The Point and The Path: Suspense in Storytelling for Mission-Driven Marketing
The Point and The Path: Suspense in Storytelling for Mission-Driven Marketing
For the past month or so, I’ve been working on a series of articles that think through the productive tensions that storytellers have to manage if they want to tell good stories and tell them well.
It all started with a conversation in a coffee shop. A new client of Argonaut Productions wanted to know more about what we do and how we do it. I talked them through our Discovery Process and how it sets up the Design Phase of our projects. That led me to share my thoughts here in a piece that I called “Creativity or Curiosity: Discovering Stories Worth Telling”.
That piece got me thinking about how finding the right balance between different elements is part of creating a productive tension. So, I ran with the idea.
Last month, I posted “Humanity and Heroism in Nonprofit Storytelling”. That article looked at how narrative structures create expectations in an audience and how the structures you choose can either set you up for storytelling success or put you on a path to nowhere.
There are probably dozens of other productive tensions worth thinking through. But the one that I want to talk about today might be the most obvious one of them all.
Frankly, I’m a little bit embarrassed that I didn’t think of it sooner.
I’m talking about Suspense.
“The suspense is terrible. I hope it’ll last.”
- Gene Wilder
(Or maybe it was Oscar Wilde)
Does Suspense Play A Role In Marketing?
Suspense is one of the most basic elements of a good story. It’s what makes you turn the pages when you get caught up in a page-turner. It’s what turns the 2 or 3 seconds that you have to grab someone’s attention into enough interest that they stick around to hear more.
There’s a school of thought in Marketing and Advertising that says you need to get straight to the point. Otherwise, they’ll tell you, your audience will move on before you get to have your say.
Even if a marketing message is “all point” and “no path”, that doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s no room for suspense to work its magic. The elements that combine to create suspense can come from within the message itself or the audience can bring those elements with them.
How you create and manage your audiences’ expectations determines whether you hold their attention or just shout at them as they pass you by. Obviously, I have my own opinions about which approach will get you the best results. But you don’t have to take my word for it.
“Good books don’t give up all their secrets at once.”
- Stephen King
What Is Suspense?
Suspense is the feeling you get in response to the excitement or anxiety that you experience when you’re uncertain about what will happen next.
As human beings, we do everything that we can to rid ourselves of anxiety. In the case of suspense, it’s our mind’s desire for completeness that needs to be addressed before that anxiety can be resolved.
From a psychological standpoint, if you can create excitement or anxiety in your audience, you can count on them to stick around until you give them what they need to complete the pattern and feel ‘normal’ again.
Why Does Suspense Work?
We’ve all looked up at the sky only to find images we recognize in the clouds floating over us. Looking for faces, animals, and objects that we recognize can be a wonderful way to pass a sunny afternoon.
Most of us have heard the stories about somebody somewhere who saw something burned onto their toast. We laugh a little to ourselves and then we go on about our day.
In both of these examples, there is a common process at work. Far from being a good way to waste time or a source of silliness, it is one of the things that helped to make sure humans stuck around long enough to climb their way to the top of the food chain.
When we were just one more species in the mix of predators and prey, we needed to know whether something dangerous was lurking in the bushes. Since camouflage helps predators stay hidden, we often had to make life-or-death decisions with incomplete information. We’ve moved on to building houses to keep the wolves away, but the way we process information hasn’t changed as rapidly as our circumstances.
How Does Suspense Work?
When we “see” images in the clouds, it’s called visual matrixing.
When we “hear” voices speaking to us through white noise on electronic devices, it’s called auditory matrixing.
In both cases, our brain takes incomplete information that stands out as potentially important and goes to work filling in the gaps and smoothing over the rough edges.
Matrixing probably isn’t unique to humans. It’s a safe bet that most mammals’ brains do it on some level. But what does set human beings apart is our ability to use symbols to make and share meaning. It’s what helped us rise to the top of the evolutionary heap and escape the hustle and bustle of the predator-prey dynamic.
“Man is the Storytelling Animal”
- Salman Rushdie
Using Suspense in Storytelling Marketing
When you follow the AIDA model, you aim for attention and then interest. Getting an audience’s attention and capturing their interest means that they stick around because they “want” to.
Piquing an audience’s curiosity means that they’re sticking around because they’re enjoying being there.
What matrixing teaches us about suspense is how big a difference there is between the intellectual processes that lead to interest and the biological processes that are at play when you create suspense.
When you create genuine suspense, your audience “needs” to stick around to find out what happens. If there is something they can do to move things along and get to a resolution quicker, they’ll do it. Of course, not all suspense is created equal:
“Mystery is an intellectual process . . . But suspense is essentially an emotional process.”
- Alfred Hitchcock
Use Suspense For Storytelling in Marketing
As I noted earlier, there are a lot of different ways to introduce suspense into your storytelling. The first step toward getting better at using suspense is understanding what your options are and how to put those options to work for you.
One way to think about using suspense in your storytelling is to work it in on the strategic level.
You can also think about ways you can use suspense as a tactic in your storytelling marketing.
Strategic Uses of Suspense in Brand Storytelling
There are at least two different ways that you can put suspense to work for you on the strategic level.
