Hello, I’m Dr Andrew Holmes, one of the research staff developers on Prosper based at the University of Liverpool. I’d like to welcome you to this workshop on the secrets of storytelling. This session will help you gain some understanding of why storytelling is relevant to career development and will explore the essential elements of storytelling. So what is a story? There are a number of definitions out there, but generally, stories revolve around the idea of a narrative, a connected series of events or experiences. Stories can be true or fictitious and may be presented in a number of different mediums or formats. The purpose of a story is to interest, amuse, or instruct. Every story has a purpose, a reason for existing, an effect it wants to have on the person receiving it. Creative writing teacher Margaret Geraghty also makes the point that good stories always contain at least one major character transition generally in a character’s mental state. Nick Carraway in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ gets swept up in the Long Island lifestyle, but by the end of the novel he comes to hate New York and leaves. Luke Skywalker struggles with his father’s legacy and the dark side, but eventually overcomes them and stands on his own. Lyra and Will in Philip Pullman’s, ‘His Dark Materials’ move from being children to young adults, gaining awareness, responsibility, and maturity in the process. These examples are fictitious, but an awareness of what makes a good story translates across the fiction-non-fiction divide. Never forget that you are the protagonist of your own story, and you have your own arc. By using storytelling techniques, you can demonstrate to employers your journey so far, where you want to go, what you want to do, and why? Storytelling and narrative are important in most aspects of your lives. The communications scholar Walter Fisher and psychologist Jerome Bruner have argued that, ‘Narrative is a key means through which people organise and make sense of reality and engage in recent argument.’ Fisher coined the idea that humans are homo narrans, storytelling animals who are persuaded to make decisions based on their coherence and fidelity of stories. Bruner describes this narrative mode of thought as being concerned with human wants, needs, and goals. The consequence of humans organising our thoughts through narrative is that narrative sticks in the brain. Numerous studies have shown that narratives increase interest and recall of information and may be more likely to prompt action. These quotes are from studies looking at people’s engagement with science and they demonstrate that framing scientific information as narratives increases the impact and power of the communication. The study by Morris et al looking at the effectiveness of climate change communications, found that embedding information in story structures influenced pro-environmental behaviours. Hopefully, that brief overview has shown you the power of stories and how influential storytelling can be. Where can you use storytelling in your career? Well, honestly, everywhere. Being aware of the power of storytelling and how to use it is beneficial in a whole host of situations, from pitching ideas to writing press releases, from job interviews to giving presentations. If you’ve looked at Prosper’s resources on CVs, you’ll know that storytelling techniques are useful for academic and non-academic CVs and are particularly important for narrative CVs. We’re now going to look at some of the essential elements of storytelling. Simon Hall teaches communication skills at the University of Cambridge. He founded and is director of Creative Warehouse, which does communications for companies and for the public sector. He’s also written several novels, some non-fiction books on business communication, and was a BBC news correspondent for 20 years. Simon has kindly presented Prosper with his nine key steps to effective storytelling. Let’s start at the start. Starts are hugely important. You want to get your audience interested and invested. You want to hook them from your first words so that they want to know more. The popular claim that the modern attention span is ten seconds or less is widely regarded as a misinterpretation of the actual research, and attention spans are highly variable depending on the specific context of the situation. That being said, you do have limited time to get somebody’s attention and if you’ve got something important to tell them, you’ve got to grab them. We’re going to look at the beginnings of some pop songs and great literature to see what we can learn from them. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’ That’s Jane Austen’s masterpiece, ‘Pride and Prejudice’, an iconic opening line. But why? Three points come out of this opening line. First of all, when you read an opening line like that, what do you know about the book? Is it going to be a crime book, a thriller, science fiction, horror? No. You know, immediately it’s going to be a romance. In only 20 words Jane Austen has shown from the very start what her story is, plunging in from the very beginning. Point number two. That opening line gives you a good sense of the author and their character. Are they worth spending time with? With this opening line, Jane Austen displays her writer’s eye for observation and detail. As a result, you want to spend time with her, to hear more from her. Point number three. When you read an opening line like that, does it make you think this book is going to be rubbish or does it make you want to find out more? Again, it makes you want to find out more. Those three points just from that one opening line and let’s see how they’re replicated in other famous opening lines. Here’s the opening line to a famous song. ‘Load up on guns, bring your friends.’ Those seven words open Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ and again, the three points we saw earlier are there. It goes straight to the heart of the story. Rebellion. You get a sense of the writer, their anger, rebellion, and rage at the world, and you want to find out more just from another few words. Okay. Another song. ‘Hello, darkness, my old friend.’ That’s Paul Simon’s ‘Sound of Silence’. Just five words, but a beautiful opening. It’s thought to be about the assassination of President Kennedy, the extinguishing of a beautiful voice of hope and energy. The opening line goes straight to the heart of that story, gives you a sense of Paul Simon, and makes you want to find out more. Okay, let’s switch to another book. ‘All children, except one, grow up.’ That’s the opening to J. M. Barrie’s classic ‘Peter Pan’. It’s just six words with one clause. Again, it goes straight to the heart of the story, expressing the book’s ideas so simply, but so effectively, making you want to find out more. Okay, here’s the last one. ‘It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.’ That’s the opening line to George Orwell’s ‘1984’. Again, it follows the three principles. It goes straight to the heart of the story. It tells you about Orwell, and with its delayed drop where everything seems normal and then is suddenly weird, makes you want to find out more. So those were the three principles for starting your story. Remember, you’ve got a very limited time to grab the audience’s attention, whoever you’re talking to. So set out your story from the start, give us a sense of your passion, your belief, your knowledge, and authority, and make us want to find out more. Next, we’re going to hear from Simon Hall himself as he tells a story from an interview he did to get his current role. As you listen, take a moment to recognise how his opening line obeys those three principles.

Let me tell you a little story now, which is why you’ve got the young Hall with attitude there, doing his ‘My Generation’ pose. When I first came to Cambridge four years ago and was asked whether I might want to teach at the university, there was one of the most intimidating experiences of my life when I had to do a little test lecture briefly in front of some eminent professors. Oh my God, it’s the University of Cambridge, 800 years old, I’m really scared. Anyway, I did it, and I debated whether to put this story in, but I’m glad I did because it made a real impact. From then on, they have all said to me that was the one part of my presentation they remembered, which of course is why we’re talking about storytelling and the power of storytelling. So here’s my little story. I’m 14 in that picture. Note at the beginning of this story, five minutes of a terrifying teenage intervention absolutely transformed my life. I was a dreadful child at school. I was quite troubled, and I was often being suspended and excluded, being really unpleasant to teachers, being lippy, getting involved in fights. I was just in danger of getting out of control. Then one day, aged about 14, as in that picture, I was strutting along one of the corridors in my school, which was a state school in Sussex. Not a terribly good school. Classic coastal town, often overlooked, quite deprived. I was doing my strut along, nasty, horrible me, and out of a classroom jumped two teachers, Nigel Waugh and Jerry Lewis, and you’ll see why I remember the names so well in a minute. They grabbed the horrible young me, pulled me into the classroom, locked the door behind us, and drew the curtains. I was terrified because this was the mid-1980s. I thought I was going to be beaten up. It was a savage time. It was perfectly possible. Actually, what Nigel and Jerry did was they sat me down on a chair and they gave me a grilling. They said I was an idiot because I had good brains, and I was eloquent and thoughtful, and people listened to me, and I could be a leader, and I could do so much with my life. Or I could screw it all up like I was about to do. I was so touched that those two men had believed in me enough to plan that intervention and then make it, the first time anyone had shown so much interest in me, that I did turn life around from there. I went on to university, and I joined the BBC, and I travelled all over the place covering amazing stories, and I became a writer, and I got published, and travelled all over the place talking about that, and then ended up here in Cambridge teaching at the university and running my own business. Do you know what? I don’t think any of that would ever have happened if it hadn’t been for that five-minute intervention by Nigel and Jerry. You probably hear the catch in the voice as I talk about it because it does every time. It still gets me. So every time I teach, every time I teach, whether it’s a session like this, or with undergrads, or in private business, I always remember Nigel and Jerry, and I hope I’m fulfilling the wonderful legacy they left me. So that’s my little story. Two points from that. The power of storytelling. I could have just told you I really believe in teaching, I know what it can do in terms of turning people around, helping them, transforming their lives, just a moment’s intervention. Or I could tell you that story. Which will you remember? Which is the most powerful? Point number two, when I did tell that story here in Cambridge, it’s the one people did remember, and it has helped me because they understand my commitment to doing this, and hopefully doing it reasonably well. So I hope that’s an illustration of the power of storytelling. It lights up our minds, in the way that facts don’t. It’s a remarkable thing. We remember it much more than mere information and it’s shown scientifically to release oxytocin, which is the happy hormone. We love stories. We love stories. That’s why we’re all here talking about stories.

