the power of storytelling- what nonprofits can teach the private sector about social media

8/7/2019 The power of storytelling- What nonprofits can teach the private sector about Social media

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Companies are spending countless hours and millions o dollars trying to

master social media. Is this a revolutionary platorm that can drive every-

thing rom customer relationships to product developmentor just another

orm o marketing? In a new book titled The Dragonfy Eect, Stanord

University marketing proessor Jennier Aaker and marketing strategist Andy

Smith seek to answer these questions by examining numerous examples

o social media at work, distilling a ramework or inspiring inectious action.

One o the our dragony wings that comprise the authors ramework and

give the book its name is engagement, which they defne as truly making

people eel emotionally connected to helping you achieve your goals through

storytelling, authenticity, and establishing a personal connection. Presented

here is an excerpt adapted rom the book, ollowed by a discussion between

the authors and Dan Singer, a director in McKinseys New York ofce. The

conversation ocused on lessons useul or leaders seeking to boost their orga-nizations marketing eectiveness by engaging customers through social

media. The bottom line: using social media to capture peoples attention is

dierent rom traditional advertising, and companies that measure the

eectiveness o these new channels by simply counting Facebook ans should

rethink their approach.

Learn how to harness the power o social media in this case study

excerpted rom The Dragony Eect,by Jennier Aaker and

Andy Smith. Then hear more rom the authors in a conversation with

McKinseys Dan Singer.

The power o storytelling:What nonprots can teach

the private sector about social media

m a r k e t i n g & s a l e s p r a c t i c e

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 1


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2The power o storytelling

Scott Harrison was at the top o his world. The 28-year-old New Yorkbased

nightclub and ashion promoter excelled at bringing models and hedge-

und kings together and selling them $500 bottles o vodka. He had money

and power. Yet his liestyle brought something else: emptiness. Harrison

elt spiritually bankrupt.

So he walked away, volunteering to serve on a oating hospital ofering

ree medical care in the worlds poorest nations. Serving as the ships photo-

journalist, Harrison was quickly immersed in a very diferent world.

Thousands would ock to the ship looking or solutions to debilitating prob-

lems: enormous tumors, clet lips and palates, esh eaten by bacteria rom

waterborne diseases. Harrisons camera lens brought into ocus astonishing

poverty and pain, and he began documenting the struggles o these people

and their courage.

Ater eight months, he moved back to New York, but not to his ormer lie.

Aware that many o the diseases and medical problems he witnessed stemmedrom inadequate access to clean drinking water, he decided to do something

about it. In 2006, he ounded charity: water, a nonprot designed to bring

clean and sae drinking water to people in developing nations.

Harrison launched the organization on his 31st birthday by asking riends to

donate $31 instead o giving him a git. It was a successthe birthday gen-

erated $15,000 and helped build charity: waters rst ew wells in Uganda. In

the three years that ollowed, Harrisons simple birthday wish snowballed

into donations that today total more than $20 million, translating into almost

3,000 water projects spanning everything rom hand-dug wells and deep

wells to protection or springs to rainwater harvesting. The organization has

now provided clean water to more than 1.4 million people spanning 17 coun-

tries. Its success can be explained through our design principles or gener-

ating engagement with a brand through social media.

Tell a story. Harrisons personal journeyevoking themes o redemption,

change, and hopeengaged others on an emotional level. By candidly

discussing in media interviews and YouTube videos why and how he started

charity: water, the thoughtul, accessible, and youthul Harrison helped

viewers all in love with him and his cause.

Empathize with your audience. Let people engage with your brand to

learn whats important to them and how it relates to your campaign. charity:

water evoked empathy through the use o photographs and videos that

revealed the urgency o the water problem in the developing world. Instead o

relying just on statistics, the organization promoted compelling stories

that orced people to think about what it would be like to live without access

to clean water.

Social-media engagement:

A case study rom The Dragonfy Eect

This case study

is adapted rom

Jennier Aaker

and Andy Smiths

The Dragonfy

Eect (Jossey-

Bass, September

2010).


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February 20113

Emphasize authenticity. True passion is contagious, and the more authen-

ticity you convey, the more easily others can connect with you and yourcause. Because o charity: waters commitment to transparency, donors not

only understand the history that gave rise to the organization but also know

exactly where their money goes. Reports and updates on the charitys Web site

connect donors directly to the results o their generosity.

Match the media with the message. How and where you say something

can be as important as what you say. charity: water has a staf member

dedicated to updating various social-media platorms and creating distinctive

messages or Twitter and Facebook an pages. The organization also relies

heavily on video. One o charity: waters most efective video projects involved

convincing Terry George, the director o the lmHotel Rwanda, to make a

60-second public-service announcement in which movie star Jennier Connelly

took a container to New York Citys Central Park, lled it with dirty water

rom the lagoon, and brought it home to serve to her two children. The pro-

ducers o the reality TV showAmerican Idolagreed to broadcast the

spot during the program, ensuring that more than 25 million viewers saw it.

Viral-video

campaigns and

a ocus on social

media help

charity: water

spread the word.


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Dan Singer: I you look at powerul social-media campaigns or initiatives,

whats the essence o good storytelling?

Jennifer Aaker: Good stories have three components: a strong beginning,

a strong end, and a point o tension. Most people conuse stories with

situations. Theyll tell about a situation:Xhappened, Yhappened,Zhappened.

