Story Sells — In Advertising & in Life

Episode Transcript

Kelly Callahan-Poe: The best ads don’t sell products, they tell stories. And whether you’re selling a brand or selling yourself, Neal Foard is here to show you how to do it well.

I’m Kelly Callahan-Poe, host of the Marketing Moms podcast. Today’s episode is called Story Sells in Advertising and in Life with Neal Foard. Neal spent over 30 years creating award-winning campaigns for global brands like Budweiser, Lexus, and Sony, and ranked among the top 10 most awarded creative directors in the world for his work on Toyota. Now as principal of StoryFire and founder of the Conspiracy of Kindness, he teaches business leaders and C-suite executives how to use the timeless art of storytelling and persuasion to win hearts, build trust, and make life a whole lot easier. Welcome, Neal.

Neal Foard: Hey, thank you for that introduction. What your guests don’t know is that we had a long conversation before we started recording. And I must tell you, this woman is delightful. Kelly is a delight.

Kelly: I’ll take it. We have a lot of commonalities which we may bring into the session today. So let’s first start with a little softball question. Why is storytelling so important right now in the age of AI? And if you could bring in some of the stats that we talked about before, that would be helpful.

Neal: Well, there’s a wonderful author, Yuval Harari, who wrote Sapiens. He has this phrase that I’ve heard him use, which is, the most important stories we tell are the ones we tell ourselves about ourselves. And stories for each of us as individuals, the story of who we are, the story of how we operate in the world, the story you tell yourself is your destiny. It’s what determines how you act in public. For example, if you are a new parent and you think to yourself, I’m a father now, or I’m a mother now, when I’m in public, am I behaving in such a way that it is an example to my child? So you can see how that changes how you act in the world, the story of who you are.

First of all, I want to say that stories are the operating system of the human species. For thousands of years, this is how we understood each other and understood the world. Why does the volcano go? Why is there a volcano? Are they angry? Is somebody angry at us? Why are there seasons? Why do people die? All of these things had to be explained for us to have any sense of control over our environment. So we would sit around the campfire, try to work these things out to make ourselves feel better, to make ourselves feel safe, to make ourselves feel like we belong. And stories are the default way that we take in information. You give a 20 minute meeting and you’ll have six slides and there’s 200 bullet points and everything. This is not how people take in information. It’s certainly not how they remember it. It makes no emotional difference to them.

By contrast, you probably haven’t heard the story of David and Goliath in 10 years or the tortoise and the hare in 15. You haven’t heard these stories and yet you could repeat them to me right now with a pretty high degree of fidelity and, more importantly, you could tell me what they mean. You could tell me the moral of the story, which means that this is a system for giving you information in such a way that you internalize it, understand it, and can spread it like a meme. This is how culture is formed — through things that we repeat to one another because they’re meaningful, because they had an emotional impact on us.

If I go into a business meeting and the president of the company tells me a story about an experience she had, now I have had the experience that the president had. So stories — this is how we take in information. This is how we remember information. This is how it becomes meaningful to us in a way that we can spread it. And that’s why stories are important.

But let’s talk about why now they’re so important. Because human beings are logic resistant and we’re not persuaded by rational points. Oftentimes the thing I’ll use as an example is I’ll say to an audience, how many of you have ever been involved romantically with somebody that you knew was not good for you but you couldn’t stop yourself? And in a crowd of 100, only two hands will go up — you are a bunch of liars. Or a good example for men would be: have you ever had this conversation with yourself? I’m too busy to go to the gym today. And then you’ll find yourself watching a 45 minute YouTube video on salt. You had time. You’re rationalizing. This is how we are. We’re not rational beings. We do what we do for emotional reasons. We make decisions emotionally. Stories touch the emotions.

Stories sit in your heart. You take them in and remember them in the amygdala, not in the hippocampus. So you react to them emotionally. And you would know, being in advertising and marketing, that when people are emotionally moved by something, it promotes action. It promotes belief. Brands are only effective because they stimulate an emotion. Stories give you the opportunity to stimulate an emotion. When a brand says, I care about you, you matter to me — the sensation is that you’re bonded to that person in a loyalty beyond reason. And this is what all brands crave. When it comes to tipping — are you an over-tipper?

Kelly: I tend to be.

