The Power of Storytelling in Webinars: Bigger Audience, Better Engagement, More Action

Hi guys and welcome to today's episode of Webinar Wednesdays. My name is Vilhelmiina, I'm the webinar host and the webinar program manager of TwentyThree. For those of you who have not joined Webinar Wednesday before, welcome. This is a webinar series where we talk everything related to webinars. So happy to have you joining here for the first time. And of course welcome back to those who have also been joining the previous episodes. In today's episode we are talking about the power of storytelling in webinars. And to tell us a little bit more on the topic, we have Jon Mowat, Managing Director and Founder of Hurricane Media. So hello Jon, thank you for joining us today. Jon Mowat Hello, good afternoon everyone. How's everyone doing? Good? It's great to see you. We have a lot of chatting going on in the chat. So happy to see all of you guys joining in. But Jon, today's title is pretty bold. We said the power of storytelling in webinars, bigger audience, better engagement and more action. So it's a big claim. What is it that actually we're going to be talking about? Jon Mowat Well, if you're going to do a claim, if you're going to do a title, you might as well make it a big one. I think what we need to do is, just go back slightly, right? Holding your audience's attention is getting harder all the time. At the moment, only 34% of marketers feel their own content is effective, which means that only 3 out of 10 feel their content is effective. And that's a whopping 7 out of 10 who feel they're wasting their time. So what we're really trying to do is figure out what is it that separates the 3 from the 7. And for me, the big thing is that the people that are succeeding, the 3 out of 10 are telling emotional stories. They're making emotional connections with people. And I think, just bear with me, I'm just going to do a little sort of example for you, and then we can sort of get on with the day. So here we go. I'm just going to do you a little thing. And this is a possible advert for a safety product, right? Catherine is woken from sleep with a deep hacking cough. Smoke fills her lungs and she's struggling to breathe. Rolling from a bed, she crawls across the floor under a deep cloud of black smoke. She edges slowly to her mother's bedroom. Where she sees her parents pinned under a fallen roof. She tries to get help, but is forced back by the heat. Catherine was the only person to survive that fire. A smoke alarm would have saved her entire family. So we've told a story there, which is really quite sort of, it gives pictures straight in the brain. Now, if I just said 360 people die from house fires every year, smoke alarms save lives, suddenly doesn't have the same resonance. It's all about making that emotional connection. The difference for me is what a story does is your mind and the pictures that it paints. So today, what we're going to be doing is we are going to be looking at how telling these stories in webinars helps you grow your audience, how it can engage, make sure people stay with the webinar and how it drives action. So it's a big claim, but I reckon we can do it. Perfect. Thank you for that little illustration. I thought it was very concrete in terms of showing basically the power of storytelling. Yeah, it's in your mind, isn't it? Yeah. Exactly. Can you maybe say a few words about yourself and Hurricane Media for the audience? Yeah, sure. So a long, long time ago in a previous life, I was a filmmaker at the BBC. So I made documentaries for BBC One, BBC Two, Discovery Channel. So like stories being ingrained with me. I've done stories about heroin addicts, cheaters in Namibia. And then I did six months embedded with the Royal Marines while I was sort of wearing a chemical suit. And I was in the Gulf War, a second Gulf War sort of film. I was in the Gulf War sort of filming a documentary for BBC Two. Then I got shot out and I thought this isn't really the job for me. So I came back to the UK. I started a video marketing agency, which is now called Hurricane. And we have clients around the world. And yeah, it's like it's about telling story. And I think the interesting thing for me is that I started off as a publisher and then I became an advertiser. And what's happened is those two worlds have now completely collided. So that's where the skills come in. And on top of that, just to prove I'm a total nerd, I have a book called Video Marketing Strategy and a course called Video Marketing Strategy, which is an online course. So, yeah, pretty much a nerd, really. Perfect. I have to say, I think that's probably one of the most kind of intensive personal bios I've heard of I've had from speakers on the show. So really cool to hear a bit of your background. But talking about your book, we actually have a signed copy here at the office that you have sent to us. And I've read it myself. And I thought if you're really into video marketing and kind of understanding what is going on in today's world in terms of video, it's super useful. So I thought it would be something that would also interest the audience. And I talked about it with John. And he's actually promised a discount code for you guys so you can get it for minus 20 percent as well as minus 80 percent for the online course. So we're going to be giving the codes and the links at the very end of this webinar. So make sure that you stay until the end so you get those. Thank you, John, for sharing those with the audience today. That's cool. Absolutely. It's fine. Yeah. Perfect. So before we go any deeper into today's topic, let's just go through a few housekeeping points. So on your right-hand side, you have the questions tab where you can submit all of your questions to us. If there's anything you want to ask for John or for me, then make sure to send your questions. Also on your right-hand side, you have the questions tab. You have the chat. I don't think I even need to mention it at this point. It's amazing to see the engagement and the conversation that is already going on here. It seems like we have an extremely international crowd here. Hello, Hilton, from all the way from where did I see you? From