Okay. Let’s move on from the start and discuss the second most important part of a story, the end. The end is the voice and thought that you leave your audience with. It’s why famous last words are always noted and feted. The key really is summing up your story and doing so memorably. Okay, let’s see how endings work. First of all, let’s have a look at the opening of a very famous speech. ‘Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’ The speech is Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Notice how he follows the three principles for starts. He sets out his story from the start. Gives you a sense of him as a person, his passion and principles, and he makes you want to find out more. Let’s now see how he ends it. ‘This nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.’ It’s such an emphatic, enduring, memorable ending summing up his story. You want endings to be memorable, to be powerful, and often in a way that reflects the start. Meatloaf’s song ‘Bat Out of Hell’ starts like this. ‘The sirens are screaming, and the fires are howling way down in the valley tonight.’ It ends like this. ‘The last thing I see is my heart still beating, still beating, breaking out of my body, and flying away like a bat out of hell.’ Again, it’s an emphatic ending. It’s memorable. It reflects the beginning, ending the story enduringly. Let’s have a look again at Simon Hall’s own story. He starts with, ‘Five minutes of a terrifying teenage intervention transformed my life,’ and he ends with, ‘I think of Nigel and Jerry, and I hope I’m fulfilling their wonderful legacy.’ Again, it’s enduring, it’s emphatic, it’s memorable, it’s emotional even, it’s stirring. Endings aren’t always easy to do. They’re often more difficult than beginnings. We’ve looked at starts and endings. Now let’s look at the middle. Why are you looking at a load of pylons? Well, imagine the narrative being those electricity wires and imagine the opening of a story as the first pylon, and the end of the story as another pylon further down the line. In between them, you need more pylons to hold up the narrative with. If there’s nothing in between, then the narrative, like the wires, would go all saggy and boring. Really the key to electrifying your story is to chuck out any stuff which is extraneous, any detail which is not needed, and just tell your story short, sharp, and simple, and have lots of developments to keep us interested. It can help to think visually. You know the story you want to tell. What are the key moments that happen along the way and how can you make them pop and maintain momentum? What are the story beats and how can you make sure you hit them to drive the story forward and keep your audience’s attention? We’re going to hear from Simon Hall again, this time with a story he tells potential clients to explain to them about his company.

So next, I’m going to tell you a little story just to illustrate how that works, the narrative. It’s about my company, Creative Warehouse. It’s only a very short one, but again, see the power of storytelling. When I pitch for business with Creative Warehouse, I could just tell people we’re a complete communications agency, we’re committed to doing all your business communications, or I can tell it this way, and this is the way I often do tell it. Creative Warehouse came about from a feeling of failure. It goes back to me when I first started working here in Cambridge with businesses, I was doing very well for myself. I was helping them with their presentations, pitches for investment and customers. I could write their website for them, I could write news releases for them, I could even help them with social media. But I started to get close to some of these wonderful entrepreneurs that I was working with, I really admire them, I think they’re absolutely extraordinary people, great energy, determination, vision to change the world. Then there came a problem. Because we got close, and we became friends as well as colleagues, they would often ask me, ‘Great, okay, you’ve written the website, do you know anyone who can do some design work for us to make it look lovely?’ I couldn’t help with that. I couldn’t do that. ‘Well, can somebody build a website for me?’ No, I couldn’t build a website that’s outside of my abilities. ‘Could you make a video for me? We need a top-spec high-end video.’ No, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t do that either. So I started to feel a failure, failing these brilliant people. So that’s how Creative Warehouse was born. I went out and found myself a designer, who’s a brilliant guy, who was a former lead at the university here in design. He’s terrific and he’s so annoyingly talented I could throttle him sometimes. He comes up with genius in seconds and that’s just wonderful but also mildly annoying. I’ve got a brilliant cameraman and editor who’s ex-BBC and ITV who is just fantastic to work with, and I’ve got a website builder and developer who was Thomson Reuters and many other things and he’s just great too. Really, I just stick all the glue together and let them get on with their stuff. That’s Creative Warehouse. So now we can solve all your business communication problems and do so with style. Again, see the storytelling. Start with fear of failure. End hopefully memorably. Tell you a little bit of the story, there are my pylons. When I pitch that it’s always much more impactful, and much better appreciated, and remembered much more than if I just say, ‘We’ll sort out all your business comms problems.’ So storytelling. Again, back to the importance of storytelling. We are suckers for stories as humans. Goes back to the campfire days when we didn’t even have books. Knowledge, information, wisdom was passed around by the elders telling us stories. Always tell stories, whatever you’re doing. They’ll always serve you well.