Neal: Yeah, I am. I go to the same restaurants all the time and when I find a place I like I lock in and then I tip like a maniac. I bring them toys. I’ll leave Hot Wheels for the male waiters. Why? Because I want them to have an emotional response when I walk in the door. I want them to be happy to see me. It makes me happy that they are happy to see me. And all brands should operate from that mindset of, I want to so over deliver on what my customer gets here that they would be heartbroken if I ever went away.

Back in the context of stories — when you do gestures like this, when you over-tip or a brand over-delivers, it tells a story. And the story it tells is, I’m a human being and so are you. I see you as a person, not as a sheep to be fleeced. And then your question was why AI right now? Because right now AI and its ilk — algorithms — are being weaponized to divide us and rage-bait us. They try to engage you through fear or hatred or jealousy. In that era, stories are the antidote. Stories are the way that you can reconnect with people and say, not everybody is out to get you. You shouldn’t walk through the world afraid of other people because we didn’t survive this long as a species by victimizing everybody that we saw. On the contrary, people are actually pretty cool. Most of them.

The only thing that makes us happy is connection with other human beings. Even people that like to be alone a lot — they still like to feel connected to somebody else. And in an age of algorithms when we are being made more fearful and more angry and more divided, we need to reach out to each other with the chief operating system, which is: I tell you what it’s like to be me, and I’d love to hear what it’s like to be you.

Kelly: There were some great stats that we talked about earlier. Executive mentions of the word storytelling on earnings calls hit 469 in 2025, which is up from 147 in 2015. So it’s not a trend anymore — it’s more of a boardroom imperative. And then LinkedIn researchers wrote in the New York Times that AI will replace 96% of software engineers’ current skills and the most durable skills are the soft ones: communication, leadership, and empathy. And 70% of executives agree storytelling is a super skill that powers all of them. We’re all worried about losing our jobs, but that’s the part of AI that it can’t do.

Neal: Yeah, it’s very difficult to persuade somebody to take on this as a new skill. But it is really — it’s like asbestos, it’s flame proof — because AI and the algorithms, like ChatGPT and chatbots and so forth, they’re aggregators. They’re gatherers of data. They don’t have a point of view. What they do is they serve up the middle of the road. That’s what they’ve been programmed to do — aggregate everything and spit out an anodyne average answer. And the problem with being average is — and marketers know this better than anyone — when you are average, you are not the signal. You are the noise.

That word anodyne, which I only really learned what it meant about a year ago — it means inoffensive and bland. It doesn’t arouse tension. And you need to arouse an itch in somebody to make them curious for more, to provoke their thought process so that they’re engaged in a meaningful way that leaves them better off. Think about it — you and I, we have taste. Do we only listen to average books and music and stories? Do we only go to see average movies? Do we dress in bland and average clothes? Do we crave bland and average food? Do we like to drive bland and average cars? No. Everybody wants to express themselves with flair and interest. Anybody who’s funny, by definition, they’re playing with the language in such a way that it breaks a rule, that it sets an expectation and then violates the expectation. And that’s funny. And you know how attractive a sense of humor is. If you are at a party and you see an astonishingly beautiful woman or you meet a very funny one — who do you spend time with? Hands down, it’s the funny woman, because think about all she’s broadcasting about herself. She’s saying, I read a lot, I pay attention to things, I will hold your interest long into our golden years when both of us are lined and wrinkled and flabby — I will still be interesting to you.

AI is incapable of being that person. Because AI has no taste. AI has no point of view. And the more AI exists in the world and the more it sends anodyne messages into the sphere where then it sucks it up again, it’s an echo chamber of blandness. It was bad a month ago. It’s going to be worse five months from now because it’s only feeding on its own detritus. All the more reason to adopt storytelling as a skill.

I used to teach at the management training program at Saatchi & Saatchi in both New York and London. I used to teach young creative people how to present their work because it wasn’t enough to have a good idea. People had to be able to see it when it’s on the page, not when it’s fully realized. When a young person has a great creative idea they need to defend it with the best possible description of it — and that’s drama, that’s wrong-footing someone, and often it’s funny, and it usually begins with an insight, a story about something that happened that revealed something they weren’t aware of before.

When you watch Mad Men, the Don Draper character — what makes him good is that he can go into a room and light people’s interest up. There’s a very famous quote, I think it’s Socrates who says, students are not vessels to be filled, they are torches to be lit. What that means in today’s world is: don’t burden people with a bunch of bullet points or facts. Those are the things that fill the vessel. What you need to do instead is ignite in someone an interest to learn more. Our one-time chairman used to say that the most important thing you can do in any advertisement is provoke in someone: would I want to see it again? And more importantly, would I want to share it? That’s proof that you’ve succeeded — they pass it on to their friends.