Cape Town. We have Magdalena from Ireland. Julia is joining from Toronto. Hi, Kate, from Germany. And it seems to be Sunny there. I'm going to say hello from Copenhagen. It is also a very sunny day here. It's finally kind of we're excited for the spring to come. I'm sure as you guys are as well. And just third point on the housekeeping, as always, for those of you who have joined us before, you know that I want this experience to be as interactive as possible, which means that we have prepared a few polls for you so that you get to vote and give us kind of your thoughts on the topic, what we're talking about today. And if you have any other kind of comments or discussion you want to put, you can do use the chat so that we can kind of get the most of today's session. But then let's actually start with the poll. The first poll, just to kind of warm up a little bit, I'm going to start it from here. So you can go on the right hand side in the engagement tab. And the very first question is, how many times have you left the house this week? Just to get a feel, how is the situation all around the world where you guys are joining in from today? Maybe you've gone out every day and kind of enjoyed the beautiful weather or maybe it might be a bit more rainy, like some people were saying in Ireland. Maybe just twice. It is only Wednesday at the end of the day. Maybe you haven't left at all. You're really enjoying the coziness of home. Or maybe you're kind of very much cozied up inside and you're confused about what is even outside. So let's just take a few seconds to cast in your vote so you get to kind of test out the polling. John, want to tell us how many times have you left the house so far? Well, I've got the kids dog at the moment, so I'm leaving house twice a day. OK. To go and walk the dog. And they don't seem to be leaving just as much as that. Yeah, I'm getting out. It's been quite positive, actually. And it's nice and sunny in Bristol. Yeah, it's good. Just enough, I would say. Yeah, perfect. Great. So we've gotten all the votes in. I'm going to close it right now and let's just have a look at what is the how does it look like for the audience? OK, so over the majority or over half of you have actually left the house at least every day to get a bit of fresh air outside. Great to hear. And then we have the eight percent on both sides of not at all and confused about what's going on outside. Cool, guys. Thank you for casting your votes. Now we're kind of warmed up. You've got a bit of a story from John and I think we're ready to really dive deep into the topic. So I think the very first question is when we're talking about. Emotional storytelling as a tool to increase engagement and results. What is actually emotional storytelling in webinars? Maybe you can tell us a bit more about the whole concept. Yeah, no worries at all. I think what I'll do is I'll explain what a story is. I'll explain how emotion works and then we can start sort of applying that to webinars. So I think the key thing about a story is it's sort of definitions uses is a selective batch of information which collects. Details and arranges them to take a listener from one point to another. And I think that's the really key. The really key part is that it's about sort of deciding which information you're going to say and what in what order to say in. So Randall Jarrell has said that a story is first of all, a chain of events that begins at one place and ends at another without any interruption. Mark Twain is quite good. He just said a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. So in terms of brand story, it's about. Not just random statistics and facts, but it's about adding a sort of a narrative structure to what you're doing. The key thing is that it's a curated information with a purpose. And that's where brands can use it, not just letting people find their way through the information. So let's just go back a bit. The story is really important because it's how we've evolved. You know, 13000 years ago, we're sitting around a campfire and we're communicating. How are we going? How do we know where to hunt? Where are we going to get eaten? What about the other tribes? Who can we talk to? Who can we not? So we started sharing knowledge and information through stories. And it's how we made sense of a confusing world. Now, obviously, story has evolved, but it's very much part of how we communicate. And in fact, it's so part of who we are, the stories affects us at a very deep level. So I'm going to get a bit of psycho psychological now and a little bit sort of scientific. Well, when we hear a story, what happens is your brainwaves change. OK. And the really interesting thing. The really interesting thing is that when one person tells a story and another listens, their brainwaves actually start becoming in sync. They become very similar. Also, what happens is that chemicals kick in and they sort of we stop using our observant skills. And we start just thinking with emotion because the amygdala and the hippocampus kick in. So we start remembering things. The language centers spark up because that's how we've obviously communicated. And we get all these neurotransmitters like vasopressin and serotonin. So we become emotional beings. And as we all know, you can drive you can drive decision making with emotion. That's why it's so important for a brand. Now, can we try an experiment? It's a little bit controversial on the webinar. What I wanted to do is show everyone who's watching the actual impact that an emotion, emotional story has. And then we can actually talk about what happened and how we can start harnessing that for webinars and things like that. So, Wilhelmina, I'm going to hand over to your amazing production skills. And I'll ask if we can show everybody that first video, please. Yes, let's play it. So before we. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. Is this on video here? OK, well. thing what i'm trying to do here is i was wondering you know we've got a load of marketers 200 or 250 marketers on on here and do they ever think about what it is that motivates their audience do you ever have a real think about what it is that's motivating your audience so um does your audience want to look good to its boss i'm gonna have to get my little piece of paper now to remind myself but you know do you ever look good to your boss um do your do your clients have too much work and they need help you know are they pressured to save cash and it's just it's by thinking about what that emotional driver is that gets your audience going that means you can then harness that in your webinar um if you look at what we've done today we've the emotional driver we've used is that by watching this webinar you can get better at what you do and i think getting better at your job is a really good emotional driver so yeah let's see what you think your um customers are motivated by just yes so just go on the right hand side and cast in your votes and use the one that you think will have the biggest impact so if you can only choose one from the six seven options that we have which will be your pick um and then uh do you do you want to kind of share what you think will be the result or like or i think it depends on where people's heads are at because yeah when we're in a brand right we always think well my clients want to and then you just list the key feature save money or have an easy life but that isn't actually what's driving your clients um actually having an easy life might mean they want to go home early um it's i don't know what it would be but looking at the list i think in a b2b market i think having too much work and needing help is a really strong one um and um i want to look good to my boss is also another one i don't know it'd be interesting to see i mean obviously there's this we could have done an entire alphabet of answers so i don't think we're going to get all of them but it's interesting to see exactly and if if you kind of have a hard time choosing one because you want to choose many just try to pick the one that you think uh will have the or has the biggest impact uh just so that we can get some kind of idea of uh of which way are we going here will be f is quite good i worry about the world and i want to help at the moment that is really getting people engaged because you know the world is a bit sucky at the moment and actually people do want to help so it's a really good way of of connecting with people yeah so i think we have a lot of votes in so let's go ahead and close the poll right now and then we'll see what the results look like um so it's okay pretty split actually all of the options got some votes at least but the strongest one we have an f i worry about the world and i want to help there you go working at the moment yeah interesting okay and more than anything it's made people think about what it is you're talking about and i think it's interesting to see option g uh i could be missing something amazing kind of that uh what you were talking about the whole like experiencing FOMO which i find is very big in today's uh society yeah i think that's a really interesting poll actually that's really good um really good um so what i thought i'd do is i now that we've got people thinking about how emotion could be used for their brand i was just gonna sort of cover um how effective it is so i for cancer salads and what actual work and then you're trying to get out the best of what they can vs who do things that can't we thought that you're right i was gonna start today so i've got there's just The key thing is how we apply it to webinars, I suppose, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. So how does it actually work in terms of webinars? Okay, so emotions are important, but what we can also start talking about is storytelling. So if we look at the structure of webinar, the interesting thing with webinars is they're like a linear thing, aren't they? I'm just going to have a slurp of water, actually, if I can find where I put the glass, which I can't, never mind. I'm behind you. You know, webinars are a linear thing. They're like a book or a film. They've got a beginning, a middle, and end. So we're going to talk later about marketing the webinar with kind of storytelling, but let's just talk about content and how we can use lessons from storytelling to get better, right? So what I thought I'd do is I'd talk you through, if I can remember the structures, three structures, EFA, Into the Woods, and Q&A. And those are three classic storytelling structures that we can apply to webinars to make them better, right? So the first one is EFA, which is a thing that I phrase, which is called emotion, fact, and action. And really simply, this is the simplest way of structuring any marketing message, right? You have to make an emotional connection at the beginning so that you can draw people in, and then you can tell them some facts. And at the end, you drive people to action. And the way you do that is by tying it back to the emotion at the beginning. So if you say, this is going to save the planet, that draws people in. Then you can tell them some facts about how it's going to do it. And at the end, you say, well, if you take action, you can save the planet. It's a very simple structure. It can be used across all kinds of platforms. But I'd say it's good for webinars that are short because it's such a simple structure. But yeah, it can be used anywhere. So you can start applying that to sort of how to engage people more. And to be honest, if you engage people at the beginning of the webinar, like hopefully I did at the beginning with that story of the fire, you start connecting people with the emotion of it so they stick with it. The next structure is this classic three-act structure, which is sometimes known as into the woods. And if you think about any story in the history of the world, okay, it's basically three acts. The hero may be a girl who lives in a nice village. She has a happy life. And that's act one. She's all fine. But then something happens that changes this. In act two, the little girl for some reason has to leave what she's doing and go and face something, normally into the woods. She's going to go into the dark woods, all the classic sort of fairy tales. And in the woods, she faces a struggle, right? And then in act three, she's overcome the struggle, and she has changed for