Let’s just quickly look at Simon’s story. He starts with his first pylon. Creative Warehouse came about from a feeling of failure. Next, comes a series of pylons that maintain the tension and dynamic of the story. You’ve got the challenge of the problem, and Simon feeling like a failure, and then a series of tasks he overcomes by recruiting the talented people who work for him. He finds a designer, a cameraman, an editor, and a website builder and developer. He’s gaining the tools to defeat the problem and by the end, he’s strong enough to conquer that problem, and that feeling of failure, demonstrated by the final pylon, a powerful business pitch in itself. Now we can solve all your business communication problems and do so in style. Simplicity is really important in storytelling, and it’s so often forgotten, yet can be absolutely key. Simple is not stupid. Simple is smart. Remember your audience. This picture on the slide is a nightmare in physics or maths. I’d personally find sitting through that horrendous, but the audience is made up of very clever students, so it’s perfectly fine for them. Imagine a group of primary school children had come in and sat through that. It would be absolutely meaningless to them. It’s an extreme example but always remember your audience. You are very, very clever and you know so much more about your subject than the vast majority of people. So sometimes you have to just make sure that you translate and interpret so that your brilliance can be understood. ‘Academic research has a lot of jargon, but jargon isn’t restricted to just academia.’ This quote is from a local government council document. ‘High-quality learning environments and pedagogy are a necessary precondition for the facilitation and enhancement of the ongoing preparation for adulthood and educational processes.’ What does it mean, though? What are they trying to say? They’re essentially saying that children need good schools and teaching to learn properly. I mean, how hard was that really? Jargon and lingo gets in the way, and sometimes people try to appear to be too clever, and that gets in the way of good communication. For clear communication, keep it simple. This sentence is from the BBC. Something you would hear at any morning meeting in the newsroom. ‘PM’s Presser @12 ex Downing Street, location POLCORR 2-way for ONE.’ This is actually what it means. ‘Prime Minister press conference at noon at Downing Street, political correspondent live report from Downing Street for the One O’Clock News.’ That’s the English version, but of course, the original version is fine if you’re working in the BBC, and you use these terms every day. Remember, every career, every industry has its own jargon, its own lingo, but translate it and keep it simple, and that’s the best way for good communication. Here’s a final one from a company in Cambridge. ‘Utilising Brownian motion models, non-regime switching data universes, multiple quantitative data source complex clustering and characterisation algorithms, we forecast equities’ shifts.’ It boils down to, ‘We use advanced maths to call the markets.’ It really is that simple. You have your own way of talking and writing in your own industry but remember who the audience is and make sure they understand it. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in simple. Sticking with the theme of keeping things simple, good communication should also be accessible. In the modern world beyond academia, there is a way to write and there is a way not to write. We’re going to reference this with two famous writers. Here’s the first. ‘It is commonly said that no man was ever converted by argument, but there is a single one which will make any Laodicean in England, let him be once love-sick, wear prayer books and become a zealous Episcopalian – the argument that his sweetheart can be seen from his pew.’ That’s Thomas Hardy. Nice, big, long sentences. Translation-wise he is essentially saying that someone might not like the church, but they’ll go to church if the person they fancy is there. That’s the way Thomas Hardy writes. Let’s contrast that with another very famous writer but with a completely different style. ‘I’m clear enough in the head, he thought. Too clear. I am as clear as the stars that are my brothers.’ Look at the short, sharp writing, the really brief sentences. That’s a quote from Ernest Hemingway. Which of these two styles do you think works best for modern writing, particularly for the web? It’s a no-brainer. It’s Ernest Hemingway’s style. So watch your sentences. These days you will find more and more people are looking at websites and reading documents on a mobile phone or a tablet. With small screens, short, sharp sentences are the way ahead. If you find your sentences are becoming more Hardy than Hemingway, stop and break up the sentences. Keep them simple. Okay. A final example of accessibility. What does this mean? ‘Allow me to venture a thought, notwithstanding that others may disagree, and taking into account, of course, the range of competing viewpoints, but nonetheless, I contend it can be argued that, given the evidence, even in the context of other great institutions around the world, that the University of Cambridge could be claimed to occupy the very pinnacle of all the body of higher education establishments globally.’ Again, it’s a long and not at all engaging way of saying that the University of Cambridge is the best university in the world. If the University of Cambridge taught the author to write like that, then the author has just disproved their own statement. Watch your sentences. Watch how long they are. Watch the way you write them, how accessible are they to the modern reader? Keep them short, sharp, and simple. Let’s move on to something else that can really give you an edge in your storytelling and in your communications. Titles. They’re sometimes forgotten about, but titles are really important. The highest-paid people in a newspaper office will often be the ones who write the headlines. The reason titles are so important is because they are the very first thing that gets your attention. Your story will often be one of several if you’re presenting somewhere or if you’re writing for the online environment. As we said earlier, you need to grab the interest from the very start. The title also sets out your stall. You can build anticipation and an interest from the beginning. So let’s look at some titles and work out why they work. Here’s the first one. ‘Dancing With Your Cat.’ It genuinely is a book about dancing with your cat. So if you have a cat and you want to dance with it, you know where to go to find out more. Why does it work as a title though? Three points. First, most importantly, interest. It grabs your interest. It makes you go, oh, what’s that? That’s whether you’d be in a bookshop looking on the shelf, or whether you see it online, or whether you hear it on the radio. It grabs your attention and interest. Secondly, information. It informs you. You can’t just make up a random title. There has to be something to it that tells you about the subject you’re talking or writing about, and that genuinely is a book about dancing with your cat. Thirdly, the third letter I. It intrigues you into wanting to find out more. So if you’re in a bookshop, you reach out and you open up and find yes, it really is about dancing with your cat. Those are the three things you’re looking for with titles, interest, information and intrigue. Here’s the next one. ’12 Weird Tips to Hit the Top.’ So this is from a blog and the 12 weird tips gives it away. You’ll see it a lot in online environments. Ten top tips, 12 weird tips, or whatever it happens to be. It’s because the online environment is such a busy environment that bite-size information is quite appealing to people, and they tend to go for that. See also how it interests. Oh yes, I’d like to know about that, and it informs it. It genuinely is a blog about hitting the top and it’s intriguing. The three Is again. Here’s another one. ‘Safety Meeting Ends in Accident.’ This is a news headline because journalists like their ironies. Again, it’s interesting, it’s informative, and it’s intriguing. Here’s another one. ‘Is This the Rail Price? Is This Just Fantasy? Caught up in Land Buys. No Escape from Bureaucracy!’ Journalists love puns and plays on words, and that’s a headline about a rail scheme in Northern Ireland, which was hopeless. Here’s another. ‘Do Woodpeckers Get Headaches?’ This is from a research paper. It’s trying to be a little bit playful, but without going quite as far as a news headline would go because you’ve got to keep your authority. You want to be authoritative but not too boring. ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales.’ This is from a book, and it’s a great book at that, and the title is just so intriguing. It really piques the interest. Here’s the final one. ‘The Propulsion Parameters of Penguin Poop.’ This is a research paper. Like the woodpecker one, it’s playful but not too playful. Titles are only a handful of words, but they take a lot of effort and thought because they’re so important. You want to interest, inform, and intrigue before you’ve even started. So much of storytelling is hooking us and keeping us interested. Inform us. You’ve got to give us some information as well and intrigue us. Make us want to find out more. These are good principles throughout storytelling and in all forms of communication. One thing which is absolutely critical in storytelling, and indeed all communications, is something that you may find hard to actually do when you’ve been in academia. It’s character. People relate to characters. Why do people go to certain pubs? Why do they want to get into certain restaurants? Why do they want to live in certain houses? Why are they so desirable? Because they have character. Why do we refer fondly to certain people as characters? As an example, Tommy Cooper was one of the UK’s most beloved comedians. But actually, if you analyse Tommy Cooper’s jokes, they’re not funny. What makes them funny is Tommy Cooper’s character. Don’t be afraid to put your character into your storytelling, your wit, your warmth, your wisdom, whatever it happens to be. People respond to characters. Character in communication and storytelling can make your words live for centuries. Here are some examples of words that live long in our imaginations and in our minds simply because of the character that goes into them. Here’s the first one. ‘If you live to be 100, I want to live to be 100 minus one day, so I never have to live without you.’ ‘Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in our hearts.’ ‘How do you spell love? You don’t spell it, you feel it.’ That’s A. A. Milne with his ‘Winnie the Pooh’ books. These books, although they were written 100 years ago, are still in print. There are still films being made of them. They’re still massively popular. Why? Because of the character. Look at that writing. If Milne had written that flat, and academic, and boring, and uninteresting, no one would have taken any notice, but the character of what he writes, the voice to it is right into the heart of childhood. It’s so happy, so warm, so contented. It’s just a voice of pure love, and he sums it up so beautifully in the character and that’s why it lives long in the memory. That’s the importance and the power of character. Now let’s switch to another completely different character and see how different this is and yet how famous this writing has become. ‘That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve on account of me, and that I be not buried in consecrated ground, and that no sexton be asked to toll the bell, and that nobody is wished to see my dead body, and that no mourners walk behind me at my funeral, and that no flowers be planted on my grave, and that no man remember me. To this, I put my name.’ That’s Thomas Hardy’s, ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’, spoken by the character of Michael Henchard. It’s just rank with bitterness, how viciously unhappy that is. It drips through the paper. That’s Hardy at his most bitter, and it’s become so well-known because of the character of the writing. Here’s another example, a complete opposite. ‘After hearing the disgusting noises from downstairs last night, I’ve also vowed never to drink alcohol.’ ‘Perhaps when I am famous, and my diary is discovered people will understand the torment of being a 13¾-year-old undiscovered intellectual.’ That’s from Sue Townsend’s ‘The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13¾.’ It’s so memorable because of the character of the writing. She somehow goes into that 13¾-year-old teenage angst-ridden mindset and portrays it so beautifully. That is the power of character. It’s really important to your writing. You have to cage character a little bit when you’re doing academic writing, but in terms of other forms of communication, it’s incredibly important. People respond to the character, so don’t be afraid to let yours come through. In the resources accompanying this video, you’ll find links to two articles. One is by Dame Athene Donald, who’s the master of Churchill College at the University of Cambridge, and the other is from Innocent Drinks from just over a decade ago. Have a quick read of them. Get a sense of how different the characters are but how effective each of them is. The one from Innocent Drinks, they’re coming along in a very friendly, chatty, very approachable way. Athene Donald’s one is far more authoritative, far more measured, but passion comes through in both of them. Completely different styles, completely different subject matters, and completely different characters, but very effective for both. You have your own character, and your character can work if you get it in there. Don’t be afraid of character in your writing and your communication because it’s very powerful, and it engages people far better than just doing things neutrally and objectively. Another critical point about communication in storytelling is to make sure you don’t go on and on. Say what you need to say and shut up. Cut, cut, and cut again to reduce your content back to the bare bones. Less is more is a golden principle of storytelling and communications and with graphics and images as well. The painting on the right is a Rothko. It sold at auction for $186 million. Why? Because of the classic simplicity. The power of less is more. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is one of the most iconic examples of speechmaking in history because it’s so feted and well-known, people assume it went on for rather a long time, but in reality, it lasted about two minutes. It’s only 272 words long, half a page of A4. Why did it go down in history as being such an incredible piece of storytelling and speechmaking? Not because of the word count but because of how much the words counted. You’ve seen the start, you’ve seen the end, and the content in between was pretty good too. The power, the passion, and the principles of the man, and how he expressed it are what makes it iconic. A modern parallel is Twitter. You don’t get many words on Twitter. Dr Paul Coxon tweeted this, a very short story. ‘Hello, my name is Paul. I’ve got a PhD in physics and thanks to a random brain freeze, forgot the word for photon, so had to call it a shiny crumb in front of my colleagues.’ His tweet, a tiny little story, less than 40 words long, bounced around the world. As a result, Paul was interviewed by radio, TV, and newspapers all around the planet. It was a bit of fun, a bit of self-deprecating humour, but it’s a little story, and it was very good for him because it upped his profile. One of the most famous micro-stories is only six words long and is by Ernest Hemingway. ‘For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.’ It’s a story in six words and it works so well because it lets your imagination rip, and lets your imagination go running away to understand what has happened. The less-is-more principle leaves space for the imagination, and the imagination is absolutely critical to storytelling. If you can stimulate people’s imaginations, you’ve hooked them. Cut your content back to the bare bones and leave the rest for people to imagine. If you’re interested in writing, you may have heard about the ten per cent rule. It was a piece of advice passed on to Stephen King when he was a teenager and something he still adheres to now. In his memoir on writing, he talks about how any first draft can be cut by ten per cent and as a result improved by the simple process of removing content that doesn’t contribute to the story. The final step to successful storytelling is something Simon Hall terms starry storytelling and it lies at the crux of what makes a story work at the core of storytelling. It comes down to two things. Has it got emotion and has it got information? Does it make me think and does it make me feel? If I learn something and I feel something, then the story’s generally good. We’re going to hear from Simon for one last time this session as he talks about an occasion when he visited a state school and talked with the students about what they can do with their lives.