I have an example of that. I hired these two young women to be the copywriter and art director team. We were trying to advertise the Toyota Sienna — a new feature where you could hit the key fob and it would open or close all of the automatic doors. In a focus group, they didn’t hear a lot of facts. What they heard was a woman express, “sometimes I feel like I’m carrying the whole weight of the family.” And that stimulated an idea.

The commercial they came back with: a woman drives up in front of her house late at night and everybody else is asleep in the car. Her husband’s asleep, her infant is asleep, her toddler is asleep. She opens all the doors with the key fob, gets out, and takes the little infant upstairs. The house is on a hill, so she has to climb a long staircase. Then she comes back and gets the toddler — little legs dangling — and takes him up the stairs. Then she comes back and realizes her husband is about a good 260 pounds. The next thing you see is her carrying him up the stairs like a little baby. As she gets to the top, she turns around to the Sienna and hits the key fob — all of the doors close. It just says: push button automatic doors on the new Toyota Sienna.

Here’s what the ad did so well — even if women haven’t had that specific experience, they feel seen. They go, yeah, that’s what it’s like. You think I’m selling you automatic doors? No. What I’m selling you is a company who understands what it’s like to be you. And that provokes friendship and an acknowledgement that the company cares enough about you to notice what it’s like to be you.

I’m in the tank for Toyota. I’m a huge believer in that brand. Every time you think they’re going to betray your trust, they don’t. Toyota to me was a really good example of they really deeply cared — everybody on the assembly line deeply cared that the product was going to be flawless. They had a religion of quality at the brand where everybody was in. And that’s a story. Just that every day those people go out into the world, they believe. And that’s very persuasive.

Kelly: To get everyone singing from the same choir is a very difficult challenge. And when you do, it’s pure math.

Neal: Right. And have you ever had this experience? You’ll go into a company and the chairman, the president will have very, very high ideals and she’ll express what it’s all about. And then the very youngest and brand newest of the people in the company will be singing the same song. And then there is this giant — these layers in between —

Kelly: You’re doing it.

Neal: — who goes, yeah, that’s a bunch of bullshit. And you know you’ve got a real problem when the only real believers are the brand newbies and the person at the top. And so the mark of a great company is when the people in the middle are preaching the evangel. Like the United States Marine Corps — those drill instructors are true believers. They will say, my beloved Corps, I will not let you in unless you live up to the ideals of my beloved Corps. And you go, something about this is working.

Kelly: Let’s take this one step further because obviously persuasion and human psychology is a huge part of what we do in marketing and advertising and selling. You’ve spent over 30 years studying why people say yes. And you’ve actually created 25 secrets to help professionals maximize their persuasive power. At a fundamental level, what is happening in someone’s brain when a story persuades them? This can lead into the whole Zig Ziglar — people buy on emotion, justify on logic.

Neal: Everyone that goes through the world has their radar up for threats and danger. And part of what makes a human being feel good and safe is the idea that they are not alone. What will persuade people is the feeling that you are on their team, that this is not me separating you from your money — this is you making an investment in something you can believe in.

The example I will use perpetually: you have to tell stories that are uplifting, that are positive, that make people feel good about themselves and about the future. I was in my car one day and I made a U-turn that was far too close to the curb. I ripped the sidewalls out of my left hand tires — two flats. You’re stuck if you’ve got two flats because you’ve only got one spare. And then I notice if I can just limp a hundred feet, there’s a tire store. So I’m sitting in the waiting room, balancing between these mixed emotions — I have to pay for two new tires, but this could have been a lot worse.

I’m in the waiting room with two women. They look exactly the same age, went to the same hair stylist, dressed approximately the same — I swear if you put them in a police lineup I couldn’t have told you which was which. One woman is on her phone complaining loudly about a bad experience she had in a restaurant — she felt like the waiter got her order wrong twice, and she thinks the second time was on purpose. The manager refused to fire the server. There was a big kerfuffle and maybe a mimosa got thrown. She’s now saying she’s going to leave a scathing Yelp review and probably put up posters on the telephone poles near the restaurant. Finally she ends her call. Not 15 seconds later, the woman on the other side of me leans in and says, “I had a very good experience at a restaurant this morning. I was looking out the window, having my coffee. And there was this cute girl that came along with a big dog and she was going on a walk and she saw this old gentleman waiting to cross the street. He’d actually cycled through the green twice because it’s a very big boulevard and he looks like he doesn’t think he’s going to make it all the way across. So she takes him by the hand. When it turns green, she takes him across the street — all the while the big dog is patrolling in front of the cars to make sure nobody gets any fancy ideas. And they got to the other side, and instead of going their separate ways, they had this short conversation. And then they walked off arm in arm. Isn’t that wonderful?”

