A (4:20)

No, I agree. I think that storytelling is, especially for nonprofits, our last, best competitive advantage in a world where we can't really compete on quantity and we can't compete on budget, and we can't compete on, you know, gigantic marketing teams driving everything, I think, sharing our authentic stories. But I know that so many nonprofits and so many members of my audience really struggle with this. And you talk about moving away from telling our own story to leaning into the audience's story. Can you tell me more about that and, like, what that shift looks like?

B (4:57)

So I think important to say as an organization, we work about half our time with organizations in who are charities, nonprofits, foundations, and half our time with much more commercially driven organizations. But we see a similarity in both. But particularly in the nonprofits, the people are often very good at explaining their cause, you know, their beliefs, why they're there, because the people who work in them are so bound up with that cause. Right. You go and work for one of those organizations because it's something that you believe in and you want to create that change in the world. However, being good at that story doesn't necessarily achieve your goals, because quite often you're talking to someone where what they want to get out of that conversation or that interaction is something entirely different. And so I think sometimes we're working with these organizations to say, you know, it's not just about saying why your cause is the most important. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the person who's listening to you. It's not your story. You're entering their story. You are having to give them a reason to distract them from all the other things going on in their world, to get behind you and to empathize with you, for you to be memorable in what you've told them. And all of those things mean you have to put yourself in their shoes much more than your own. So a really good example is we were working with a very large charity in the uk, and they're in the dementia space. And they're so good at telling their story, they're so good at communicating that dementia is now the leading cause of death in the uk. That why it's important? Yes, Huge. And why that's important, how to get behind it, all of those kind of things. But we were working with them when they were going and meeting with a very big media owner here, a very big newspaper. And what we were trying to get them to understand was when you go into that meeting, that newspaper doesn't need to hear that you're the biggest killer in the uk because they probably know.

A (6:48)

They've done their research.

B (6:49)

You're in that room because who of who you are and what you represent, what they need to know is that their readers will care about that issue, will buy papers because of that issue, and will be. Will see you as a partner who can achieve commercial goals for them. And that's not the story they're used to telling. And so that's really reframing their entire story in the mind of someone else. And that's half the work that we end up doing. Kind of saying, okay, you've got a core story. You've probably, you know, you're so many of these organizations have great marketers in them. You know, their positioning is brilliant, their actual story is brilliant. But then what's the story of all the different audiences that you're telling? What are they worried about? What are they interested in? What are they trying to achieve? And then how do you start to reframe your story in the mind of them? And we speak a lot about a concept called Jeopardy, and that's about really leaning into what is it that your audience cares about and making sure in the first moments of that interaction, you're leaning into that jeopardy. So, you know, what is it that keeps them up at night? What's the thing that they're really trying to achieve? How can your cause connect with that? And we talk about either scaring them with that jeopardy. So, you know, what's a big outcome. They really need to worry about that. Perhaps they haven't thought about intriguing them, like reframing it in some way or inspiring them, like getting them on board with the future that they want as much as you. And when you do one of those things, it completely changes how you start your story and how you start that interaction. And because you're very much geared to what do they care about, what's going to really make them lean in and listen to what I'm saying. And a lot of that's bridge building. Right? It's. And we have to do so much more of that today, sadly, than we've ever had to do is empathize with someone else's point of view because they might be entirely different from our own, and really think about how are we reframing our message to be about something that they care about and are interested in and get them just close enough to us that we can then bring them into the rest of the message.

A (8:50)

I think that's so important. I know a lot of organizations when I teach storytelling, they often look at their mission or their tagline as their story. And it does have to come from a character and what they care about. And I love that you gave that example of talking to a room full of press or journalists, because the journalist, they do, they want that hook and that angle. And it usually comes in a story. Like, if you ever see an article in the newspaper or online about an issue, it's always framed as a story with a human interest angle because it helps contextualize it and make it more real. So you talk about working with, you know, you've worked with Alzheimer's organizations, you've worked in advocacy for, around dementia, like, what is your advice? Or for telling stories around these kinds of difficult issues. This is where I think a lot of nonprofits get stuck because they. They feel like, oh, these stories are too hard or they're heavy, they're not exciting and interesting, and people. They're going to depress people or. Or people are not going to care about them. So what's your advice? To sort of share and tell authentic stories, like staying authentic to our mission in a heavy space like that?

