How To... Bring a Touch of Tinseltown to Content Marketing

In 2010, after a dozen years spent climbing the marketing ladder, I took a sabbatical to pursue my first love of filmmaking. I’d made award winning shorts in my spare time and, when the last got some buzz at the Beeb and agents came calling, I decided to take the plunge.

I was moderately successful, selling a few screenplays, getting commissioned to write a couple more. I took meetings with glamorous LA execs with incredible hair. I was sent cast lists with A-list talent that producers wanted to appear in my movie.

Five years later I found out we were expecting twins and decided I needed a more reliable source of income. So I co-founded a content marketing agency with an old WPP mucker. In London. In 2015. Did I say more reliable...?

Touchpaper was born of three ideas.

1.    People reward companies that establish an emotional connection with them.

2.    The fastest way of making that connection is by telling a story.

3.    Most businesses tend to do a terrible job of this.

Storytelling in business is nothing new. Adverts have been jerking tears, tickling ribs and banging drums for 60 years. But these are almost always product-centric and campaign-led.

I’m talking about taking a human being on a journey from witless prospect to Kool-Aid-quaffing super-fan. Applying different types of content, with various themes and objectives, over a period of time. Holding their hand through the buying-cycle.

I learned a number of things during my time in the film business. The main one being the oft-repeated lesson of just how unimportant the writer is in the grand scheme of things!

Some experiences, however, are definitely transferable into content marketing. Indeed, our business is founded on them. Here are the three main ones.

What’s it about...?

Producers often ask this question twice. First, they want to know about the plot and its cast of characters. The second time they mean ‘what’s it really about?’ What’s the underlying message that connects the characters to the daily lives of the audience? They’re looking for universal themes like love, money, sex, revenge and fear.

In a business context, think first whether the information is presented in a logical, articulate and elegant way (what’s the plot). Second, think narrative context - what is it that will make the reader or audience care about the content and the message behind it.

You maybe need to dial down the sex and violence from your average popcorn flick. Appeal instead to perennial workplace favourites like income, success, respect and self-actualisation.

‘Hero with a Thousand Faces’

Joseph Campbell’s exploration of the human monomyth inspired a generation of Hollywood storytellers (George Lucas famously based Star Wars around its teachings). It’s since been filtered through the ‘how to’ format of Christopher Vogler and other script consultants to educate screenwriters around the world.

Campbell, channeling the work of early anthropologists, identified a common thread running through stories told around the world. He taught that all narrative forms - from Renaissance poetry to the spoken word traditions of Amazonian tribesmen - shared the same underlying structure. It goes like this:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

The big question is how does this relate to content marketing? The first step is to ‘cast’ various real world players - your client, their customer, the competition, etc - as the archetypes identified in Campbell’s story structure. From there, it’s a case of mapping the hero’s journey against the customer’s buying cycle.

To create is to collaborate

Film is the most collaborative of all the arts. Even for writers. Though you spend a lot of time alone in a room bashing out a new draft, at least half the job is to work alongside producers, development execs, actors, the director and, deep breath, financiers.

If all those people aren’t happy with the script, it simply won’t get made (which partly explains why so few films make it into production).

That means you need to learn how to share your vision, to welcome other viewpoints alongside your own. If you’re precious about your art; if you insist on realising an unadulterated, uncensored, pristine version of what’s in your head, stick to the theatre.

It’s not easy, and my tongue is a mess from all the biting of it. But, it’s an important lesson for all creatives, especially in a business context. We all need to assimilate other perspectives and ideas into our work.

The simple fact is it doesn’t matter how luminous your artistic soul is. Your work will be better if you let other people rip it apart for you to put back together.

People often ask me if I miss the film business.

The answer is no. Maybe I’d have a different view if I’d joined the top 1%, lunching at Chateau Marmont and getting my own parking spot at Warners. But I doubt it.

The truth is I love what I do now. I believe that most businesses have a great story to tell, if only they knew how to tell it. I also think there’s great value in helping them tell it - to them, their customer and, who knows, maybe even society.