And I said in a very loud voice, yes, that is wonderful. Now — who would you rather spend the day with? One woman is farting her grievances into our lives. The other woman is improving my day by giving me the sense that maybe there’s hope. Maybe the younger generation cares about the older generation. Maybe people do things for no selfish reasons.

Now consider how persuasive the second woman’s story is. I am completely dissuaded from the first woman’s story — I don’t believe a word of it. On the other hand, I’m willing to accept whatever exaggerations the second woman is telling me to fit the narrative of what I’m hoping is true. I’ve got an image in my mind of what the young woman looks like. I can tell you what the older gentleman was dressed in. I filled in all the details because I wanted it to be true.

And this is the secret to selling something to someone — nobody will buy anything they don’t want to buy. If they don’t want to buy it, any excuse will do. On the other hand, if they are in, what’s a couple extra bucks? They’re emotionally invested in making it happen. So any excuse will do. A story that makes you feel like there’s hope — here’s number one, 100%: life gets so much easier when people like you and likable people tell uplifting stories, they make people smile. Do you want to spend time with somebody who’s gorgeous and handsome, or do you want to spend time with somebody who makes you laugh? Come on, that’s not even a contest. People get bored of beauty so fast.

Kelly: I wanted to get into this idea of emotion, of using emotion in storytelling and why people don’t do that and they’re kind of hardwired to persuade with logic first. I think some people tend to confuse — you can have emotion, you can have data. “56% of women will get cancer by the age of 60 if they don’t do this.” So what are those pressure points that trigger people? They’re not stats. They’re usually stories of individuals.

Neal: Very famous quote attributed to Joseph Stalin: “A million deaths is a statistic, a single death is a tragedy.” When you are talking about an individual — I can tell you what the old man was wearing in the crosswalk when that woman was telling the story. I had populated the story with all of the necessary detail because a part of me wanted it to be true.

Let’s go to your cancer statistics. Until I know who the cancer is affecting, I’m not really listening. But as soon as I find out that your favorite aunt is the one with cancer and she’s only 50, it is heartbreaking. And I will not let that happen to my own mother. You become galvanized because all of a sudden you care.

I saw this marvelous video — I think it was a school in Pakistan. This little girl was such a live wire. And her father — they had this game where he would tell her he loves her many times as she’s departing. And she would play the game of saying enough, enough, but then she would come back for a little more and he would say, I love you. And then she would go, stop saying it — and run three feet and then come back to the open door for more. Imagine if she had been one of the girls killed in a school bombing. You would be outraged beyond capacity. The emotions create a level of understanding that data never breaches. You need to personalize things.

Let’s think about why people love dogs. Imagine all of the things that are wrong with dogs. You have to walk them constantly. You have to pick up their poop. They shed on everything. When they’re tiny, they pee on everything. They chew everything up. They cost a fortune at the vet. If you go on a trip you have to board them. And after you’ve poured all of this sacrifice into a dog — they die. And I promise you that’s going to be among the saddest days of your life. So why do people bother? Why do they love dogs so much?

The answer is: dogs love you first. They don’t wait for permission. They don’t wait for you to be the first mover. They don’t judge you. They’re always happy to see you. Some of them, when you are attacked, they don’t even think about the danger — they will throw themselves at it. And my favorite thing about dogs is that they don’t look at you and wonder if they could have done better.

When dogs love you first, it automatically triggers reciprocity in you. When they love you, you love them back. And this is a lesson for all brands. Every time you produce a product, it should be a love letter to its customers. Do you know “shrinkflation” — something that used to be this big in the same size bag? Now it’s that big. This is what happens with private equity. As soon as private equity takes over Jersey Mike’s, the amount of meat in the sandwich goes like that. It’s not a love letter to your customers. It’s a finger to your customers.

And to me, that’s not a brand, that’s a con. Any time we’re communicating anything to our clients, you have to start with the premise of, I’m going to love you first. I don’t wait for my clients to prove that they’re worthy of me. I’m the one who makes the first move. There’s a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy — when you treat them as worthy, they become worthy. The Pygmalion effect. When you set an expectation and you live by it, people that walk in the door will live by it. You don’t expect somebody else to be honest first. You’re honest first.