This was an event at a school which was just pretty much like my school, just a very ordinary, normal state school where I was doing a talk. The story goes like this. Would you like to know how to deal with imposter syndrome? There’s my hook. Anybody interested in knowing how to deal with imposter syndrome? Yes. Okay. I can see some people saying yes, I’d love to know how to deal with imposter syndrome. Wouldn’t we all? This is how to deal with imposter syndrome. That talk, one of the things I mentioned is dealing with imposter syndrome and how you do it, how you handle imposter syndrome. What I could have said to the group, and it was a big group, it was about 150 youngsters in this hall. That’s the head teacher there with the head boy and girl, and me. He introduced me. There were lots of teachers there. It was a big group. They were about 16, 17, 18 years old. I came on to talk about imposter syndrome. I could have just said to them something about imposter syndrome, that I suffer from it, and lots of people I know suffer from it, but actually what I did was this. It came to me, and I don’t know why. I was about to talk to them about it, and then I said, ‘Who here suffers from imposter syndrome?’ There’s about 150 youngsters, and of course, they’re young, so they’re self-conscious. They’re not going to give too much away; they want to be cool. I said, ‘Who suffers from imposter syndrome?’ There was a quiet, a bit of an awkward quiet, and then one guy put up his hand, one of the students. Then a girl put up her hand. Then something really, really interesting happened. Next to me on the stage at the front, the head teacher put up his hand. Then more students put up their hands, and then teachers put up their hands, and I put up my hand, and within seconds, everybody in that hall, all 150-so of us had their hands up in the air. The reaction was extraordinary. Everybody was looking around like, you, I can’t believe you, you suffer. You as well. Oh, look at that guy at the front, the Cambridge guy. The head suffers from it, and all the teachers suffer from it. The understanding just rippled through us. Everybody suffers with imposter syndrome. Absolutely everybody. It’s true. I’ve worked with some brilliant people, some really well-known people, and they all suffer with it. It’s part of being human, drives us on, helps us keep going, helps us try and improve. That’s how you deal with imposter syndrome. It’s part of all of us, part of the human condition thing. The point being starry storytelling. Give us some information, give us some emotion, and your storytelling will be starry, and you’ll see a bit of the start and the end in there and some of the narrative, but that’s okay. Keep it short and simple and all that stuff. Those are the principles.

So in summary, the nine secrets of storytelling are striking starts; hook your audience from the start by giving a sense of what your story is about, a sense of who you are and the desire to find out more. Enduring endings. Sum up your story memorably. Engaging structure. Remember the electricity pylons. Electrify your narrative by being aware of your story beats and making sure they stand out. De-jargonification. Keep it simple and keep your writing accessible with shorter sentences. Make sure people can understand it and remember that people come to your story on different devices and under different circumstances. Make sure your titles interest, inform, and intrigue. Let your character be seen. Less is more. You don’t need to go on and on. Remember Lincoln. Remember Rothko. Remember King. Give the audience both information and emotion. Thank you so much for your time and participation in this session on the secrets of storytelling.

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Hello, I’m Dr Andrew Holmes, one of the research staff developers on Prosper based at the University of Liverpool. I’d like to welcome you to this workshop on commercial communication. This workshop is split into two sections. In the first half of the session, we’ll look at how to communicate commercially, what you need to know, and the types of language and structures you should use. In the second half of the session, we’ll look at four areas of commercial communication. How long is the average attention span? If you look online, you’ll see plenty of blogs and articles suggesting that it’s ten seconds or less and that it’s decreasing over time, but much like goldfish memories, this isn’t an accurate representation of the data. Attention span is very much context-dependent and there’s little evidence to actually suggest it’s getting shorter. When focused on a task, adult attention spans can last up to an hour or more. For browsing the web, people report around 15 seconds. For browsing social media, people have reported as low as two seconds. The evidence behind these claims is rarely straightforward, so it’s easiest not to put a number on it. For the purposes of commercial communication, the context of your audience attention span matters. Pictures and adverts assume a tiny attention span. A technical report for a client assumes a much longer attention span. What matters is how and what you say, knowing how your audience is likely to be receiving your communication. The photo on the slide is of a lecture theatre in 1960s America. The professor at the front is teaching maths or physics to an audience that presumably understand what he’s talking about. To an audience of schoolchildren, however, he might as well be speaking gibberish. Knowing your audience, and communicating well to your audience, is critical. What do your audience know? How do they want to receive information? Are your audience on social media, reading magazines, exclusively readers of broadsheet newspapers? What do they want? Once you know the answers to these questions, you can ensure that you organise your communication so that you reveal the information that’s most important to your audience first, in ways that they understand, and in a format that they use. You may have seen this represented in the inverted pyramid of communication where an article leads with the most newsworthy essential information at the top, continues on to important details, and finishes with the information that would be nice for your audience to know, but that isn’t essential. This top part is framed by questions of who, what, when, why, and how. Three of these are particularly important for communication. What is the product? Why is it essential? Who would be an ideal user? The inverted pyramid is the opposite of the traditional academic publication pyramid, which leads with background and context, moves on to methodology, and finishes with the implications of the research. Although it should be noted that most academic publications feature a summary or abstract at the start where the findings and implications are mentioned, meaning that the academic communication pyramid also has a small, inverted pyramid above it. Making sure your intended audience can understand you is integral to communication. You have an in-depth knowledge of your subject and will have your own technical terms and jargon. These will get in the way of your audience unless they are as knowledgeable about your subject or product area as you are. Make the language you use as plain and simple as you can. It’s easier for your audience to understand and it makes it quicker for you to get your point across. As an example, the paragraph on the screen won the bad academic writing contest and is fairly indecipherable to the majority of the English reading world. As a rule of thumb, try to cap sentences to a maximum of 25 words and check to see if you’re using lots and lots of words with more than two syllables. Words with three or more syllables aren’t a problem, but they build upon each other, creating harder-to-understand language when used in high density. As an example, here is an extract from a council document. ‘High-quality learning environments and pedagogy are a necessary precondition for the facilitation and enhancement of the journey to adulthood educational process.’ What does it mean? It simply means that children need good schools and teaching to learn properly. Sometimes language like this is used because the writer is so deeply invested in their subject that they can’t see the issue they’re creating. Sometimes language like this occurs because the writer wants to appear clever or serious. Another example is this. ‘Utilising Brownian motion models, non-regime switching data universes, multiple quantitative data source complex clustering, and characterisation algorithms, we forecast equities’ shifts.’ What this really means is that the company uses advanced maths to call the markets. Technical language like this absolutely has a place in commercial communication, but it tends to feature more in in-depth documents or once the potential client or customer has been drawn in to find out more. It shouldn’t be the first thing the audience sees. Another example of how to write well can be found in classic literature. The extract on the left is by Thomas Hardy and is essentially saying that someone might not believe in God, but they’ll go to church if the person they fancy goes to church. Hardy’s writing is full of long sentences, long words and looping arguments. In contrast, the quote on the right is by Ernest Hemingway. It’s no less powerful. It doesn’t skimp on the feel or the impact, but its sentences are short and sharp. The longest sentence there is ten words long and there are only two words that are more than one syllable long. When writing commercially, aim to be more like Hemingway than Hardy. Linked to this is the less-is-more principal. The two pictures on the slide are vastly different in terms of the amount of visual information they present. On the left is a very busy and colourful children’s picture and on the right is an understated and muted painting by Rothko. The children’s painting is worthless to the wider world. While the Rothko sold at auction for $186 million. Whether you agree with that incredible amount of money or not, it’s a case of saying less but getting more across. Although it should be noted that in this case, knowing your audience is important, and to the child’s family, the relative worth of each picture will be reversed. Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is one of the most famous speeches of all time, widely remembered and quotable. Because it’s so well-known, people tend to assume it went on for a long while, but it probably only lasted about two minutes. It’s only 272 words long, half a page of A4. Why did it go down in history as being such an incredible piece of storytelling and speechmaking? Not because of the word count but because of how much the words counted. In his memoir on writing, the novelist Stephen King talks about how any first draft can be cut by ten per cent and as a result improved by the simple process of removing content that doesn’t contribute to the story. Try it next time you write something. The less-is-more principle applies to using data in your commercial communications as well. These two slides from presentations have far too much information on them, obscuring the important messages they’re trying to convey. When considering presenting data in commercial communications, you need to think of the single point you want to make. the take-home message you’re trying to tell the audience, and then work out what the minimum amount of data you need to make that point is. This isn’t a case of removing data to create a false message, or hiding contradictory information, just removing extraneous information that adds nothing to the message. You could also put the message in a heading to drive home the point the data is making. Data is also no good by itself and it’s important to relate the findings to your business or goals and to your audience’s interests, whether they are potential customers, investors, or other stakeholders. For example, this graph has six different lines and a heading that just describes what the graph is about, not the message it’s trying to convey. What is actually being said with this graph? Here the graph has been simplified to show only the relevant data and the heading now clearly shows the intended message. A strategy of focusing on fewer bigger customers has led to higher profits. This is another example of too much information obscuring the intended message. What is actually the point being illustrated here? By removing extraneous information and focusing on the core message, we can now quickly see that the intended message behind this data is that the South West is the region of the UK with the fewest communication companies and therefore might have the least competition for a company looking to expand to a new region. We’re now going to hear from Simon Hall about how storytelling techniques can be used in commercial communication. Simon teaches communication skills at the University of Cambridge. He founded and is director of Creative Warehouse, which does communications for companies and for the public sector. He’s also written several novels, some non-fiction books on business communication, and was a BBC news correspondent for 20 years.

