How I realized the power of storytelling from my History teacher!
As a Digital Marketer, I believe powerful storytelling is the key to an engaging content. While you may present your content with a good outlay and awesome artwork, readers will quickly lose interest if you don’t offer them anything new or exciting. Remember when we were in grade school and the teacher would tell us fascinating stories to captivate our attention and help us remember the lesson? That still pertains. With all our research on how to optimize content, how to make them look good we’ve forgotten the most important part — the need to make it interesting.
My colleague and I were listening to the song Kuveniye the other day & began to discuss how rich is our Sri Lankan history and culture. We discussed the events of King Vijaya then his relationship with Kuveni, their children Jeevahatte & Disalla, blah blah blah… Hearing the names & the way I pronounced them, he shockingly questioned me ‘how come you remember them so well?’ & he told me that it took him by surprise as he doesn’t meet many guys remembering the local history this good. In fact, it’s not the first time I was asked such a question.
Over time most of us tend to forget what we study at school yet remember a few things very well. History is a lesson any child would feel a bit left out or bored given the very nature of it is all about how things came into play, who did what in what year etc.
When I was in the 5th grade, history was not a subject that I would love to indulge myself in as I did with Art! But then everything changed the day a new history teacher walked into the class & told us that he would be taking over the history classes. He began by saying that he’s about to tell us a story of the early settlers and the first king of Sri Lanka, which took every one of us by surprise. Why? Cause we are usually told to take our textbooks out, turn to a certain page and then take down notes while getting a brief explanation for it!
From the rise of the Anuradhapura Kingdom to the fall of Yapahuwa, he transformed all the textbook lessons of history into exciting stories to an extent we never bothered to open our books! Be it the assassination attempts of Prince Pandukabaye or the final moments of King Dhathusena at Kala Wewa or the ten Giants of Dutugemunu, every little detail, names and events were sculptured in our memory as powerful stories.
It is not my memory power nor a miracle I remember the history lessons till now, at least most of it. As a teacher, he knew exactly how to sell his lessons to the class. He made us feel the emotion when King Dhatusena held up his hand high with the water of Kala Wewa telling Kashyapa that this is his wealth, he made us feel ambitious when King Dutugemunu waged war against King Elehera and claimed his rightful throne, through his compelling storytelling technique! The end result being his target audience buying his lessons wholeheartedly!
This is what inspiring people & brands have in common, an ability to turn their stories into positive energies, regardless the content and the perception people have of them. Take Steve Jobs for an instance, Steve himself was a powerful storyteller & when he did say he’s gonna revolutionize the iPhone on the keynote event in 2007 he did it by a powerful story.
This is what Spielberg did with Jurassic Park when he decided to bring the prehistoric animals into the big screen. This is what Lakmal Darmarathna is doing with Koombiyo, which changed the complete perception of the younger generation towards local television content. This is what Kapruka did with FTT (Future Trend Television) on their YouTube video ‘FTT Valentine Gift 2018’ which in turn helped Kapruka to skyrocket their sales on Valentine & of course this is what Mahinda Rajapaksa did and is continuing to do in Sri Lankan politics… tell powerful stories in a compelling way.
Powerful storytelling can be useful at any level, from binge-watching a Netflix series to a board meeting or from a classroom to a parliamentary debate. It helps people to understand, increases empathy and engagement towards the content. Now that you have a better understanding of the importance of storytelling, you can start refining your own content so that it better reflects your brand’s target audience.
You should try it sometimes!