Life gets so much easier when people like you. So I’m going to make myself likable. Not only do I tell stories that are uplifting, but part of what makes them uplifting is that they are fun to listen to or they’re touching. By the time you get to the end of the story, I feel emotionally affected. I will often tell stories that have made me cry — things that have happened to me that are so beautiful. Once we have seen the amount of sacrifice human beings are capable of and the sweetness that they’ll do unprovoked, it’s very reassuring and soul filling. And so when you tell a story that has that kind of uplifting quality that reignites your belief in the future — you’re giving a gift. That gift is: you’re going to be memorable, and you’re going to be interpreted like a dog. They decided to make this the best meeting of the day by telling me a story that was entertaining and meaningful and touched my emotions.

Kelly: Let’s move over to the fundamentals of storytelling for advertising. You have three pillars of a compelling story.

Neal: A story has to have a hero, a protagonist, and that hero needs to want something. If we go back to the Sienna commercial — the mother of the family, she’s definitely heroic. She needs to get her sleeping family off to bed. But there’s an obstacle. There’s a challenge. Her husband weighs 280 pounds. And so you are very interested in the story because you’re going, how is she going to resolve this? She exceeds our expectations, as many mothers do. She is vastly stronger than we first took her for. That is how a lot of women are. They are underestimated.

If you were going to present that idea to people that are going to need to pay for its production, you have to make sure they know what they’re getting before they hear the idea. You’re going to tell them: this is a story about a woman who has probably been underestimated her whole life, who carries more weight in her family than you think she’s capable of, who is the bedrock and the foundation and the glue that holds that family together. And she doesn’t expect a medal at the end of it. This to her is just a Tuesday. And then you present the idea, and when they get to the end of it, they go, wow, that was a work of art. Because it lived up to everything that young woman told me it was going to say. It said all of that in the story — and none of that in bullet points.

You set up a protagonist, somebody who wants something, somebody who’s heroic in some way, or they learned something by the end. Then they want something, then there’s a challenge, and now you’re trying to figure out will they succeed. And then when you get to the end — how did that affect them? Well, it was actually really important that the woman isn’t affected at all. This changes nothing, because that’s her life. And doesn’t that remind you of somebody? It reminds you of you, doesn’t it?

In any story, fundamentally, you’ve got to have somebody who’s a protagonist who wants something. They face a challenge or some obstacle. They’ve overcome it and they learned something, or we learned something from their journey. There’s a scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones walks into a market and all of a sudden there is this enormous man swinging an enormous scimitar. And Indy’s response is, I’m not going to sword fight this guy. He just pulls his pistol, shoots the man in the head and turns very exhausted. The story is about: I don’t have time for this. Enormous challenge, bang — onto the next. It’s funny. It makes us laugh. It was a miniature movie in less than 30 seconds.

In the end, it’s really just act one, act two, act three. Woman is trying to get something. Woman faces challenge. In overcoming the challenge, she is now the hero of this tale. She has survived and she has changed by the experience.

And let’s talk about how when we tell stories about ourselves, there’s a very important lesson: if this was the only thing I told your audience, it would be to never make yourself the hero of your stories. Don’t do that, because you become not credible. As soon as somebody presents themselves as heroic, you have not aroused the admiration of your audience, but rather the skepticism. “I caught a fish this big.” No, you didn’t. Even if you were the hero of your story, cast somebody else in the role of hero. Tell the story as though you observed the behavior of this person.

I have a friend, Matt, who is a glorious storyteller — magnificently successful in business. There was a thing that he did that was very generous. When he told the story, he told it as though it was somebody else, knowing that if he told it about himself, nobody would believe it. And now he gets to have his cake and eat it too — he gets to tell about the incident and he gets to say, this is what I admire. He earns my admiration as somebody who was behind the scenes as well.

Anybody that goes onto LinkedIn and says “so humbled to have won this great award” — no, you can use the word humbled, but you’re not using it right. What you really mean is, I’m so proud of myself that I wanted everybody in the universe to know that I won this award. Cloaking it in false humility only makes you look like a bigger tool. Do yourself a favor — there should be one purpose to go on LinkedIn: celebrate the achievement of somebody on your team. Or if you’re going to post something, make it of some value. Did I improve people’s day by putting this here?