Storytelling is so important. Storytelling is absolutely critical. It really comes down to this You can rattle off a whole load of facts, but facts, they fade. Stories, they stick. Stories stay in our minds. Stories are very powerful in commercial communication. They’re very powerful in life. They simply reflect life. Anybody know what percentage of our conversations with our friends, our colleagues, our bosses, anyone, anyone know what the guess is about the percentage of our conversations are telling stories? Any thoughts anyone? Stick it in the chat box. Give me an idea of what percentage of our conversations with others are stories.

40 per cent. 50 per cent. 70 per cent. 70 per cent again.

Yes, about right. It’s about two-thirds, so 67/70 per cent. That’s what the research tells us. If you think about it, yes, you go home tonight, you can talk to your partner, your friends, your family. ‘You wouldn’t believe what happened today.’ You’re at work with your colleagues. ‘Oh, you wouldn’t guess what so-and-so did,’ and you tell the story. We are absolute storytelling machines. Maybe it goes back to the days of childhood when parents tell us stories, and it was wonderful, and life was all happy, and we didn’t have car problems, or relationship problems, or bills to pay, and all that sort of stuff. They light up the mind. Stories absolutely light up the mind and they are remembered in a way that mere facts aren’t. Stories even stimulate the production of oxytocin, the happy hormone, the love drug as well. So stories. So how can stories help you? If you can tell stories about what it is you do, or what your vision is, or how it can help people, or why you are doing it, that will stick in the mind far more than merely just saying this is what we do. Let me give you three examples, brief little stories. Would you mind animating for me, Fiona? So this chap is Joe Glover. Joe Glover is a friend of mine and also runs a business in Cambridge. His business is called the Marketing Meetup. It’s for people who do marketing to get together and network and help each other. That’s really the simple way of telling you what his business does. He believes in everybody helping each other. He’s a really nice guy. Here’s the actual story of how Joe’s business started, and how he tells it, and why it’s made such an impact, I think. When Joe started to go into marketing events, he hated them because everybody was, he described it as being on broadcast and not receive. Everybody wanted to talk about themselves, their products, their ideas, and it was sell, sell, sell, sell. He found it depressing, and draining, and exhausting. So he founded something different. The Marketing Meetup he insists people come on listen mode. You listen to each other, you really find out about each other, you make proper contacts, proper connections, and you try and help each other, and blimey, it’s taken off like a shot. It’s all over the UK. It’s now in America, it’s going to Australia, it’s going all over the place because of that simple change of ethos. People listen to each other and help each other rather than just try and sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. So he could just say, ‘This is a place where you don’t sell. You try and help each other,’ or he could tell this story about the first events he went to, and how awful he thought they were, and how he didn’t want to go to any more. So the Marketing Meetup started from there. What do you think people remember? What really makes the emotional impact? Let me tell you another one. Would you mind animating for me again, Fiona, please? This is Sheila Kissane Marshall, a friend of mine from Cambridge, who also runs a business called Boutros Bear. Boutros Bear, they help people who have suffered with cancer and survived. They help with their rehabilitation. That’s what Boutros Bear does. However, here’s the story. Several years ago, Sheila was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer, and it was very touch and go whether she would survive. She suffered quite extensive surgery. Her rehabilitation was very difficult, but Sheila, as you can possibly see from that look in her eyes is an absolute fighter in life. She got through it, but what she was struck by, and indeed horrified by, was that there are very few certainly joined-up and effective rehabilitation services for people who are trying to come back after cancer. So Sheila set up her own all about nutrition, and exercise, and well-being. It worked for her. It’s now working for hundreds, indeed thousands of other people. That is the genesis of Sheila’s business. What do you think makes the impact? That she tells people that this is a business which helps people rehabilitate from cancer, or she tells her story about how she nearly died from the thing, and she was damn well horrified there wasn’t enough support for cancer sufferers, so she started putting it together herself, and now it works a treat. Final animation, if you would, Fiona. A confession from me. Creative Warehouse, my business, came about from feeling a failure. An absolute failure. Why? Because when I first came to Cambridge four-and-a-half years ago, I was doing quite nicely working with businesses and entrepreneurs, helping them with writing their websites, and their core value proposition, and getting the media coverage, and their presentations for customers and investors. I really admire business people and entrepreneurs, who work incredibly hard. They’re not often rated and given enough credit for what they do, and I became good friends with some of these people I was working with, and they started to rely on me for their communication support. Then came the problem. They would need some design work doing. They’d ask me if I could help and of course, I couldn’t. Didn’t have the skill set. Or they would ask for a website to be built. Could I do that? No, of course, I can’t. I don’t have the ability, Or they’d ask for a top-quality video to be made and edited. Can I do that? No, I haven’t got the skills for that either. So I started to feel I was failing them, and I didn’t like that feeling. So when I took over Creative Warehouse, I went out and found a brilliant designer, and a superb cameraman and editor, and an outstanding web developer. Now together, as the value proposition goes, we can solve all your communication problems with style. What do you remember, me telling you that, or me telling you the story? So storytelling. There will be a story about why you are doing what you’re doing. There will be a story about the impact of what you’re doing. There will be many different stories you can tell about change, the difference you can make. Find yourself a story, pick a story, could be one of several stories, and when you’re talking about what you’re doing, whether it’s in presentations or reports, tell the story, and you watch how the audience reacts to that compared to a list of mere facts. So storytelling. Never overlook the power of stories. They are the most beautiful things. They are one of the symphonies of our lives and they can hugely help you in your commercial communication.