the better, or she's back where we were. But those three classic acts of fine, go and challenge, and then it's fine again. Or you win or lose, depending on how dark the story is. But it's a really good way of doing things like webinar case studies. So, you know, you start with a story of this brand that were doing okay, but then something happened, and that forced them to engage a new customer or engage. And now they're doing really well. So that three-act structure just adds a nice kind of, like, at least a way of structuring your things. And you can do that within a webinar or just within a case study. So, you know, if you're going to apply that to brands, act one is the customer's backstory, where you're talking about their hopes and dreams. And then act two is they have a struggle, and you're selling the problem they had. And the resolution is, look, they've used your product, and now it's great. So it's a really simple way of doing that. And then finally, the third thing that we can take from story with webinars is this classic sort of science storytelling structure that I learned at the BBC, which I call Q&A. And it's a really good way of structuring complicated messages. So once you've done that emotional bit at the beginning, you can raise a really difficult question like, why did the universe – I've set myself a really hard task now, but why did the universe exist? So that's the big question. And then from that, you can ask, well, okay, let's go back. This happened, the big bang. What was that? Okay, then we had this, and then we had evolution. So what does that mean? So you break the big question down into small chunks of other Q&As, which all lead you to the end conclusion. In actual fact, I'm writing a medical brand story this week, and we're doing exactly this structure. We are saying, how do we treat this? Okay, well, so we've got this drug. How does it work? And then we say, okay, well, it breaks down into manufacturing, and we answer that question. Okay, what about regulation? And then what about testing? And then that gives us the answer. So we've used that question and answer structure of a big one followed by small ones. It works really well. And just to be really nerdy, it's what we're doing today, because we started with a big question like, how do you use emotion in webinars? And then what we're doing is we're going, okay, what is story? What is emotion? And we're answering all the questions up to the end. Yeah, breaking it to the small pieces. Yeah. We actually have a question in terms of what you were just saying. Amy's asking, could you review the story structure that came before the three-act structure again? Oh, yeah. Talking about the EFA. Yeah, I mean, I probably went over it because it was so simple. It's EFA, emotion, fact, and action. So if you're telling a story, find that emotional driver that your audience has. Like, what is the thing that they actually care about, right? And that is the thing that you're going to put at the beginning. We will save the planet. You will save money. You will look great. You know, whatever that is. Once you've hooked them in, then you can hit them with the facts, the fact thing. And with facts, we're looking to do as few as we can, but as many as we need. And once we've done that, we can go to the action part of it where we go, hey, do you remember that emotion you had at the beginning? We refrain that. We remind them of that. And then we do it. Oh, there's a fire alarm test. Oh, there it's gone. So the EFA is very simple. Get them emotionally hooked. Tell them some facts. And then drive some action. Great. Actually, talking about the facts, we have a question related to that. So I'm just going to pop it to the screen. From Anna, I am an analyst. How can I tell stories to the truth? What an amazing question. Okay. Firstly, okay. I'm trying not to give you things that are really going to put you off, but don't let facts get in the way of a good story, is one thing that we used to say at the BBC quite a lot, which is that you don't have, just because you're an analyst, it doesn't mean you have to. You have to deal with all of the facts. In actual fact, maybe as an analyst, your job is to pick the key facts which tell the overarching narrative. The other point is it's okay to be accurate without being precise. And I know this is a weird thing to take on board, but if you say something is down to the milligram in weight, it's very easy to be wrong. Whereas if you say, oh, it weighs about a kilo, it's quite easy to be right because you're less accurate. So what I would say is, we don't need to be worried about telling all the facts, as long as the ones we tell are true. And the other thing is that you can tell all the facts somewhere else in your story. So if you're doing a webinar about one particular thing, as soon as you start piling in all those other facts, the story gets lost and it gets really confusing. So it's like, just keep those out of the way, because they can be dealt with later, if that answers the question at all. Yeah. No, no. I think, I think it is. It does. We don't have to say everything. The point of a story is that we're picking out the key threads that joins all the things. We're not denying the other ones, but I think as an analyst, the best thing to do is pick out the ones that tell your story. Are you saying like without overwhelming the audience, basically? Yeah, exactly. And we're going to talk about this in a minute, actually, I think, because as soon as you overwhelm them, it's not a story. It's just a barrage of stuff. And very, less is more. Simple, simple, simple. Yeah. Perfect. So actually, when we talk about all this kind of different methods that you've been talking about, how, what are the tips that you can get from storytelling to make your webinars better? You already maybe kind of mentioned a few here, but to go even deeper into that. Yeah. Okay. So that's a really good question, actually, because there's loads of little things. And the biggest one is a thing called the deal. So when you're an author or a journalist or a writer and you're writing a story, you make a deal with your listeners, listener or your viewer that this is the thing about