But a good story takes Y, the middle part o the story, and creates tension or

conict where the reader or the audience is drawn into the story, whats going

to happen next.

Treating stories as assets is an underrealized idea right now. Stories serve as

glue to uniy communities. Stories spread rom employee to employee, rom

consumer to consumer, and, in some cases, rom employee to consumer or

consumer to employee. Stories are much more memorable than statistics or

simple anecdotes and are a mechanism that allows communities to grow.

Strong stories can be told and retold. They become inectious.

There are at least our important stories that all companies should have in their

portolio. The frst is the who am I? storyyou know, how did we get

started? The second is the vision story, the where are we going in the

uture? This may or may not be connected to the who are we? story. A third

is the apology and recovery story. In any long-term relationship, there is

inevitably going to be transgression. But it is remarkable to see how ew

companies have thought through what a transgression is or them and how

they might respond to it. The fnal type o story that becomes really important

or corporations to have in their bank is the personal story: what are the

personal stories that are being incubated and cultivated within the

organization? This is a very dierent type o story. This shines a light on

people rather than the organization.

Dan Singer: Is it the story that resonates? Or is it the storyteller?

Andy Smith: The story is the most important thing. You dont have to be

amous to tell a good story. Where it really does come back to the storyteller is

authenticity. People have to believe you. And you have to believe in the story

yoursel in order to be eective.

Jennifer Aaker: The reason authenticity becomes important in social media

is that as you think about customers or employees stepping toward a cause,

its otentimes done when they trust the entity. When they step away rom an

organization, cause, or goal, its oten because they eel its overly

manuactured, overly proessional, something to potentially distrust.

Applying the lessons beyond the social sector:

McKinseys Dan Singer talks with the authors o The Dragonfy Eect

Jennifer

Aaker is the

General Atlantic

Proessor o

Marketing

at Stanord

Universitys

Graduate Schoolo Business.

Andy Smith

is a marketing

strategist

and principal

at Vonavona

Ventures.


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February 20115

Dan Singer:What can businesses learn rom olks in the social sector who

use social networks and social media?

Jennifer Aaker:All our wings o the dragony act in concert. The frst

wing is ocus: what is your single small, concrete goal? That goal should be

measurable over time so you see how close youre getting to it. The second

wing is grabbing attention, making people look. That is very similar to more

traditional means o marketing. The third wing is engagement, telling the story,

which also has been important in the past. But how do you enable action on

the part o employees and customers? That is very new to the social-media

world. When you execute on these our wingswhen our small acts are taken

in concertthats when you get amplifcation or inectious action.

Dan Singer:So how do you assess companies eorts to date against the

dragonfy ramework? Are we in the early days?

Andy Smith: Its not exactly the earliest day. Theres this hangover eect

rom traditional media. You can call it campaign thinking. Companies are

pretty slow to take ownership o the ongoing back and orth with consumers

thats required to build a relationship. As public companies, they have whole

departments devoted to nurture relationships with, say, fnancial analysts.They need to apply the same kind o approach to their social-media

constituents. The platorm itsel is relatively straightorward. The mind-set

needs to come with it.

Dan Singer:How do you think companies should measure their success in

deploying social media or engaging with customers? Youll hear companies

talk about the number o Twitter ollowers or the number o Facebook ans

they have. Are those the right measures?

Andy Smith: It reminds me o the early days, when people counted hits on

your Web site. With each new media comes dierent meaningless statistics. It

goes back to wing one: beore you deploy an eort, you need to be thinking

about your goal. Thats been a challenge or brand builders. Setting those

goals and actions and measuring yoursel against them is the way that

companies confgure the clearest path orward.

Dan Singer:An unstated assumption is that the medium through which

the communication happens is electronicFacebook, e-mail, Twitter. As

those platorms become mature and probably airly cluttered, will peopleget social atigue?

Andy Smith: Oh, I think people have already started to show plenty o

atigue. It seems like the more things change, the shorter the lie span

between early adopters and people burning out. How many Twitter people

can you ollow?

Jennifer Aaker: Theres one study that were running right now that looks at

the degree to which a subject gets asked to contribute some money or time to


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Copyright 2011 McKinsey & Company. All rights reserved. We welcome your comments

on this article. Please send them to [email protected].

a cause. The number o people who delete something like this immediately

rom their inbox is somewhere around 95 percent. So youre already seeingpeople eeling inundated by asks, especially in the social-good realm. Then

theres another big group o people who eel that social media is overhyped

and has gotten too much attention.

Dan Singer:This is eerily reminiscent o traditional orms o advertising. In

television, theres so much clutter that what dierentiates the e ective rom

the rest is the quality o the story and the resources o the advertiser. Would

you say the same is true here? Whats going to dierentiate the 5 percent

that get read rom the 95 percent that get deleted?

Andy Smith: For advertisers, [it will be] creativity and the depth to which

they really apply the principles o understanding whats going to make people

go. You literally just cant throw a switch and write a check and buy it. But you

can certainly get more airplay and more attention i you nurture your

community and build your ollowers, build your an base, build the things that

matter, and then activate them.

Jennifer Aaker: Its about the people driving the technology. You have to be

cognizant o where the true power o social technology lies. Its not in thetechnologyits in the people using it.

the power of storytelling- what nonprofits can teach the private sector about social media

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