B (10:06)

I mean, I think it's more relevant than ever at the moment. Right. Because people are switching off the news because they just don't even want to know because it's so terrible.

A (10:13)

I just did that this morning.

B (10:15)

Yeah, exactly. And even when they are looking for lightness and they're in their social feeds, suddenly their fashion content, their beauty Content is interspersed with kids in Gaza and no one knows what to do with that now, you know. So I think it's a, a more prescient problem than has ever been. I think the advice that we give is again, you're trying to think about your audience and what they care about and what they will lean into. So there are different ways to frame the same story when you're thinking about that. But it's also about the fact that people want progress more than ever. They want signs of joy, of hope. They need to know what's the plan. And I think that that is a more recent thing that people are expecting a value exchange from a story actually. So I don't want to just be scared of that story. I can be scared and shocked by it. But then I want to know what can I do? What's my agency in that story and how can I help? How can I be part of the solution? And I think we're not necessarily always used to doing that. We used to quite hard hitting messaging about an issue and the assumption that that means someone will take action. And of course sometimes that works, right? Like sometimes that is the thing. But I think it's, you know, I remember when there were drink driving campaigns and it was about, you know, really big shocking messages around that. And then there was a comparative campaign, I think it was in Australia where they were talking about people dying on the tracks of trains and they actually used a more comedic angle and it was like almost reframing it to get people's attention. And it did so well because people were just so that it's almost like snow blindness of all.

A (11:56)

They're fatigued. Right?

B (11:58)

Yeah. So I think there's an art to it, there's experimentation to it. But I really think the overarching lens that we give is we have to give hope, we have to give a plan, we have to communicate progress. You obviously think about layers of a story, so there's probably always a place for that big hard hitting stuff. But there needs to be a way that whoever you're communicating with can feel like they can take some action and feel better. And that's ultimately what people want now, don't they? They want to feel better. And obviously in some of these issues there is no feeling better, but we need to find the way to at least give them the agency to do so.

A (12:34)

Exactly. And I think we need, like you just said, progress. We can frame it in that this is not hopeless. You know, I'm thinking about it's, you know, breast cancer awareness month in the United States right now. And I think of the stories being told are a lot of. There's a lot of hope, There's a lot of, this is what the research can do. This is what early detection can do. And you're talking. It's framing it in this. In a progress kind of mindset, rather than this heavy sort of heavy thing, a commercial that I always think of. I don't know if you've seen the ASPCA commercial with the Sarah McLachlan song Arms of the Angels, and it's all abused animals in cages and injured animals. And people actually talk about this as, like, they turn off the television. They cannot. They don't want to be manipulated, they don't want to be made to feel bad, and they don't want to be made to feel guilty. And I think that's exactly what you're talking about, is that snow blindness, that fatigue that people have around being made to feel bad. And they're. They're willing to learn about an issue, but they want to know that there's some sort of way forward and there's some sort of. Some sort of vision for the future.

B (13:46)

I mean, the Alzheimer's Society here that we've worked with, one of the biggest things that they communicate, they talk about, it takes a society. And, you know, the positivity actually comes from, look, all these people are working for this not to be a thing that affects you and your kids further down the line. And the entire reframing that they have around Alzheimer's as a disease is. It is something that we can do something about. And it is something that if we act and we put more money into more researchers, and we put more money into trialing the medicines that there now are, and we put more money into education around it, it's genuinely something that people can live with for far longer than we've ever known to be possible before. So I think all of these things are. They also really dug into that perception of it's hopeless. We need to do something about people feeling it's hopeless. So now so much of their storytelling is these are the little nuggets of success that we're seeing. And this is everything that we're doing in terms of a plan to make that success something that comes quicker. And I think that that's so important, and it's something that so many organizations can learn from, because if we don't believe that any progress is made, what are we all doing anyway? That feels like quite a hopeless place to be in. So I think even just sometimes for internal organizations sake as well, injecting hope and communicating that is really key.

