Another Story: You'll Laugh, You'll Cry, You Might Toss Your Cookies

The snazzy DVD I received in my monthly Wired Magazine was produced long before last week’s post (Tell Me A Story), but the timing’s good enough to provide a continuation of the “storytelling” theme.

The DVD fell out of my Wired Magazine when I tore open the polybag. It looked like a sneak peek at a new short film called "Eureka: The Best Ideas Come From the Most Unlikely Places.” The only hint that this was not your ordinary Hollywood marketing promo was a small Shell logo on the bottom of the DVD jacket.

The sucker I am, I popped the DVD in my Mac and was treated to a beautifully produced 9-minute commercial touting the brilliance, humility, family values and humanity of the engineers at Shell that are trying to secure the last drops of oil in near-empty wells without harming the environment. No kidding.

You can watch the infomercial below. But be warned….if you’re not inclined to feel good about oil companies, the 9-minute film might leave you a bit queasy.



Most non-profits don’t have the budget to dump a few million bucks into a DVD drop to every Wired subscriber. So why the heck am I writing about the film here?

Partly because I’m confused. The company is getting hammered on You Tube and on blogs across the country. The film is being called propaganda…trash…nauseating. At this early stage of the game, the public response to this PR tactic can’t be what Shell intended, can it?

Which leads me to the importance of the relationship between your story and your audience. True, stories are the best way to deliver information to your audience. But the only thing worse than proving your point by inundating your audience with dry statistics and bullet points is by concocting a story that makes people laugh in disbelief or throw up in disgust. So test your stories before you broadcast them and make sure you’re not setting yourself up for ridicule by the very people you’re trying to win over.