Having examined the general principles of commercial communication, we’re now going to move on to considering different forms of commercial communication. What is a value proposition? A value proposition is a persuasive statement that sums up the core of your idea succinctly. It should really be ten words or less, and it is important for both an audience outside of your company, potential customers, clients, investors, etc., and as an internal message of intent within your own organisation. The value proposition provides the customer with a number one reason why a product or service is best suited for them. It’s designed to turn a prospect into a paying customer. It’s more than just a product or service description. It’s the specific solution that your business provides and the promise of value that a customer can expect you to deliver. Whilst they can stand on their own, value propositions are often accompanied by a sentence or two providing extra information about the product or service. A good way of writing value propositions is to use the heroes and villains approach. Your potential customers have a problem. The villain of the story. Your company has a product that can solve this problem. The hero of the story. The value proposition is then structured in a way that highlights both of these issues, telling the customers quickly how your product can defeat their problem. Let’s look at some examples. Here’s the first example; save money without thinking about it. The company is Digit whose service analyses your daily income and outgoings and automatically helps you to save the optimal amount. The villain here is the idea that you have to work hard to save money and if you don’t then you’re in some way losing money. The hero is Digit whose service can prevent this from happening all without you needing to do a thing. Here’s another one. Make your website better instantly. In just five words, this value proposition tells you exactly what service and benefit the company is offering. The company is Crazy Egg who say that they can improve and fix websites. The villain here is your old website and the amount of time it takes you to update it. The hero is Crazy Egg who can not only update and fix your site but can do it very quickly. Here’s the final example. Tap the app, get a ride. The company is Uber and why this is such a strong value proposition is that it manages to demonstrate the ease and simplicity of its service in just six words. It also indirectly highlights the issues of having to phone for a taxi the traditional way and points out that the Uber way is quick, easy, and convenient. No waiting, no trying to give directions to tired cabbies, no fumbling around with money. It’s all in the app. The villain are the problems and issues associated with getting a traditional taxi. It’s almost implied that traditional taxi services are in some way the villains too. The hero is Uber who can make the process of getting a cab quick and hassle-free. It’s time now for you to have a try at writing a value proposition yourself. If you already have a business idea, then base it around that. Otherwise, use your current or past research, and try to craft a value proposition about why someone should want to find out more about your research. Try to convert your audience from disinterested to engaged and interested. Pause the video whilst you complete this exercise. A value proposition is just one of a suite of brand assets that a company might have. Whilst they can appear quite similar, they fulfil different roles for the company. A mission statement provides a brief overview of the values and objectives for your organisation. It doesn’t necessarily refer to a specific product or service, more it provides the audience with the reasonings behind the company and its goals. Mission statements are often grand, lofty statements of good intent. A slogan is used in marketing campaigns to sell a specific product or line. They’re short, catchy statements, and because they’re tied to a campaign, they’ll often change with each new campaign. A tagline, on the other hand, is tied to the brand as a whole, with the aim of increasing brand recognition. As such, successful taglines are rarely changed, and the best become so synonymous with the company that just saying the tagline alone is enough to identify the company. The sportswear company Nike provides examples of these different brand assets. Its value proposition is, ‘Customisable performance or lifestyle sneakers with unique colourways and materials.’ It’s telling the world what it does best or uniquely, why you should look at Nike rather than at any other company. Nike’s mission statement, on the other hand, is, ‘To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.’ A far more emotive statement with motivating words such as inspiration, and innovation, and a global scope. An example of one of Nike’s slogans is, ‘Twice the guts, double the glory.’ A short and punchy statement that plays on the no guts, no glory saying and implies that Nike customers are braver and stronger than other shoppers and get rewarded to the same extent. Nike’s tagline is one of the most famous taglines in the world. Just do it. Three words that don’t mean an awful lot outside of the context of Nike but are so inherently part of the brand that to hear them is to immediately think of Nike. The Nike Swoosh logo is a visual tagline, again symbolising some of the ethos of the company and its goals. The elevator pitch is a well-known tool of commercial communication and networking more broadly. The basic premise is that it’s a short statement that can be used to introduce yourself and your product or service in the space of 20-to-30 seconds. It should capture the interest of the listener, be memorable, succinct, and highlight your unique selling point, your USP. Whilst we traditionally think of it as a tool for engaging with potential clients. It’s actually a very flexible tool that can be applied to a range of situations beyond meeting new people at a conference. For example, within an organisation, elevator pitches can be used to propose new ideas or projects to senior managers who are often short on time and need to know the essential information as quickly as possible. A good elevator pitch can even be used to explain your research topic to friends and family. The key starting point for your elevator pitch is to identify the objective. What do you want your audience to remember? Once you’ve written your elevator pitch, it’s crucial that you practice it. There is a simple formula that you can follow to create an elevator pitch. Firstly, grab the attention of your audience by solving a problem that they have. Then back this up to establish your own credibility. Once they’re curious, introduce yourself, and then finally provide an opportunity for future interaction through a call to action or by asking a question. For example, ‘Our product could be to people with multiple sclerosis, what insulin is to diabetics. Lab tests on mice have shown it not only stops the disease in its tracks but actually reverses its symptoms. I’m Su, from Lif Nano and if you’re at the conference for the whole weekend, how about a coffee so I can show you more?’ Breaking this elevator pitch into its separate elements clearly shows that it grabs the attention, establishes credibility, introduces the speaker, and then provides a way for the listener to respond rather than just expecting them to react spontaneously. Here’s another one. ‘You think your legal bills are way too high, right? What if I told you I could get you the same quality service for half the price and double the convenience, and I can prove it because I’ve already done that for dozens of clients. I’m Sioned from Legal Sphere, and if you give me your card, I’ll give you a call to show you more.’ Again breaking this pitch into its separate statements, you can see the four elements clearly. Grab the attention, establish credibility, introduce yourself, and then offer a call to action. It’s time to try writing an elevator pitch yourself. Use the four-step formula to write four brief dynamic statements. This could be about a business idea you have or your current research. Pause the video whilst you complete this exercise. Before moving on from the elevator pitch, here are some final tips. A card or brochure is a good example of a takeaway item, something your audience can take with them and remind them of your conversation later. Make sure you tailor your pitch to your audience. You may find you end up with a small selection of elevator pitches that you can use depending on your audience and the purpose behind your interaction. Be enthusiastic. Show the passion and energy that you have but remember not to speak too quickly. Also remember that the perfect opportunity to meet your dream audience, the perfect investor, client, customer, etc., will likely happen when you least expect it. Practice your elevator pitch so that when the moment arrives you can make a great first impression. Websites are an essential form of commercial communication in today’s environment, and they’ve moved on a great deal from the busy walls of text seen in this example. Check out Simon Hall’s company Creative Warehouse and their website. The front page is very clean. There isn’t a lot of text. The company’s name and its value proposition is all that’s there, and there’s an envelope symbol as a button for getting in contact. Yet despite the simplicity of the design, the front page immediately provides all the essential information clients need. Make your website clear from the outset what do you offer? Your value proposition can be good for this. Your homepage acts as an elevator pitch of sorts. People don’t tend to spend a lot of time browsing sites that they think aren’t relevant to them, so make sure that what you offer is crystal clear from a brief glance. Provide information on the products or services you offer. A page about the company, your team, or your story can show a visitor the human element of your company, and also the company’s goals and values, helping to create a sense of trust between you and them. Testimonials are a great way of evidencing the worth of your company and reassuring site visitors of your worth. Always make sure that there is a way for site visitors to get in contact with you. The less-is-more principle holds true with websites. Google has never had an overwhelmingly busy home page, but it highlights the shift towards site simplicity that’s occurred online over the 20-plus years of its existence. If you’re creating your own website, it’s worth bearing these eight principles in mind. Make your site simple and easy to understand. Arrange your site so that visitors gravitate to the most important elements. Make it easy for visitors to navigate. Make the feel and look of the site consistent throughout as it’s very jarring to navigate an inconsistent website. Make sure your site is usable by anyone and compatible on all devices since it’s likely it’ll be viewed by many visitors on their smartphones or tablets. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel. Use elements and designs that people are familiar with. Ensure you gather user responses about the site and react to them, and establish credibility with your customers through testimonials, and by not hiding your intent and pricing. We’re going to look at in-person communication now. How much in-person communication do you think is non-verbal? There’s a popular myth online that 93 per cent of communication is non-verbal, but this catchy statistic is based on a misinterpretation of data. The truth is that there’s no actual number, and the importance of verbal and non-verbal communication can be entirely context-dependent. For example, if I told you that there was a stapler in the drawer over there, any non-verbal cues wouldn’t be that important to the information I was conveying. Whilst the 93 per cent statistic is false, non-verbal communication is clearly an important element of in-person communication, and it supplements the words you are actually saying. It’s worth paying attention to how you act when communicating with your facial expressions and body language. Smiling and maintaining eye contact help establish trust whilst being aware of spatial boundaries can prevent people from feeling uncomfortable. Remember that different cultures have different norms when it comes to non-verbal communication, and if you’re looking to do business in a new country, it might be worth doing a little research to find out any differences in advance. The corporate culture of the ’80s and ’90s were not kind to good manners. However, recently the importance of good manners in commercial communication is being remembered. As Tim Askew points out, manners give us a structure within which to operate, a roadmap for dealing in everyday business. As with non-verbal communication, it’s important to remember that there may be cultural differences in manners, and you should do some research before branching into new international markets. In this workshop, we’ve covered key elements of commercial communication from general principles to specific forms. The important take-home lessons from this are: understand your audience and help them to understand you. Get your message across quickly. Establish trust and credibility through data, testimonials and evidence to convince your audience. Use storytelling techniques to engage with your audience. Most importantly, be prepared. Research your audience. Prepare your offer and practice. Thank you for listening.