A (15:10)

So you also draw from the world of entertainment to structure memorable stories. So what storytelling principles from that world do you think nonprofit communicators can adapt and borrow?

B (15:23)

So when we first started the organization, and we continually do this actually, and it's an incredible amount of fun is we went and interviewed storytellers from all different types of fields, so producers, editors, political speech writers, you know, screenwriters, et cetera, et cetera.

A (15:38)

Did you write a book?

B (15:39)

I wish you'd.

A (15:40)

Right.

B (15:40)

But we need to about. Yeah. The storytelling world of books actually needs updating. They're all a bit out of date now, but. And apologies if anyone's got a really recent one. That's fantastic. And I just don't know. So we do that because we can get caught up in our own bubbles, right. In marketing and communications and think we kind of know it all. And actually the reality is the best storytellers in the world probably don't sit in our industry half the time.

A (16:01)

Right.

B (16:01)

They're the people who are writing amazing books and films and the things that just hold your attention and. And stay with you. So we wanted to learn from that space and bring it into the world of business. There is lots that has been written and we definitely can't lay claim to it. And there's a couple of books in particular the Seven Basic Plots, which is by Christopher Booker and the Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.

A (16:28)

Oh, yes, those.

B (16:30)

They center around the same kind of things that actually stories that we engage with. And this kind of ruins entertainment for anyone listening for a whole time. But the stories that we engage with tend to play around the same rul. And there are different structures and there are actually seven different story types they talk about in one of those books. Now, when we do training with people and we're guiding them, we tend to focus on four when it comes to stories that really drive change. And that's because some of those story types are things like tragedy. And you probably don't want to just sit with tragedy as an organization, whether you're working in nonprofit or not. You know, you want, as we've just talked about, the upside, the solution, one of the others is comedy. And again, comedy is kind of just circle as a structure. They, you know, everything happens. And then we were right back to the beginning again. So the four that we talk about, we talk about defeating the monster. So if you imagine something like Jaws, for example, yes, as a film, but the monster, if you're one of my favorite station, the monster might be apathy. You know, the monster might be a behavior that we're all trying to guard against. And in that story, it's really about your audience really understanding what the monster is and then you giving a really clear way as to how the monster will be defeated. And it's quite a common story, I'd say, in the nonprofit space, because you want people really to buy into that. Cause we talk about quests, and in a quest, it's about, you know, what's the journey like? Where is the end destination that we're all trying to achieve? Getting your audience to buy into that and then talking about how you get there. So it's a more optimistic way to tell a story. And I think about something like the gay marriage act in America and how quickly, you know, that was changed through really compelling communication. It was about, everyone deserves love. And that's a question.

A (18:22)

Well, quickly, but yeah, not as quickly as many people would not.

B (18:27)

But yes, campaign and legislation.

A (18:30)

Exactly. That campaign was phenomenal.

B (18:32)

Amazing. And we talk about rags to riches. So if you imagine something like Cinderella, you know, you come from nothing, you end up with everything. And in storytelling, that can really be like, you know, we have a specific goal that we want to reach. Come with us on that journey. And then the final one that we talk about is a rebirth story. So if you imagine a film like Groundhog Day, for example, where I love that movie, and the learnings from a rebirth story are, you know, you were here and it was amazing. You did something, and this happened. Let's get back there again. And so, you know, quite often in politics, you might see these kind of stories, you know, like, let's Make America Great Again, those kind of stories. All of those stories have particular rhythms to them, things that happen, types of information, particular characters that come to the fore. So when we work with organizations, we use those stories and how we help them structure their own story, how we help them think about how that story rolls out to different audiences, because it enables them to think about familiar rhythms. And actually, when people hear stories, they like those rhythms. They're almost one step ahead of you in your story because they recognize the rhythm, and it's really comforting. And it means that it helps you structure a story so it's more memorable. It helps you think about how that story is succinct, what kind of job it's doing. You know, it gives a structure to it that's so helpful. And so we've just found the Two work hand in hand really brilliantly to take those learnings from entertainment but apply it to a slightly more commercially minded world.