Oftentimes really good chief executives will tell stories about something that they did wrong — to say, I learned from this and I will not repeat this mistake. I learned from this and I don’t want you to repeat a mistake I made. We are a learning organization and it is okay to own your mistakes. There’s a wonderful Syrian aphorism: “if you are on the wrong road and you are heading the wrong way, no matter how far you’ve gone, turn around now.”

You can see how powerful that is when a president says, I made a mistake. I sent us down this road. That was not the right thing to do. We are turning around and going back. It is my fault. But I will not double down on an error. I will not waste more of our time and more of our money. Now what happens to that cynical middle of your company? They go, he owned his mistake. And now they have permission to do the same.

Having had experience with Toyota — been to many of their factories — the people building the cars will encounter a flaw on the line and they’ll stop the line in order to run this problem to ground and get it fixed for once and for all. You think they’re upset? No. They’re happy. Because now that we’re going to fix that, that’s one less problem that this car will have. This car is this much closer to perfect. They practically celebrate when they find these things. They’re a learning organization. It’s what makes them so formidable.

So I can either, as president, stand up in front of everybody and tell them how wonderful I am — which is not credible — or I can say, can I tell you something that happened to me? I was rude to a guy that was parking cars. I was mad at myself the second it came out of my mouth. But I didn’t stop and I didn’t turn around and I didn’t apologize. Four hours later on the golf course, I’m still angry with myself. I literally left the 12th tee and I walked all the way back to apologize to that person. Then I felt okay. I want you to remember — no matter who you are in this company — if you say something untoward towards somebody else, apologize now. You will carry it for the rest of the week. In the telling of that story, I’ve humbled myself, but not really. What I’ve demonstrated is I’m a learning person who’s imperfect, but going through the world with the intention of getting better. So when you’re telling a story, don’t make yourself the hero. Rather, be the person who learned something.

Kelly: And this is related to noblesse oblige, right?

Neal: Yeah, noblesse oblige. Look, if you’re going to get all the money and you’re going to own all the land, you owe the peasants a surviving life.

Kelly: I said it backwards.

Neal: You cannot push them to the point where all of a sudden you’re on the end of a guillotine or on a pike. You’ve got to recognize you have to be good to people sufficiently that they feel good about you being the lord of the manor. In today’s world they’re not going to kill you — they’ll kill you symbolically. They’ll find a way to undermine you.

We were about to do an international pitch, headed to Seoul, Korea. We had to get on a plane in New York, fly halfway around the world. And I left my computer — the one with the presentation on it — at my desk. We’re getting in the van and we are racing to the airport. And the cleaning woman comes out with my backpack and says, you forgot your computer. Now, I knew that woman and I’m not saying I had been exquisitely good to that woman, but I had never pissed her off enough so that she said, good luck with the show. She had not found her moment to throw a torpedo in my hull. That’s noblesse oblige — you’ve got to make sure that you are good enough to people where they don’t look for ways to put you into the ground.

And this is part of storytelling — floating through the world telling a story about yourself, which is: I am looking for ways to improve other people’s day. I am conscious that there are other people in the world and I am wondering what it’s like to be you. There’s a strange efficiency to being generous to people. You think it’s going out of your way? No. It’s lubricating the gears. This engine’s going to run smoother and cooler if you are nice to people.

Walking around with a guilty conscience is deadly. Loneliness is deadly — they say loneliness is like smoking three packs of cigarettes a day. How do you get lonely? You get lonely by not going out into the world looking for ways to improve the lives of others. As Yuval Harari would say, the most important stories we tell are the ones we tell ourselves about ourselves. Who am I?

I saw this wonderful Korean series about older people in Korea. These people in their 70s now — what do you think they went through in their youth? A lot of sacrifice. And so now they very much resent people that are telling them what to do or how to be. There was this wonderful line from a woman who is being told by her husband or her son how she should behave. And she says, “I am the protagonist of my movie. I will not be told to be a supporting character.” Think about how powerful that is. You are the protagonist of your movie, Kelly. You are the one who controls how this plot goes. And you’re the one who decides how this movie ends. How do you want that third act to go?

You know how cool it is when you really make an effort in a meeting — when the room has been visually prepared, when it’s got cool visuals everywhere, and when it smells like something when you walk in. That’s what realtors do, right? They make it smell like baking bread. You think they go, oh, this is a great realtor? No — you go, something about that place I really liked. Smells are operating subconsciously.