this. And if you watch it, you are going to find this out, right? So you're going to set up some kind of emotional thing. You want to save the planet. We're going to show you how that works. So you're making a deal with them. And then at the end of your content, you have to, if it's going to be satisfying content, you have to pay that off. Because if you set up a deal and then don't answer the setup, it's unsatisfying. And then the other thing to do is on the way, from the setup through to the payoff at the end is keep bringing people back. So for example, on this webinar, although we're going all over the place about story, we keep bringing it back to how we can use story to, to, to make webinars better. And then at the end, we'll answer the question. So it's the skin to the deal and it's got a setup and a payoff. If that, does that make sense? It's a good one. That one. Yeah. As soon as you break the deal and you don't answer the thing that you set up at the beginning, people just don't watch. Then the other one I would say is, is focus. And the thing with the story is it's select information that takes people from A to B. So don't let your webinar move away from that core drive, you know, and the way I always do it in, I'm always challenging brands with this, is this question of, so what, as soon as someone comes in and says, we need to say this, we need to talk about this feature. You go, so what, what has it got to do with that story that we're telling in this piece of content? So it's very easy to get sidelined, but focus just on that one, A to B to C to the end of the story. It's, it's really important because if you read a good book, they don't just start telling other bits of other stories, do they? They just stick to, to the one, to the one point. And on that less is more. So less detail is better. Especially now that time is, time is so crucial, really. So it's better to go into less detail. I would say certainly at the top of the sales funnel, then as you move through the sales funnel and you know, you're into a webinar right down in the bottom and it's a how to, to thing, fine, two hours of drop down menus and that sort of stuff. That's great. But at the top of the funnel, less is definitely more because you just want to sort of get the, the minimum detail you can in there. So it works. Final one, rewrite your story, keep rewriting it, even though you think it's done. I mean, Miss Sunshine, a brilliant award-winning film that was rewritten over a hundred times. And Ernest Hemingway said all first drafts of shit. So it's like, tell your story, get used to that emotion, and the structure that you're going to use. And then just keep rewriting it really. So I'm just going to post it in the chat so everyone can get. So there was the deal focus and rewrite. Yeah, there's the deal. So use the deal. There was focus. And there is, yeah, that's exactly right. And then there's also a technique called the bridge, which is, we do this all the time, which is just to bring people back to the purpose. You know, I'm talking about this because this is my point, or this is important because this is my point. And, and that, in a storytelling, that's called a bridge and just brings it back to the central, the central story. So super, super nerdy storytelling tips. So out of all of these that you've been talking about, what have we actually been using in today's webinar or how we've done anything? Yeah, we've done loads of them. Yeah, no, it's a good question that, okay, let's have a thing. Well, the whole webinar today we've structured on the Q and a structure. So we started with that big, how does story make your webinar better? And then we broke that down into what is story, what is emotion, how does it apply to business? You know, we've answered those kinds of things. We've been bridging throughout. We've constantly been saying, you know, we're going to bring back to the subject, bring it back. And hopefully when you get to the end, you will feel that we have honored our deal in that we made a deal with the people watching that we're going to help them get, do better webinars with story. And by the end, hopefully you'll have the answer. Otherwise I'll have failed miserably. And we won't have done that, but those are the techniques that I've tried to put in. Anyway. Yeah. Perfect. And in terms of the topic that we had or the title that we have for this webinar, bigger audience, better engagement and more action. How has what we've been talking about today done that? Or how does it actually do that? How would you kind of tie it all together in terms of that? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think what we've talked about so far is how like a good story with emotion in it will drive people through the narrative for your webinar and like also help how you structure it. But also I think we can be, we can be starting to think about how we attract people. Like if you think about the emotional driver, that's going to make your audience sit up and actually pay attention and be engaged. The very first emails that go out should have that emotional driver in them. So, you know, if you're using 23 as a platform, for example, it sends out an email in advance and that should have the emotional driver in that you're going to be talking about. We're going to save you money. We're going to save the planet work. So you're already using that sort of story to drive it. And again, after the event, you can drive more action by saying that was a great webinar. We answered the question that you had and now go and do something. So we're really kind of doing that. And then just making sure that all the LinkedIn and social posts have got, I've got that kind of leveraged emotion in it. So that's how we can grow an audience. Definitely better engagement, certainly using the structure that we had. But the other thing we talked about is more action. Well, if we're at the end of the webinars, we're doing calls to action, which linked that emotional driver at the beginning, then yeah, people are going to going to do more. So definitely can we applied. Okay, perfect. Um, what about when we're kind of working in this COVID 19 times, any thoughts on how brands