A Story is Not an Ad

The hero changes permanently, forever, and cannot go back.

A story can be thought of as the dramatic presentation of the permanent transformation of a character.

This is how I think of story. 

Okay, it’s one expression of the way I think about what kind of story I want to write. 

I know story can be defined in the broadest of terms so that, as a practical descriptive matter, this definition will cover all the shades and variations and forms humans have used and still use to tell each other what happened, what will happen, what might happen, and what may never happen in this life and the next.

Google Dictionary | A story is “an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment.” 

American Heritage Dictionary | A story is “an account or recital of an event or series of events, either true or fictitious.”  

Webster’s | A story is “an account of incidents or events.” 

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms | A story is “in the everyday sense, any narrative or tale recounting a series of events. In modern narratology, however, the term refers more specifically to the sequence of imagined events that we reconstruct from the actual arrangement of a narrative (or dramatic) plot.”

Well, whatever the definition of story, people can use the term as loosely as they want. It depends on the audience, purpose, and context. For us writers, though, we can’t think so loosey-goosey about what a story might be or could be, at bare minimum or at vague maximum, because it’s just not helpful for us as writers of . . . yeah, stories.

At least it has not been helpful for me.

I’m writing this from the point of view of a novelist or screenwriter. I’m not writing this from the point of view of an entrepreneur, a brand consultant, or a lexicographer. Those folks can talk however they want. It’s not like it’s up to me anyway, obviously.

If you’re a novelist or screenwriter (or want to be), it helps to stay focused on what a story, at its best, can be in the context of your craft. It also helps to be on guard against distractions from and dilutions of the concept of story as it is used outside the context of your craft. 

Don’t be confused by how freely the word story is thrown about in today’s culture and applied to everything from auto insurance to yoga pants.

People today call lots of things stories. A brand tells a story. An ad tells a story. A consumer experience tells a story. An algorithm tells a story. A marketing touchpoint tells a story.

Baloney.

After a while, you may start to think that all you need to do to write a novel is record yourself talking about your recent trip to Whole Foods or Walmart.

Double baloney.

Using the word story is a way to elevate a consumer interaction and give it a meaning it does not deserve and doesn’t aspire to in the first place. Ads, brands, touchpoints, and algorithms are not stories. It’s weird that people want an ad to be a story. An ad is an ad. A brand is a brand. What’s wrong with that?

Google  Dictionary | An ad is “a notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event.”

Merriam-Webster |  An ad is “a paid notice that is published or broadcast (as to attract customers or to provide information of public interest).”

Collins | An ad “is an announcement online, or in a newspaper, on television, or on a poster about something such as a product, event, or job.”

Seth Godin | “You can define advertising as the science of creating and placing media that interrupts the consumer and then gets him or her to take some action.”

Meghan Keaney Anderson | “Don’t push people to where you want to be; meet them where they are.” 

David Ogilvy | “Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image.”

A brand—together with art and copy, websites and social media, mission statements and personal interactions—can strive to convey, in its representation of the spirit of the business, a vision of a consumer who has consumed its products and services and thus experienced an improvement in their quality of life. 

Yes. I’m on board with this. I want products and services to improve my quality of life. Absolutely. And this is a good thing . . . but this dynamic is not a story. And it doesn’t have to be a story to be a good thing.

The “story” that an ad or brand promises is not the permanent transformation of an individual’s personality. A product or service can only provide, at best, a temporary consumer transformation, and transformation is probably too strong a word. It’s probably better to just say an ad, product, brand, or service promises, in some way, a temporary consumer experience, and it’s going to be temporary so that you, the consumer, can return again and again to renew your service plan and buy more products and eat another gluten-free veggie pizza and continue your relationship with this brand (or not).

People in marketing, advertising, and design use the word story as a soft, catch-all term to encompass everything a company does (from production processes to employment practices, from sales techniques to promotional events, from sourcing to social-media posts) to try and evoke happy feelings in its customers in order to inspire loyalty, which means to keep them coming back and spending money.

I really like Counter Culture coffee. It’s wonderful. I enjoy the sensory experience of smelling the aroma of their perfectly roasted beans, inhaling the steam from a freshly brewed pot, and sipping two cups in the morning while I play my word games. I do not expect a permanent transformation of my personality during these mornings. 

Good lord, I don’t want drama! I want the opposite of drama. 

I want to relax and savor the moment and sit in stillness with my gratitude for existence. I expect sensory pleasure. I expect a perk from the caffeine. And I know it’s temporary—I expect it to be temporary—because I look forward to doing the whole thing again tomorrow morning.

For a marketing person, this may count as a story. For a writer or a human being, this is not a story. This is an experience. It may be a positive experience, absolutely, and it may be transformative, yes, to a limited extent. Very often—if not always—we buy a product or sign up for a service in the expectation that our lives will be made easier, not more difficult. 

Stories, however, involve making the main character’s life very difficult because only by overcoming what is difficult can a person experience a permanent transformation.

Easy times float on by. Hard times force us to act.

So a consumer buys a product and thus, in a proportional way, becomes a new consumer. They enjoy a sparkle moment of elevated self-regard. This is a real phenomenon. People really do feel good when they buy certain products. 

I feel good when I buy a new journal or brush pen, a new drum or watch, a new book or cologne. I’ve done my research. I’ve looked into kitchen knives and nonstick pans, organic coffees and athletic socks, hybrid vehicles and ergonomic chairs, and I’ve often enjoyed the process as well as the first flush of consumer joy using those knives and drinking that coffee and sitting in that chair. 

But the sparkle fades. However much I don’t want the sparkle to fade, it fades, and there’s not much I can do about it, because these products don’t promise a permanent change in my personality. They don’t promise a permanent state of easy bliss, no matter how much I wish the effervescent poolside antics of the actors in the prescription-drug commercial will persist, in sunny slow motion, indefinitely. And I do not have unrealistic expectations about having my personality permanently changed, no matter what the gym membership or reward system or brand-loyalty program promises. I know better.

I do not buy a product and live a story. I do not expect that buying a product would mean I would live a story. I just buy some shit and feel good about my purchase and have fun when I use the product, and yeah, that’s it. That’s a consumer experience. That’s not a permanent transformation of character.

How I use a product (like a fry pan or laptop, violin or paint brush) is up to me. That’s where the brand story ends, and my life begins. I am living my life, drawing on my desire, setting goals or messing around, making music or burning my stir-fry, and so on. This is my story, if I choose to live it, and you can live yours, too, whatever tools, products, face creams, or hybrid vehicles you choose to buy. 

I’m not trying to get marketers to change their vocabulary. God help me. No way! They have to use whatever vocabulary they can to enhance the value of what they do in the minds of business folks. No, I’m talking to writers here (well, I’m talking to myself) to remind them (me) that story for a writer represents a particularly intense way of thinking about life, and it’s not at all commensurate with the way the concept of story is used in ads and brands. 

Anybody can buy that set of knives. Anybody can sign up for a lawn-care service. Anyone can wear that cologne or luxury watch or pair of sweatpants. The consumer experience is generic (mostly) and not personal to the consumer in the way that a story would be personal to the main character.

“Advertising,” says Don Draper in Mad Men, “is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is okay. You are okay.”

I don’t mean to take the word of a fictional character as definitive on what advertising is, but you get the point. Advertising does not want to challenge you, scare you, or change you. It wants to reassure you that you are and will be just fine, especially if you buy this product and that service. 

This is the opposite of what a character experiences in a story. A character is challenged to their core, scared to death, and changed forever by their experience.

In fact, that’s what happens to Don Draper in Mad Men.

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