It’s All About The Story

Strategic Communication Basics

Dan Hahn

Ideas Come in Stories

Reich's narratives Emotion

Hope Fear

Few

Subject

Many

The Triumphant

Individual

The Rot at the Top

The Benevolent

Community

The Mob at the Gates

Winning Means Your story goes public more quickly and

more broadly. Your story, not theirs, defines reality. Case in point: Ronald Reagan transformed

the civil rights movement into a story about “activist judges,” “social experiments,” and the need to “get government off your backs” without having to mention civil rights (but old time Dixiecrats “got it.”) Upshot: stories can fly under your radar.

Winning Stories Evoke Commonality

You like what I like. You value what I value. You think like I think

… which implies Effective communicators care

enough about their audiences to identify with their attitudes!

Winning Stories Touch Emotions

Policy wonks and other head-trippers are a minority.

We hold faith, hope, and love in our hearts.

We hold anger, fear, and disgust in our guts.

Winning stories go for hearts or guts.

Winning Stories Meet the Tests

Narrative Fidelity Narrative Probability or in plain English Does it hang together? Does it ring true?

A Good Story

Has coherent structure, implicit or explicit, from “once upon a time” to “happily ever after.”

Has heroes, villains, “damsels in distress,” etc. clearly defined.

Is moving, vivid, memorable, rich in metaphor, has a clear moral, yet is clear enough that Disney could use it.

May reframe opposition narratives, metaphors (see Reagan, above).

Small Group Exercise #1 Choose a still-challenging issue. Identify the opposition. Identify their core story (stories). Do they have “winning stories” that

Evoke commonality? Touch emotions? Hang together and ring true?

How might you undermine their story (stories) ?

Small Group Exercise #2 Remain with that still-challenging issue. Identify your core story (stories) . Do you have “winning stories” that

Evoke commonality? Touch emotions? Hang together and ring true?

How might you defend your story? Create or revise your core story and

prepare to share the improvements.