It doesn’t just smell good in the meeting. There’s music when they walk in that sets a mood. Or there’s a whole thing of sound effects so that when you get to the end of the presentation, you hit a crescendo of trumpets. Ta-da! And you would have something in front of them — not just any snack. I don’t want to give them sugar, because I don’t want them crashing in 20 minutes. I would give them espresso beans, or very good coffee, or cashews — protein that is going to keep you engaged. And then there’s a place setting with little toys or something provocative. Why? Because whatever you’ve put in front of them is on theme for the meeting. It’s going to reinforce whatever you were there to sell them. Or it’s a small gift — thoughtful, personalized, something they’re going to want to keep. Because I am 100% determined that when you leave this meeting, this is the only thing you’re thinking about for the rest of the day. If anybody asks you how the meeting went, you say, “Well, we didn’t approve the work, but I love those guys.” If you set a tone for every time you come to see us that it’s the best part of your day — they kind of owe you one. I’ve had clients tell me, I didn’t want to say yes to that one, but I owed you one.

Kelly: One of the creative directors I worked with at Grey said that when you go visit a client, it should be the best part of their day. They’re in meetings all day and this is the best part of their day. You need to come to them offering them a present and the gift is creative — creative based on their brand and what it represents — and you need to tell that story in such a way so they are receiving the gift in a magical way and accepting it in a magical way.

Neal: You said a mouthful. Accepting it in a magical way. You just put your finger on persuasion 100%. It was not rational. It was magical. It was emotional. They accepted it in the spirit in which it was offered because it was a gift. The creative was a gift. It solved a problem beautifully, artfully. Can you imagine how much fun it must be to be John Williams and be able to present to George Lucas, here’s the theme song I wrote for your movie?

I’ve been on commercial shoots where the crew applauded. And how do you not earn applause? Take 26 — that’s how you don’t earn applause. You earn applause at take three. “Moving on” — the happiest words in any key grip’s life. And there’s only one way you’re going to get it. You came prepared. You were rehearsed. You had internalized it. You couldn’t wait to share it. Commercial shoots were the most expensive movies second-for-second of any production on earth. I’ve been on shoots where they were spending $10,000 an hour before post. Some actor shows up unprepared and we’re burning $10,000 an hour. On the other hand, you showed up excited and ready to go — and the director is like, I will put this actor in everything I am ever going to shoot. Wes Anderson has his people. They just show up in movie after movie. Not because they showed up unprepared — because they showed up ready to give the gift.

Kelly: Yeah, I mean the whole thing has to be magical. What you’re presenting is magic, the gift is magic, and they will accept this gift.

Neal: Yeah. Then, okay, so you need to copyright that and trademark that because…

Kelly: Well, this actually is really good because it leads us to the next topic. What you’ve said is that the storyteller, not the source, earns the credit — like an actor who delivers a memorable line while the writer goes uncredited. Brene Brown loves to tell the story of Roosevelt, the man in the arena. She didn’t write it. But she takes the credit because she told it. Mel Robbins does the five, four, three, two, one blast-off idea as if it was a rocket launch. Not her idea. She just took an idea that already exists and ran with it. So you agree that if you’re the one who says it, just like an actor says a line, then you own it?

Neal: You will notice that really great actors are very generous with their praise of the script. A Daniel Day Lewis, a Meryl Streep — have you ever noticed how generous Meryl Streep is with her praise of the script? That woman could read the phone book and make it compelling. Because she understands that this is a craft that I love and I wouldn’t be able to do it except that somebody created a character that I can inhabit. She loves the whole thing and she loves the people that make it possible.

I believe the reason that you get credit for it is in proportion to the fact that you are generous with who it came from — that you say, this is meaningful to me when I came across it. The paradox is that the more credit you give somebody else, the more you own it. It’s true. You’re behaving like the audience that’s listening to the story right now. You’re sitting right next to them saying, hey, watch this — see what they did? Isn’t that great?

It’s like standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon. I was a Boy Scout and we had a tour bus. We all ran to the lip. Little boys going, wow, I’m going to climb down. And I’m looking at other people watching the rim and I see an old guy go up to the rim and look out over the beauty — and what does he do? He turns around looking for someone to share it with. It’s not the same if there’s no one there to share it with. It’s not as beautiful. You need somebody there to appreciate it with you. Have you ever noticed how great salespeople love to be sold? A car dealer loves a great pitch because they know how hard it is to persuade somebody who’s on the fence. As long as you’ve prepped the room and made the presentation a gift, they want to buy it. All the more reason to make an effort. Prove that you cared enough that you got dressed for the date.

