Are you captivating your audience with story?

Leona Hobbs, November 30 2010

The audience will not tune in to watch information. You wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. No one would or will. The audience will only tune in and stay tuned in to watch drama. ~ David Mamet

Robert Bruce over at Copyblogger writes about the importance of story telling as core to effective communication using advice from a memo playwright David Mamet sent to a team of writers on The Unit.

Story telling is important in all channels, but this is resonating for me in the context of social media marketing. Are conversational calendars judged for their daily engagement metrics to the detriment of story telling? Frequently, I think we miss the potential in social channels to use stories to engage our audience and instead settle for the easy push of “information”.

As Bruce writes:

Information is simultaneously too much and not enough.
Information is impotent to reach the hearts and minds of those who can use your idea, product, or service.

David Bruce at Copyblogger: How to Captivate Your Audience with Story (From America’s Greatest Living Playwright)

Worth a read is the text of the original memo available at Movieline: David Mamet’s Master Class Memo to Writers of The Unit