrative so we have to beg and plead with this writer to change this headline so that we could take control of our brand narrative it's remarkably hard to get a TechCrunch writer to change a headline by the way but we did manage to do it and this helped us take control of that brand narrative of our story it was a small win for us we also do things like this the printing press changed everything and gave birth to a Renaissance art and science flourish technology evolved and stars began to spread far and wide the world move but then something unexpected happened authors and playwrights became influencers people imitated the favorite characters while culture was born and more and more fiction became fact Oscar Wilde said life imitates art but what happens when technology imitates art where would that leave us will you be content to observe imitate Oh will you dream of society's next great fiction let's have that conversation so this is part of our thought leadership program so we invest a lot in content and this content is all about telling our story and part of our story is that we are an innovative forward-thinking brands so if you just thought we were a form builder we would like to tell you otherwise through our brand narrative and this is just one scene that we purposefully edit into our story this video led into an article which we believe to be the world's first conversational article so it's a kind of chat pod experience embedded into an article is if the author is looking over your shoulder as you read it you can check it out on our blog and what happens is as you respond or don't respond to the chats in the article it kind of changes your experience and this was just an experiment we were just playing around but it's part of our story to tell people look we're thinking about the future of Interactive asking and answering online this was a big success for us it got huge reach was shared tens of thousands of times and Rand Fishkin the great Rand Fishkin big marketing influencer with 350,000 followers or something like that on Twitter said this about the piece of content that is a great piece of brand editing right we created something somebody else put a scene together and put that into our brand story much better than the review that I shared you showed you at the beginning of these slides and this led to a product MVP so it got such a good reaction that we actually built an MVP product to see if people actually wanted to build this with our technology so now a few beta users are you playing around with this and seeing how they can put interactive content inside their Help Center articles and all of this kind of stuff and then we do this so this is part of our brand story to touch show people to behind the scenes of trying to scale a company which is a very difficult thing to do so we try and show people the challenges that we go through and then finally we try and inject a little bit of personality around all of this so these are our founders David and Robin so these are our founders really messing up an interview and we try and do this a lot we just show all of our mistakes we make mistakes every single day and we try and show those and that's part of our brand story so this thing is flashing at me I'm over time which is lucky because I'm almost done I just want to lead you leave you with one final thought anybody can copy your product anybody if they have enough money enough technical resources or whatever anybody can copy your product but there's nobody that can copy your brand so spend time on creating the best narrative and spend time on editing wisely thank you very much [Applause] [Music]