A (20:08)

I love that so much. And I know there was a famous article that one of the executives at Pixar wrote about storytelling that has been shared widely that I really enjoyed. But no, that those books, I'll definitely put them in the show notes so my audience can check them out. What role does audience research or listening play in your storytelling approach?

B (20:33)

I mean, I would say when we work on a consultative basis with clients, that's a huge part. We interview people regularly, we run groups, we're looking online and seeing how people are talking about brands or causes. We like to talk about always being curious and for us that means do not stay in the bubble. So, you know, whilst we will always look at, you know, what might be competitive or adjacent causes or organizations, we always look far outside that as well. We go very far reaching and where we look for inspiration because often you can learn from, you know, an industry or organization that's so far outside your field.

A (21:08)

Right.

B (21:08)

And particularly for our clients, they just don't have the time to do that themselves. And you can bring really interesting thinking by going far and wide. So we do that a lot. And I think what that also informs is that theme that we talked about at the beginning of what does your audience care about? What's their story that you're kind of leaping into? It means that we start to understand that and we can build far better, more informed, you know, Personas and start to think about hypotheses, things like that, that we can bed into and then insert our story into them. And I think that's the way round. You always want to be doing it like understanding where they are. I think we spend, particularly when it comes to political causes or things where we're having to think in a slightly more politicized way, we spend so little time thinking about the opposing point of view and actually, you know, we're seeing it in the UK here at the moment, it's quite terrifying. Like we like to write people off because they think something rather than go what are the underlying factors that have led them to that point of view.

A (22:11)

We're doing that in the States as well.

B (22:13)

That's what I mean.

A (22:14)

Immediately writing people off and for like you just said, writing them off without trying to understand what their point of view is.

B (22:21)

Yeah, and often those things, you know, here as well as in the US it's I can't afford my day to day life. And that's what's led me to this particular, you know, kind of thought process that's led me to an organization who gave me some form of hope, even if no one else understands that form of hope that I've bought into in the absence of the people I normally believe in giving it to me. I've gone over here and that happens all of the time. And we don't spend a lot of time thinking what got them there, how do we build a bridge to that person, how do we put elements of our story that might just pull them back a little bit and not assume that they are a lost cause. So I think, you know, we spend a lot of time trying to understand not just the audiences that you're reaching, but some of the ones that you might think you can never convince, but you still need to learn from.

A (23:09)

Exactly. I think that's so important. I think stories unite us really. And it's one of the most powerful forms of uniting like minded people, but also getting people to really understand and empathize with a message or a cause that they might not have understood. So how do we measure the effectiveness of storytelling? This is a question I get all the time, so I'm very interested to hear because I feel like people see storytelling, like you said, a soft skill. It's marketing, it's awareness raising, which are all very valuable. But how do you measure the effectiveness just beyond maybe clicks or views?

B (23:47)