The first is to use suspense to build an emotional connection. We typically see this at work in what we’ve come to call “brand storytelling”. This approach lines up with what I’ve said in previous articles about the epic narrative form. When your team or your customer or your donor stands for something good that has a huge obstacle to overcome, you can use that to define them in the audience’s eyes.
The second way to use suspense on the strategic level is to make it the central element of your marketing strategy. When you use content marketing and social media to tell stories about your brand, you make it the main character. If those stories always leave off with more to be done, audiences will always want to come back to hear the rest. Suspense as a marketing strategy is a long-term investment in storytelling.
Suspense as a Tactic in Storytelling Marketing
When you use storytelling in marketing, you’re telling stories that send a message to a customer, donor, or volunteer. So, the stories you tell shouldn’t be about products and services. They should aim to connect on an emotional level through core values, culture, and community.
You can use tried-and-true storytelling frameworks like problem-cause-solution to create suspense. One way to accomplish this is to give the audience a hint or a teaser early and then hold back the answer as you build their anticipation.
Another way to generate suspense is to manage the sequencing of your messages. If you always end on a cliffhanger, the audience will walk away with unresolved anticipation. You can start off your next message by resolving the tension of that anticipation and setting up the next cliffhanger.
Competition is another great way to introduce and manage suspense in your messaging. In transactional marketing, you’re usually competing against other companies that offer similar products to the same consumers. In mission-driven marketing, you and your audience are working together to compete against something bigger. It’s an epic journey full of conflict and tension. But it’s also something they know exists in real life.
“Real suspense comes with moral dilemma and the courage to make and act upon choices. False suspense comes from the accidental and meaningless occurrence of one damned thing after another.”
- John Gardner
Become A Master of Suspense To Get Better Marketing Results
It doesn’t matter if you’re mapping out your brand story or putting together an end-of-year campaign. The key is to create compelling content that will inspire your audience.
Suspense acts on your audience in very real ways and produces measurable results. When our brains hear stories, chemicals get released. Dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and vasopressin—to name just a few.
Dopamine is the neurotransmitter most closely associated with being in a state of suspense. Dopamine leads to increased focus, motivation, and memory.
You won’t be hooking your audience up to brain scans or sending samples to a lab for testing. You’ll know that you got it right when your stories lead audiences to the behaviors that you’re hoping to instigate. Did they donate to your fundraiser? Did they volunteer for your event? Did they make a purchase or subscribe?
Nonprofit Marketing Plays By A Different Set of Rules
I started this article off by talking about “balance” and creating productive tensions.
Suspense might be the biggest “productive tension” of them all. But just like everything else, you have to maintain a balance.
We’ve talked about how suspense works on our brains and why it works as an effective marketing strategy or tactic.
But with great power comes great responsibility. Your audience won’t appreciate it if they feel like you’re playing with their emotions. So, it’s important to think about how you’re using suspense and why you’re using it the ways that you are. A little bit goes a long way. If you overdo it, your marketing will suffer as a result.
Brand Position
A while back, I posted an article on brand positioning in nonprofit marketing. I talked about how brand positioning comes down to finding the point where a nonprofit’s mission intersects with its network of donors and supporters on the one hand and their beneficiaries on the other.
For most nonprofits, the mission that drives the organization speaks to WHY they do what they do. When you take the time to craft your story around your WHY, you end up with a message that lays a stable foundation for all of your campaigns and programs.
Storytelling in Campaigns
When you’re putting together a campaign, you have a specific goal. That makes it easy to use suspense in your storytelling. All you have to do is capture the audience’s attention long enough to make them ask “will they get there”. If you do it well, “will they get there” becomes “will we get there” without the audience even noticing that it happened.
Content marketing, social media, a blog, or video can help you announce and promote a campaign. If you manage the suspense in the message, they will all work together to make sure that the audience is emotionally invested in the outcome.
Bits and Blasts
There are plenty of ways to use pieces of your story to create content that is perfect for the smaller bites that audiences expect on social media.
When you show them a little bit of what you’re doing and why it’s so important, they’ll want to know the rest. They might go to your website to find out more. They might subscribe to your channel or follow you on Twitter to make sure they don’t miss out.
Call to Action
There’s nothing that screams “advertisement” quite like those well-worn phrases:
· Act Now!
· While Supplies Last!
· But Wait There’s More!
For nonprofit marketers, there is always the challenge of getting the audience to take action without being able to offer them any kind of tangible personal benefit in return.
People who donate and volunteer know that the rewards are emotional and intangible. They do what they do to feel like they’ve made an impact. They want to feel like they’re a part of something bigger than themselves.
A good call to action makes the audience feel like they are the heroes of the story even while the outcome of the journey is still in doubt. Talk about suspense!
“Anguish of suspense made men even desire the arrival of enemies”
- Guy De Maupassant
Get the Help You Need to Put Suspense to Work in Your Storytelling
At Argonaut Productions, we take the time to get to know your story. We work with you to make sure the messages in the videos we make for you fit into your broader marketing strategy.
During the Discovery Phase, we help you clarify your WHY and pin down the core values that define your organization’s culture.
Our design process is collaborative. Before we ever schedule a production day or turn a camera on, we make sure that we’re working toward a video that will amplify your message and get you the results you’re after.
When we deliver your video project, we help you post and promote it to make sure it gets in front of your audience. We even help you track and optimize the video’s performance.
How can we do all of that, you ask?
Well, I could tell you but . . .