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Hello and a warm welcome on to the course ‘Communicating your research to non-specialist audiences’. This course is all about going above and beyond with your communication skills. It’s going to be about finding ways to talk about your research in an impactful and engaging way to lots of different audiences and in lots of different formats. So first, I’m going to introduce you to the idea of having a research story and why that’s really important to have to hand as a researcher. You’re then going to have a go at working on your own research story by completing a research story mind map. As part of this, you’re going to really get to know your audience by making an audience profile. Lastly, we’re going to finish by exploring the different methods and platforms that you can use to communicate with your target audience so that, by the end of the course, you’re going to have a research story ready to go and lots of ideas about how to use it to start communicating with your audiences straightaway. So you’ll find the learning outcomes for the course as well as some other useful resources coming up in the next part of the course. The course is going to be a mixture of video tutorials, interactive activities and text resources. Make sure you get stuck into all of these to get the most you can out of the course. So that’s us for now, folks. Grab yourself a pen and paper, a tea or a coffee, and let’s get stuck in. See you in the next video.

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Hello and welcome on to the course. In this video we’re going to explore why having a research story is so, so important. So let’s get stuck in. As a researcher, you always need to have a good research story prepared; you already know this. On a day-to-day basis you find yourself in scenarios where you’re communicating to completely different people about what you do and why. For example, maybe you’re presenting in a meeting, you’re talking to people from different research groups, you’re writing about what you do for a blog or a magazine, you’re doing a public engagement or participatory research project, you’re being interviewed for your future job, you’re collaborating with industry. All of these different scenarios mean that you need to have a research story prepared and ready to go, a research story that doesn’t leave people feeling like you’re talking about something on another planet or a research story where you’re using really welcoming and inviting language, a research story where you’re explaining exactly what it is that you work on and why. For those of you working on a participatory research project, a good research story is a crucial, crucial first step when you’re starting to communicate with those different people that you’re going to be working with. Having good welcoming, inclusive communication is a crucial first step in forging those strong, strong relationships and making sure that you don’t alienate people from the get-go. So we’re going to get stuck in straightaway, folks, and I want you to head over to the next part of the course where I want you to have a go at telling me about your research, but in one sentence. So head on over and I will see you back in the next video.

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Hello and welcome back to the course. So, hopefully, you’ve had the chance to tell me about your research, the tricky bit in one sentence. So if you haven’t done this already, please do go back to that activity and give that a go because that one sentence is actually going to be the foundation for your research story. So watch this space and watch that research story grow throughout the course. So to get started then, we’re going to have a look at what makes a good research story. So let’s get stuck in. So all good research stories have four key parts to it: firstly, it’s about knowing your audience; secondly, making it short and sharp; thirdly, highlighting your work; and, lastly, making it relevant. So when we’re working out our research story mind map throughout the course, let’s think about it in these four ways. So when we get to know your audience or audiences, this is about giving your story some context. So this is the context part of your research story mind map. We want to make your story short and sharp, and this is all about how you structure your story. When highlighting your work, this is going to be the main content of your story. Lastly, by making it relevant, this is all going to be about the flavour of your research story. Throughout the course, we’re going to go through each one of these parts in a little bit more detail. You’re going to contribute to completing that research story mind map and, by the end of the course, you’re going to have a story ready to go that you can tell anyone and everyone in so many different situations. So head on over to the next video; I can’t wait to get stuck in.

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Hello and welcome back to the course. So this video is all about setting the flavour of your research story. It’s about taking something super-super-complicated, like your research, and being able to give it some context for those people who you’re going to be communicating with. So before we get started then, it’s really important to remember that you are the only person in the whole entire world, even the whole entire universe that knows your research like you do. Even someone sharing an office with you probably understands, I don’t know, let’s say 60/70 per cent of what you do – let’s be generous. Someone across the corridor in a different office, maybe 50 per cent. The other 50 per cent, you’re the only one who knows. Now let’s think about someone on a different floor or a different building on the same campus as you, they’re probably going to know less than ten per cent. Now think about the type of people that you might be communicating with in your different public engagement and participatory research projects. It can really feel to them like you’re talking to them in another language from another planet and this is where setting a flavour for your research story can be super-super-powerful. So let’s think back to your research-in-one-sentence activity. Were there any really complicated words in there? You’re probably thinking, ‘No, not really. Amino acids, discourse analysis, ethnography, this, that and the other,’ and you’re probably thinking it’s not very complicated. Now let’s put yourself in the shoes of your nana; would your nana understand those words? That’s what I like to call the ‘nana test’. So with everything we’re going to do today, everything to do with your research story, have a think about the nana test, think, ‘Would my nana understand what I’m trying to say?’ I’m going to let you into a super-super-powerful hack that you can use to make your research story relevant to lots of different people, your nana included. So let’s have a look. So the first thing we’re going to do is actually come up with a way to talk about your research as an analogy or a metaphor that lots of different people are likely to be able to relate with. So what do I mean by this? I’m thinking card games, something that you’ve heard on the radio, perhaps a boardgame, a TV show – one that’s on now or has been in the past – perhaps an invention or a gadget or maybe a well-known story or myth or fable. So what I want you to do next, folks, is think about something that comes to mind; think about analogy or a metaphor and think about one that you could use to talk about your research. So for a powerful example of what I mean by this, head on over to the next part of the course. I will see you there.

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So let’s take a look at an example then of a research story analogy. First things first then, anyone heard of TCR immunotherapy? Didn’t think so – maybe a few of you. Who’s heard of ‘Where’s Wally?’ Now we’re talking – probably most of you, hopefully all of you. So in the next example then, we’re going to look at how we can use an analogy of ‘Where’s Wally?’ to talk about TCR immunotherapy. Before we look at that example, just a quick note on using acronyms. In research we love using acronyms left, right and centre, but I can tell you that they are one of the worst ways of communicating with people. If I go straight in with my research story saying ‘TCR’, I’ve lost you straightaway because you don’t even know what TCR is. In fairness, even if I then unabbreviated the acronym and said ‘T-cell receptor therapy’, you’d probably still know as little. So just a little note to absolutely avoid acronyms and abbreviations unless you have the time to be able to completely explain them. So head on over to the resource in the next part of the course to find out about what Wally has to do with TCR therapy. So head on over, take a look, and I’ve also included some more examples of analogies in the next section, as well.

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Hello and welcome back to the course. This video is all about setting the context of your research story. I hope you enjoyed coming up with a flavour – with an analogy for your research story; I cannot wait to see what you came up with. So thinking about the context then, this is, essentially, thinking about who you’re going to be talking to and why do you think they care. If you answer these two questions, you can really start to add some context into your research story, which is ultimately going to make it super-super-impactful. So let’s get started then by thinking about who; who are you going to be talking to or who are you likely going to be talking to? So the first place to start with this is, instead of just thinking about the public as one whole great big body of people, is actually to start seeing people for who they are – what groups they might be a part of, who they might hang around with, what their needs might be in society. So, for example, this is a diagram I commonly use and it’s by no means exhaustive as there are so many different groups of society that you could end up communicating about your research with in a public engagement or participatory research project. Just as some examples, perhaps you might be talking to specific museums or very specific community groups, perhaps charities or other organisations like that. Perhaps you want to work with school groups, perhaps teachers, parents of schoolchildren of a certain age. Perhaps it’s patients, perhaps carers or families of patients. Perhaps it’s other healthcare professionals. Perhaps you’re interested in working with particular businesses that might work in different sectors or on certain topics. Perhaps you’re interested in working with policymakers who work in a particular area. So already you can start to see how the public is not just one great big group, but already these many diverse groups of people have very different needs, might have very different expectations of you and your research. So once you have found out who you think you’re going to be talking to, the next thing you want to work out is why do you think they care about your research. What impact is your research trying to have on them or on things that they care about? What problems is your research trying to solve for them? So let’s take a look at some examples about what I mean by this. So what I have in front of you are lots of different reasons why people might care about your research and, again, this list is absolutely endless, but here are just some common things that might come up in the context of your research. So, for example, perhaps you want to make something cheaper or safer. Maybe you want to make something more reliable, more sustainable, more economical, maybe more accurate, or you want to make something quicker. Perhaps you want to improve health or decrease the prominence of some diseases. So, for example, if we go back to our ‘Where’s Wally?’ analogy about TCR therapy, there are lots of different groups of people that you may want to communicate with – for example, policymakers, patients and businesses. Actually, the context for each of these groups of people is going to be slightly different. The important thing to note here is that the flavour – that analogy – is going to be exactly the same for each one of these groups, but the context that you’re talking to them is going to be slightly different. So, for example, for policymakers, they might be really interested in the fact that TCR therapy is cheaper and that it improves health compared to current therapies. For patients, they’re probably going to be really interested in knowing that it’s safer or that it’s more accurate than current therapies. For businesses, they might care about the fact that it’s more economical or quicker or easier to develop. So you see that, depending on who you’re talking to, the context of your research story changes slightly and this is really, really important because you’re going to want to lean into this in your research story. So think about those different people, think about who they are, think about why they care. What I really want to do now, folks, is hand over to you to think about your own research story – think about who and think about why. It could be that there’s a few different whos and a few different whys, and that’s absolutely fine; I would love for you to explore all of those. So we’ve had a little think about who your audience might be and why they might care about your research. Next, we’re really going to take a deeper dive into getting to know your target audience by having a go at making an audience profile. So I’ll see you in the next video soon.

