What’s in your story that will move your audience emotionally to your call to action? This is a crucial question when setting your story content.
If you want listeners to help you achieve your purpose, they need to be able to feel your call actually resonating inside them. Peter Guber was compelled to visit veteran television news journalist Anderson Cooper who offered a very different style in telling stories. Anderson remarked that even if your only goal is for them to hear you, you still need to move their emotions.
Anderson told Guber this lesson came home to Cooper in the strongest possible way when he was in New Orleans covering Hurricane Katrina for CNN. His experience of the disaster was so overwhelming that he couldn’t play the straight-faced objective reporter. He had no choice but to reveal his own personal anguish and frustration through the stories he selected and the emotionally vulnerable way he told them.
Cooper’s stories resonated powerfully with millions of viewers, and all across the country people told and retold the stories of Katrina not as Cooper had seen them but as he had felt them and in turn made the viewers feel.
His coverage of Katrina rocketed him to superstardom as a CNN ratings magnet and ushered in a new style of broadcast journalism, dubbed “emo-journalism,” which since has spread across the network landscape and even into print and radio news.
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To validate the power of telling purposeful stories, Guber includes in this book a remarkably diverse number of ‘voices’ – master tellers with whom he’s shared experiences. They include YouTube founder Chad Hurley, NBA champion Pat Riley, clothing designer Norma Kamali, “Mission to Mars” scientist Gentry Lee, Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, former South African president Nelson Mandela, magician David Copperfield, film director Steven Spielberg, novelist Nora Roberts, rock legend Gene Simmons, and physician and author Deepak Chopra.
After listening to this extraordinary mix of voices, you’ll know how to craft, deliver – and own – a story that is truly compelling, one capable of turning others into viral advocates for your goal.