I mean, I think it's important what kind of stories we're talking about here. So you know, are we talking about stories that are guiding the future of the organization? In which case your KPIs are much more around? Do we all have clarity around where we're going? Does everyone in the organization understand that mission? Have we importantly made decisions off the back of that story that have enabled us to stop doing things as well as start doing them? Because we like to add as people, we like to have additive stuff, but we don't like to strip away and be more single minded very often. So I think in that space, you know, you're talking about far more business led KPIs rather than marketing and communication led. We do a lot of storytelling that's about your internal culture and again, your measurement there is entirely different because that's about how aligned the organization feels behind the cause, how understood they feel, how heard they feel, how supported they feel. And the stories are instrumental to that. So you know, we would always look at those kind of KPIs and put those in place. But I think importantly, these aren't Quick turnarounds. When you're talking about those kind of stories, whether it's future stories or cultural stories, that's a long action that you're putting into place because you're changing hearts and minds. So I think it's important to not look at it like a campaign, but to look at it as a thing you track over time. And is there clarity around the organization of the stories that we want them to understand and feel about us? When it's external, I think it's about being really clear on the business KPI behind it. So again, not necessarily just awareness, but you know, were we doing a particular thing with this story where we wanted a particular audience to think differently about us in some way? Is it more reassuring and you know, re engaging people who already felt about us in some way? You know, I think we could always be a little bit tighter with our KPIs than we tend to be. We tend to stick with the same ones for everything for tracking purposes. I think actually sometimes that misses that. There needs to be a really specific goal with the story that you're telling and what you're trying to achieve with it.

A (25:45)

Absolutely. Looking forward, you've mentioned that we need to re examine communications challenges as a community. I really believe that as well. So what systemic or sector wide communications challenges do you think we're not talking about enough?

B (26:02)

I mean, I think we touched on one of them before, that lack of hope. And I think we have become white noise as a sector and I think that's a real issue, you know, and things don't stay at the front of the news agenda. And yet we've been so reliant on that news agenda for years. So I think there's got to be so much more of how do you give agency to people? How do you build real community with people? Yes. How do you go outside that community and think about the people who don't have the same point of view? All that stuff that we were talking about before, thinking about that long term understanding of people that we're telling our stories to, I think we should be digging into that more. Whereas I think we have become about campaigns. And actually as a sector, we're always going to really struggle if that's the only way we're doing it. Because you know, bar a few organizations that have very big budgets, by and large as a sector, that's not the state that most of us are playing in. Right. So I think building genuine relationships and building communities that can do a lot of our storytelling for us needs to Be the focus, but it feels like that's still at the fringes more broadly. So for me, I think that that's the kind of storytelling I'd be wanting to get into more.

A (27:14)

Oh, I completely agree. I would love to see more of that. And for our small non profits, sort of just getting started and really not knowing where to start, like what is one thing they can start doing today.

B (27:26)

I mean, I think that jeopardy that we talked about, the what do you love that jeopardy? What's the thing that your audience really cares about that you need to tap into as soon as you speak to them? I think that for me would be the work. So clearly you've got to do the work on, you know, what is our cause, why do we exist, what are we actually trying to change? And to make that as single minded as possible, but then to map out the different audiences that you need to create that change with. So be they funders or volunteers or partners or donors, each of those has a different need, a different thing that they need to hear from you. A different reason why you're trying to get their attention intention, a different goal that you have with them. Mapping that out would be the thing that I would do because I think just immediately you'll make your storytelling more nuanced and it'll start to make you realize, yes, you need to get that mission, vision, you know, all of that stuff that we've all become so familiar and obsessed with, those many layers. And I'm sure the entire market is still confused between mission, purpose, vision. They all feel like they circle around the same place and everyone's got a slightly different definition for them. And it's agency is just confusing people where possible. But you know, yes, of course we have to crack that. But I think we could spend just that bit more time on who are we trying to convince and what do they need and then making our stories.

A (28:45)

More nuanced around that for funders and policy stakeholders. Some of us, I am definitely, I'm more of an emotional storytelling person. That's what hooks me. But some people are hooked by the facts and the data. So how do we balance this emotional storytelling with this sort of factual messaging and like convey our outcomes? Because there's so much pressure, you know, to show outcomes. But we really want to incorporate this emotional storytelling. How can we strike this balance?