should be telling their story in terms of kind of the whole what we've been talking today, whether it's in webinars or or even more broadly? Hmm. Well, that's the that's the subject at the moment, isn't it? Really? Yeah. That sort of stuff. Um, I think what we're talking about is, um, whether it be in webinars or any content that you're putting out is understanding, accepting the situation, um, without being sort of melodramatic. I mean, it is a massive thing, but we need to accept the sort of the new normal. I think the idea of being human and reflecting and I think unpackaging things as much as possible, which will companies doing to show what's going on behind the scenes, um, accepting the emotions that real people have. You know, some people are scared, scared of being in. Um, do you want to keep hammering home the you're scared message? Well, maybe not. Maybe for brands we should be a little bit more positive, real, but sort of positive without being over the top. Um, actually, I've got us. I have actually got a slide which I'm going to dig out. Um, if I put that up, yes, can you put that slide up? I think it's my first slide. Um, what should I do? That if you just share your screen and then I can put your slide up. Okay, so if I go, Slash share screen, uh, and I go to this one, so if I say it out loud, I'm more likely to get it right. Yes, no, we have it. Um, okay, so can you see my screen there? Okay, so this is really interesting one. This is what consumers want brands to continue to advertise during the pandemic. And, you know, this is obviously skewed towards the TV commercials and radio because that's what it was done for, but it's, it applies to all contents. If we look on the right, you know, the biggest stuff that people really, really want are funny, positive content to distract from what's going on. Um, they want a sense of commute continuity and normality, which is kind of like webinars like today. Uh, so in that sort of bracket, they are like, yes, we do mention COVID-19, but actually we're talking about how we're going to push businesses forward. The next one along the third one from the right is provide information about COVID. Now that isn't for us. It's not for me certainly, but it might be for some people on here, but I think brands should be wary of that. But then the fourth column share how you are supporting staff and customers. I think that's a really, a really key one. Um, so just was a random example. What hurricane have done is we've created this series called locked down, but not out. Um, and it's just all our content is about, yeah, we're locked down, but we're going to help you as much as possible. And we're going to do webinars about how to get better. And we're going to do blogs about things you can learn. And we're going to give away free training courses and all that kind of stuff. So it's like making content. I think that's helpful. Um, and relevant without being sort of like super bleak. Yeah. So I'm going to clear my screen now. Yeah. We've had actually a lot of questions coming in. So are you ready if I start popping them on the screen? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. Perfect. So, uh, let's get started here. We have, um, for example, let's take the first one. Paula is asking, how do you connect using storytelling when it has to be online and knowing that your audience, your audience might not be so engaged or focused? Okay. Wicked. There was an idea that story takes a long time. I mean, it doesn't, you know, um, there is this amazing story, which is, um, it's quite dark. I'm sorry, but it's like, um, for sale, baby shoes, never worn. And it's like, that is like nine words. And it's just such a heavy duty story. Um, the, we don't need to be doing these long narratives. Um, you can do, uh, five second emotional thing, which grabs people. And then you tell the story further down the line. So specifically in a webinar, we have plenty of time to tell us stories, but, um, you can tell a brand story incredibly quickly. It's just a case of drilling down into that, um, that genuine emotional driver that makes people care and then answering it. But it's a really, really relevant question. Um, the other thing is, you know, people keep saying, um, oh, we can't get attention. People don't have attention span. It's less than a goldfish and all this kind of stuff. Well, people actually sit and watch an entire game of throwing box sets back to back for like 14 hours. If they're willing to give their attention, they will do. It's just the case of being one of the three out of 10 marketers who's making content that's good enough to justify people's attention. I think that was quite a rant. Sorry. Good example. And actually on that topic, uh, Chris is asking, do you have to adapt your story to the taste of your audience or does in your opinion, a good story attract everyone? Okay. That's a really good question. Um, there's two different ones there. There's the brand story, which is like, this is what we do. This is what we solve. But I think that should be fairly generic to all audiences. But if you really want to be effective and I, I kind of didn't talk about this earlier because I was aware that I could have just gone down a complete sort of blind alley with it. Start with the personas of the audience, specific personas in your audience that you're talking to. And let's say you've got four of them. Um, let's take, um, medicine. So you're a, you're a medical person. You're in a pharma company. You're going to be talking to eight people. You're going to be talking to patients. You're going to be talking to patients, families, right? Each one of those is going to have a totally different, not central narrative, but how you go about structuring the story is going to be very different. So yeah, I definitely think that your story as in the emotional connections, excuse me, should change depending on who your audience is. Um, and that's just a piece of persona work to figure out what it is that drives each individual persona. Great. Um, more questions coming up here. Sarah is asking, I just got so caught up in improving my videos that I got caught up in perfectionism and stopped making any videos. Can