We help your company enter the experience economy

But Is It Art?

By Rolf Jensen

To me a good corporate video is art. Why? Because it tells a story and does it well. Aristoteles, the great philosopher who lived in Athens more than 2000 years ago, said it. A good speech needs three elements: Logos (the rational aspect), Pathos (an appeal to our emotions and Ethos (values). It is as simple as that and Aristoteles would have mentioned videos as well - if he had been alive today. (Imagine! if we had just one video from his speeches)

The principles of good storytelling were developed long time ago and they have not changed since - because they are eternal. Homo sapiens, our species, has not developed, we are still moved by a good story and seduced by the best ones. Actually, we have no defense against them. Gary Larson once created a cartoon showing father mosquito coming home to mother mosquito, he was dead tired and said to her: "I am so tired as if I had spread malaria all over Africa." The next days he got mails telling him that it is the female mosquito that can give you malaria, not the male. Larsons response: OK, but nobody has complained that mosquitoes speak English, live as man and wife and understands their situation perfectly. We are seduced by a story well told.

Why? Human beings have developed a brain in three parts. The first one is the reptilian brain, the instincts. Sharks and crocodiles have only this type of brain. Most animals and human beings have also got the limbic brain, where all our emotions are located. The latest addition is the neo cortex, the seat of Logic. When we buy a pair of Nike shoes, the limbic brain will do all the decision-making. Your spouse may ask you how much you paid and point out that you could get good shoes for less. Only now you ask the neo cortex to assist you. (Even though it was not consulted in the shop). It will say: "They will last for many years and you can wash them a lot of times, a good buy, really." In a good marriage the dialogue will end here. In a less good marriage the next question will be: "how do you know?"

A good story has a conflict. First everything was fine, then this terrible thing happened, but luckily we were saved by this or that. And we lived happily ever after. We need the terrible thing. In a fairytale it is obvious. In movies too. Remember the movie "Jaws?" Try to remove the shark from the manuscript. People go the beach, they swim - they go back again. They go for another swim, Jaws 1, 2 and 3. It will not work, we need the shark, some shark. Where is the shark in a corporate video? It could be the hard work with product development. Sometimes we were about to give up, but sometimes we work all night to help customers. But of course it has to have a happy end.

A good story tells about actions. Don't tell it, show it. Hans Christian Andersen never tells us what to learn from his fairytales. It is for us to discover. It just tells us that this ugly duckling did this, suffered that and next spring it had become a beautiful swan. If you want to tell customers about corporate values, show them in action.

We need stories about companies now and more so in the future. Just now we are entering the experience economy as I predicted in my book "The Dream Society", published in 1999. The appeal to the heart is important. Because, tomorrow the best story will win in the market place, it is the age of the storyteller.

These were my words, but not my ideas. Aristoteles and in modern times, Joseph Campbell are some of the persons that wrote down the principles of a story well told. Thank you so much.