B (29:19)

We actually do quite a lot of training around. We call it narrative in numbers because I think sometimes people think of them as it's a bit like brand marketing versus performance marketing. Like never the two shall Meet. And we don't really think about it like that. We think that, you know, all storytelling should be engaging and emotive, and you might use a multitude of techniques within that, whether that's imagery, a particular piece of narrative, or a really big stat. I think it's good to always personally have a mixture of all of the above, because I think if you're absent of any statistics and something that really backs it up, you've missed an opportunity to ground your story. When any audience you speak to is likely to have at least one person who really engages with that more than they do narrative. And I think what we need to do is not to see them as so separate, to still structure what's the thing my audience really needs to care about, how do I therefore need to show up in this situation? What's the ending of my story that I'm getting them to, and what are kind of three compelling, really big points that I'm going to make, and then start to think about how we support those. But if we don't do that structure first, we end up either in reports or presentations that are drowning in numbers or totally absent of them. Rather than thinking, what do I want my audience to think and feel? And what's the best way to support that? When we think about integrating all that information, we talk a lot about zooming out and zooming in. So, you know, what's the big picture that you can create? And often the big stats and things like that are really compelling for that. Right? Like these are three big stats that you don't know that will totally reframe how you think about my issue. You know, those kind of things are really compelling when you're going into a policymaker or something, where perhaps you need to have slightly more of a scare tactic or something that just makes them lean in from the off, but then zooming in to the experience of one individual, like in that person's constituency or whatever it is, something that makes it feel personal to them, that they might relate to as a human being. Those two things work together, say, fantastically. And I think sometimes we think it has to be one or the other. Like, you know, a report filled with statistics just knocking you over the head with so much information, or a really beautiful film over here with a narrative, rather than, can't we kind of mix the two somewhere along the line and just have something that's succinct and just brilliantly told and still backed up with the numbers?

A (31:40)

Wow, I love that. This has just been completely phenomenal. I love Talking storytelling. I could talk about it all day. Where can listeners connect with you online and learn more about Lookup and the great work that you're doing?

B (31:54)

So I would say the best place I will be totally honest and say we're redesigning our website at the moment and it's going to be so beautiful.

A (32:00)

In the next month.

B (32:02)

But in the meantime, what I'll direct you to is our substack. So it's we are lookup.substack.com and on there you will find a wealth of information about all things storytelling. But also we regularly interview just brilliant storytellers. We have a couple of live sessions coming up actually, and that's just a really good way to kind of pick someone's brain about their approach to storytelling and get their learnings too. So, you know, that's a really just fun thing that we constantly do and it's constantly informing our approach. So definitely recommend checking out those and there's lots of recordings of those on the website as well.

A (32:38)

Wonderful. Okay, one last question. In terms of storytelling, what are you watching or reading right now that you find is just fantastic storytelling?

B (32:48)

Oh my God. Wow. That's such a big question. I'm like looking on my Kindle now about the name of the book that I'm currently reading. I am reading Zadie Smith Swing Time, which is really good. And she just has like really emotive, just brilliant storytelling. I have to say that I'm a big person where, because my day can be drowning in, you know, quite serious and quite joyful stuff. I am a big believer in getting into fiction before you go to bed to like switch your brain off and to, to make sure that, you know, there's some light in your day. And I really think that this is affecting people's TV viewing and all of those kind of things as well. Because normally I might have given you some, you know, very serious Netflix series that I was engaging with. And at the moment, you know, I'm engaging with such light hearted. Probably just trash content at times. Yes. Because I think we all need a little bit of lightness in the world. But I can definitely send you some, some good recommendations on books that we recommend around storytelling that you can add to the show notes as well.

A (33:48)

Yes. Oh, I would love that. I would love that. Thank you so much, Caroline, for being on the show.

B (33:54)

It's been really, really enjoyable. Thanks so much for having me on foreign.

A (34:05)

Thank you for tuning into my show and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation. Make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or a review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to and then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact.

B (34:32)

So that's pretty much it.

A (34:33)

I'll be back soon with a brand new episode, but until then you can find me on Instagram. Juliacampbell77 Keep changing the world, you nonprofit Unicorn.

B (34:49)

Sa.