you speak to the balance of striving to improve and, uh, perfectionism? Okay. That's a good question. I mean, I've got 16 people in my agency, so we go for perfection. Um, you know, because there's a lot of people, but if there isn't, it's more important to, um, get it out there. So I, I believe in, it depends. It depends on where your perfection is coming, right? You need a perfect plan, which is when you're going to launch stuff and it's knows what your emotional drivers are. And it knows what your audience is. That needs to be perfect. But then in terms of the actual production quality, I think that's less important because if you're hitting that right emotion, it doesn't matter if it's a little bit scrabbly around the edges. So, um, if you've, if you figured that there's a particular emotion or a particular story, that's going to resonate with your audience, filming something about it on your iPhone and making it cheap, it could be just as effective as a big shiny TV commercial. Um, yeah, it's just a case of getting it out there. And a lot of those details I would notice probably your audience wouldn't notice anyway. So, um, I would say like 80% is a good solid, uh, figure, but you know, even yeah, yeah. 80% just get it out, you know, and then test it. Great. Um, Jean is asking something that I think is, is very good to this point. I often feel cheated by storytelling. You try to touch me emotionally, but I feel that I am worth better than that and want to be convinced with my brain. Yeah. Wicked. Really, really good question. Okay. There is a dearth of crappy emotional storytelling where a brand just bought some random disconnected emotion onto the front of some generic benefit and service. I mean, you, you watch the average, normally some sort of plinky, plonky, piano and, you know, people looking longingly out to the sea and you've no idea what it is. I think a good emotion is genuinely connected to the product. Um, but then, uh, so I didn't know who noticed who that was. Message was from, but actually you're the kind of person that is going to be concentrating more on the fact mid bit of the middle. So if you look at the EFA, yeah, I've got the emotion connection, but I do need the facts. Um, so across the pyramid of content, I would expect to have some quite detailed content that people like you, you can dig into and, and, and really find out, um, but top of funnel stuff, I would just keep it to an emotion, but one that's actually connected to the brand. Otherwise it's just path. Thank you for the question. Gene is always good to kind of go on the other side and, and, uh, question the question. What is the topic? I've really played down the facts thing, but they do have to be in there. Otherwise it's just a sort of a vapid exterior. Um, if for me, that's just a way of telling the story. It's, it's not the narrative parts. You still need to, you still need to explain what the product does and, and those kinds of things. Yeah. Uh, we have a question from Hugo. How do you build your narrative while connecting emotionally with the story and your character? Oh, can you put that one back up again? I need to build your narrative while connecting emotionally with the story and your characters. Okay. Well, it depends on which story I'm getting. Um, so in terms of brand, it, it starts with that persona work. It starts with the real, the real understanding of like, who am I talking to? And way beyond demographics is like, I don't care how old they are or what AB status they have. What I want to know is what do they actually care about? What is the thing that keeps them up at night? Are they really worried about no money? Are they worried that their parents are going to die? I mean, there's, those are the things that I think you need to have. And then when you come to build your story, your, your narrative, you're always making sure that you're referring back to that sort of persona work. Um, I've lost the question again. So I've gone off topic. So I'll have to kind of bring it back. But, um, once you've done that persona work, I think then you can really start to, to, there we go. So the way I build a narrative is I start with the emotion of, of the people I'm talking to. Um, and then as I'm telling any story, I'm always referring back to that. Perfect. That's a longer answer. But these are a lot of really good questions, um, coming in. Well, let's take still a few, a few, and then, uh, I have one question for you as well. Um, quick one here. Jane is asking, do you offer training courses? I do. That's an excellent question because I do offer a training course. Um, yeah, I mean like a consultancy, but also I have a, a, a training course online and there is an 80% discount at the end of this webinar. So, um, yeah, good question. So you guys are going to be receiving that in just a few minutes. Uh, but before that, we have a question from Christian. What if you have all types of personas in a webinar? What happens then? Yeah. Okay. That, and that is that segmentation, isn't it? So my question is, should you be doing a webinar to everybody? Okay. So it depends on the, the structure of your approach, right? But if you imagine any sort of pyramid of content at the top, you've got that brandy stuff, that high level emotional connection, not too many facts. And then as you move down through the funnel of content, you've got more detail. Um, you might expand into different personas, but at the top, you really kind of talking to everybody. So if you go up, if you're doing a, a webinar that's for everybody, I think you need to be keeping it at the top quite a lot. Um, because as soon as you start going, well, here's this bits for you, but not you. And this bit's for you and not you, you're going to lose audience. You never watch a TV program and they go, well, here's a bit of natural history, but this is a magazine show. Here's a bit of natural history, but if you don't like it, there's something coming up. You do a natural history show. You do a sort of drama. So my answer would be do a short webinar that is to everybody. It's a, and then quickly drive them down into something more specific to who they are. Because again, going to that medical example, um, you're