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Hello, and welcome back to the course. In the last video we had a go at getting to know our target audience a little bit by thinking about who they are and why they might care about our research. In this video we’re really going to build on that to get to know our audience on a deeper level. By getting to know our audience, by getting to know them on a deeper level, we can communicate much better with them. So by getting to know our audience we can tailor our communications to them, making it way more impactful and engaging. So how do we do that, I hear you ask. Well, by making an audience profile, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do in this part of the course. Building an audience profile is a practical way to get to know your target audience, their motivations, beliefs, opinions, what they know or don’t know, why they may or may not care about your research, how you can find them, how you can understand them, how you can reach them, what their needs might be. All of this really helps to put yourself in the shoes of your audience and to ultimately end up being a much better communicator. So when making an audience profile, this can be separated into five main sections which are demographics, psychographics, barriers and challenges, channels and contents, and the whys. We are going to explore each one of these in a little bit more detail, and also find out how you can actually find out about your public in the next part of the course. Just a quick note to say folks, that you cannot, and will not know absolutely everything about your target audience, and that’s absolutely okay. This is just a really, really good place to start, so make sure you get stuck in. So head on over to the activities and the resources in the next part of the course, and I will see you back in the next video soon.

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So hello and welcome back to the course. We’ve done a really deep dive into the context of your research story by getting to know your target audience, who they are, why they might care. Now we’re really going to focus on the main content of your research story, so let’s get stuck in. So the main content of your research story is, essentially, going to boil down to what impact has your research had so far or perhaps what impact is your research planning to have. Of course, many of us are going to be in so many different stages of our projects, so you might just be talking hypothetically, and that’s absolutely okay, but if you think about your research story, we want it to be really short and sharp, up to three minutes. So the main content is really going to be those hard-hitting overarching questions. So to explore this, here are some questions that I want you to think about. For example, what are your main work highlights so far or the main highlights that you hope to achieve? What is the single most important thing you have done on your research so far or what are you most proud of? What is going to help you solve the problem for your audiences? What has been the biggest defining moment of your work so far or what are your biggest hopes and dreams for the project? So what I really want you to do is have a go at answering some of these questions. So head on over to the next part of the course to think about your answers to some of these questions. I think when it comes down to your research story that’s going to be up to three minutes long, you’re pretty much going to be looking for about two to three answers to these questions that you might pop into your research story. So head on over to the next activity and give it a go. I cannot wait to see what you come up with. If you’re getting stuck, don’t forget to explore the resources where you’ll see some examples and some case studies. So have a little look if you get stuck. So I will see you back in the next video where we have a look at the structure of your research story. See you soon.

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Hello and welcome back to the course. So in this video we’re really going to explore the part of the mind map where it really weaves your whole research story together and that is thinking about the structure. So when it comes to a good research story, I’ve come up with a pretty simple structure that you may want to follow when developing your research story. So let’s take a look. Hopefully, as researchers, this will be quite an easy structure that you are used to dealing with or that you are familiar with. So, for example, first you want to introduce your story, and to do this you might want to start with some sort of hook that pulls in the audience and introduces your topic of research. You may want to think about getting that analogy rolling from the very first sentence. So putting this back into the example we had earlier, you do not want to open up with, ‘Here’s a talk on TCR therapy.’ You’ve already lost your audience with the very first sentence and, you know what, you are never going to get them back. So, instead, maybe you want to introduce a hook related to your analogy. So, for example, you could open up with, ‘Who knows of ‘Where’s Wally?’ Who’s played the game ‘Where’s Wally?” So straightaway you’re sparking their interest and getting them excited about your story. So from there you then maybe want to start introducing a problem that your research is trying to solve. Maybe you want to back this up with some statistics. Then maybe you want to come in with the research question that you might be exploring to help solve this problem. Again, you can keeping linking back in and weaving that analogy through, always bearing in mind who you’re talking to and why they care. So really setting the context of your pitch. So next, if you want to, you can think of it a little bit like materials and methods. So you may want to spend a little bit of time talking about your approach to answering those research questions. At the same time, you might not want to. This is a bit of an optional section and, actually, I would say if you cannot take the time to explain your materials and methods, applying the nana test – for a reminder of that, head back to the previous video – then it’s probably best to leave this part out, and that’s completely okay. Next up is very much like thinking about your results and conclusion section. Perhaps it involves a bit of discovery – what did you find out or what are you hoping to find out? What conclusions did you make or conclusions are you hoping to make one day? Lastly, then you want to wrap it all up with some sort of discussion, which is really putting it back into the bigger picture. How will your research change the world or how is it changing the world? Again, the whole way through, linking that analogy back through and also thinking about who your target audience is and why; keep bringing that context into the story. So you want to think about your story being approximately three minutes. This is an approximation; if it’s less, that’s okay, if it’s more, that’s absolutely okay. So what I’m going to do now is hand over to you to actually come up with a structure for your research story. So head on over to the resources in this section for an example, have a go at filling in your mind map and then I actually want you to have a go at structuring a story, so putting a script together that you can use to talk to different target audiences to give them a slightly different story about your research. I cannot wait to see what you come up with and I will see you back in the next video. All the best of luck.

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An absolute huge well done, because if you’ve made it to this far in the course, then you’ve already filled in all four parts of the mind map and you’ve already had a go at structuring your very own research story. You have done the hardest part here today. You’ve come up with a story. You can go and tell the world this story. So what I really encourage you to do is now take a moment to think about what you’re going to do with the work that you have done today. For example, how are you going to go out and speak to those people that you want to speak to? How are you going to reach them? The beauty of the story is that you can actually use it in lots and lots of different ways. For example, maybe you can talk about it on the radio or the TV. Maybe you can write about your research story in a magazine or an article or a blog. If you’re doing public engagement and participatory research projects, you can use your analogy and maybe even turn it into a board game or some other sort of game as a way to connect with those people that you really want to connect with. This is exactly what we’re going to do in the next and final part of the course. So you have your research story, you’ve got to know your target audience, now we’re really going to explore the different platforms and methods that you can use to communicate with them. So let’s get stuck in. There are so many different ways that you can communicate with your audience. You could communicate on social media – for example, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok. You could use a podcast, radio. You could write articles, blogs. You could present at a festival. You could deliver a live seminar or tutorial. You could run a debate or a Q and A session. Maybe you could design infographics that you could share on these different platforms. You could create a board game. The list really, really is endless and it’s completely up to you, based on your target audience, how you would like to communicate with them. The key to figuring out the best way is to think back to your audience profile. Who are they? Where do they like to hang out, so to speak? For example, in your audience profile you want to communicate with people aged 16. You want to communicate with them about a research career. Therefore, you decide to do a social media campaign. You write blogs and advertise these on social media platforms, on groups that you know 16-year-old people hang out in. When writing your blog, you use your research story – the flavour, the content, the structure. Importantly, you can also use and adapt this research story to different formats, for example, for different audiences. So, for example, for a different audience, perhaps it’s going to be to people aged 50 that you know might attend the local festival that gets run every year, so you actually decide to present a live seminar about your research story at this live festival. You see, in both instances the research story is exactly the same – the same flavour, the same content, the same structure. The context might be a little bit different, you might be tailoring it to those different audiences and, obviously, a written format is going to be slightly different from a live delivery, but, hopefully, you can see that the research story is almost exactly the same for the different formats. So head on over to the resources in this part of the course to explore different formats and methodologies further and I will see you back in the next and final video of the course.

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A huge well done for making it to the end of the course. Now you have a research story, a target audience to tell it to and, hopefully, lots of ideas about the different platforms and methods you could use to communicate with them. So please, please, please go out and talk to some people about your research. You really have done all the hard work. So what I would love for you to do in the next and final activity of the course is to just take a moment to reflect on whether there’s an action that you want to take or an intention that you may have as a result of being on this course. For example, maybe you want to try writing a blog or presenting at a festival. Maybe you want to go and talk to somebody about exploring some projects that you may have. Let me know in the next activity, and all the best of luck putting those plans into action. Don’t forget to stay in touch with any exciting projects that you end up working on, and all the best of luck with your research and your communication projects. So that’s us for now, folks. Have a lovely day and I will see you again soon. Goodbye.

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