not going to push patients to the same webinar that you're going to put healthcare professionals to, because there's just different conversations. Perfect. And we actually have a question that I was wondering if you wanted to show a video about this. Sarah is asking, have you seen the mashup of all this and doing the same? Is it possible to stand out from the crowd? Yeah, it's good. I mean, I've, actually I was going to end with, um, there is an amazing video. It's a little bit too long, but I've created a video of, um, a cut down of this video, which shows all the sort of the bad COVID-19 generic stuff. I think when the pandemic first hit, all the ad agencies just put out something very quick. It was the first thing they thought of, and it ended up being all the same. Um, so the stuff, I think the question was how to stand out, um, try to avoid the bland cliches that we're going to show you in this, in this thing. But for me, the most successful content that I've put out myself was actually shot in my house with my kids. They're showing the reality of what it is to make films during a lockdown. Um, and I think that's the way to stand out. It's just to be authentic. Um, and as soon as it's sort of bland and generic, you're just going to lose people. Yeah. Should I play the film from here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Go on play. And it's funny. It just shows everything you've been talking about. It's like all the stuff you don't want to talk about in COVID-19. People do, Take care of people. We're people. People. People. People. People. Family. Family. Family. Family. Families. Families. Families. Even now. Especially now. Especially now. Right now. Now more than ever. More than ever. Today. More than ever. Today. More than ever. In times like this. At times like these. During these difficult times. In these troubled times. Challenging times. Trying times. In these times of uncertainty. During this time of great uncertainty. During these uncertain times. During these uncertain times. And uncertain times. In uncertain times. Uncertain times. Unprecedented times. Unprecedented times. Unprecedented times. Without leaving the safety of your home. From home. Home. Your home. At home. Home. Home. Home. Home. Home. That's the key. Here to help. Our teams are here. We are here. We're here. We're here. Here for you. Here for you. We're here for you We're here for you And we'll get through this Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Together Yeah I mean there you go Just don't do any of that basically It's what you gotta do that was i haven't seen that before it was perfect to see that um but while we were watching the video stina has actually put out the promo codes into the chat so uh as john mentioned or we talked about at the beginning you get a 20 off john's book video marketing strategy and 80 of the online video course and so make sure to to get the codes as well as the pages so you know where to claim those and how long is this actually valid john for oh that's going to be up for probably a week or so i think that kind of and also it's like you know for me it's about helping people at the moment and if anyone's got any questions just reach out because it's like that's what it's all about we're trying to share best practice whether about webinars or anything so you know it's it's just see what the questions are and i'm happy to help perfect um i have one last question for you uh john as part of my webinar week i like to ask my speakers for one tip of the week because there's been so much we've been talking about but if you kind of had to condense everything in one tip one thing to remember what is your tip of the week okay uh i made a note on this uh and now what i said yeah yeah oh yeah i know what it was okay so it's not going to surprise you but for me it's um it's about um emotion it's about emotion emotion emotion i think in everything you write to you say to and you communicate with your customers don't forget they're humans with eyes to webinars as much anything else identify the key emotion that is relevant to your brand and make sure you include that in all the content that you do otherwise you are just noise there you go that's my tip perfect very kind of to the core uh keeping it short thank you for that thank you john for everything you have been teaching us today i find this episode to be extremely inspiring and i hope that you guys in the audience uh think so as well we have the last poll up right now which is asking did you find this episode useful so please take a just a second cast in your vote it's always very crucial feedback for me to know in terms of the next episodes we're planning for webinar wednesdays and as always we are going to be back next week with the next episode we'll be talking about how to combat screen fatigue with tv like webinar experiences we'll have shoot star kind of tell us a bit more on the topic so if that's an episode you want to sign up for uh don't close your webinar tab straight away you are going to be redirected um after this webinar ends and you'll also get the link in the in the emails afterwards um and as always you will get the recording uh don't worry about that if you didn't have the opportunity to get any notes so uh make sure to um to tune in to learn more and uh huge thank you for you john and thank you for sharing uh your your book code and and the code to your online learning course i um i can personally highly recommend it it was a very interesting read and i guess you're talking about kind of the same uh as well in the books yeah yeah it's yes i'm hammering that home but in more detail basically that's what it is perfect that sounds great um and uh feel free to to always uh be in contact if you have any questions to me or john you can find um us on linkedin for example but for now i want to say thank you for everyone for joining uh you are gonna i'm still getting some questions about are you gonna get the the replay of this yes you can get this on demand so uh no worries about that you'll get it later today so thank you everyone um i uh i hope you have a very good day and then i hope to see you next week bye bye bye john thanks for joining