Kelly: You’ve said great storytellers zig when everyone else zags. What do you mean by this?

Neal: A great storyteller is essentially giving you a gift as opposed to asking for something in return. Have you ever heard the aphorism, “If you want advice, ask for money. If you want money, ask for advice?” If I’ve come to you for advice, it means I respect your opinion. I’m sharing with you a situation I’m in and hoping you can give me some guidance. There’s going to be a point in the story where the listener begins to identify with you. They go, well, if I was in your shoes, I would do this. And because you’re coming to them for advice and not money, they’re open to listening because they know you’re not trying to sell them. And there’s a point during this exchange when they go, you know, actually, that’s not a bad idea. Do I like this person? Actually, I kind of do. Do I trust them? Well, yeah, because they could have come with their hand out, but they didn’t.

In The Godfather, the very first scene is this guy asking the Godfather for a favor. And he says, “You didn’t come to me in friendship. I came to you years ago and you rebuffed my friendship and now you want a favor.” Not everybody wants to know you until it’s time to cash in a chip. And you didn’t earn that.

Zigging when everybody else zags is going into the world with the intention of giving a gift before you ask for something in return. There’s an old cowboy saying: there are a few people that learn from books and a couple more that learn from watching others, and the rest of us just have to piss on the electric fence for ourselves. Telling a good story is helping people not piss on the electric fence.

Let’s look at the Procter & Gamble ad from the 2014 Sochi Olympics — brilliant piece of advertising. The first pod of advertising at the Olympics is the most expensive real estate in the whole thing. All the VPs and brand managers come as competitors to get that spot. And A.G. Lafley, who was the chairman at the time, said: “I can’t believe the way that you people are coming at this trying to sell people paper towels. It’s the Olympics. It is the moment in our universal experience when we are trying to elevate ourselves past simple competition into something that’s more artful, more human. Here’s what I want. I want you to write me a love letter to my customers.”

What came back was the most lovely, heartfelt commercial. It begins with little babies in their little nappies, and each one falls — a little French baby, a little Russian baby, a little Canadian baby, a little American baby — and each time the mom comes and picks them up. And now those little ones are toddlers. And now they’re at the age when they’re on ice skates or skis or snowboards, and of course they’re falling flat on their faces. Each time the moms are there to pick them up again. And now they’re in rehab or icing themselves down. And the mom is there again to ease their pain and keep them going until that moment of the competition. And every one of them makes it to the end of that finish line or scores the winning goal or makes the jump or the figure skater finally lands the quad. And what do they do when they win that gold medal? What’s the first thing they all do? They look for their mothers. And up at the end, the parade of all of the P&G brands — Duracell, Pampers, Tide, Bounty — and it says: #BecauseOfMom.

Kelly: Thanks, mom. I remember that. That’s wonderful.

Neal: And I’m weeping now. Because it really is a love letter to a mother. It’s not a lie, by the way. It’s the truth. None of these kids get there without — an Olympian is the story of a mother and father or somebody believing in you enough to keep getting you up. Teaching us that falling only makes us stronger. Now, what prompted it was: don’t try to cram 20% more absorbent or 30% whiter whites into people’s brains. I want it so that when they walk down the supermarket aisle on Monday, a 30 cent difference in price is of no consequence. Because when love is involved, money is no object. That’s the economics of having enough love for your customers that they are blindly, irrationally in love with you in return. And you can’t do that by telling a story where you are the hero. Procter & Gamble was not the hero. But they get full credit because they saw something others didn’t bother to say. It’s that insight of caring enough about somebody to notice what matters to them. This is why people vote emotionally. They will vote against their economic interests if they feel seen.

Kelly: You teach storytelling at StoryFire. You’ve said it’s a skill that anyone can learn if they’re willing to practice. Talk to me about what are the biggest challenges that people come to you with?

Neal: The first one is they say, you seem to lead the most interesting life. You have stories about everything. Well, I don’t have a more interesting life than you have, but I did learn to write everything down. Small things that happened to me — five or six things will happen to you today, Kelly, that are worth talking about. This conversation that we had today, there’s a story that’s going to come out of this. For example, one of the stories I will tell from now on is how incredibly prepared you are and how nice you make it for a guest on your show. Kelly does the most magnificent preparation. She sends you this document of all the things she intends to talk about. And she says, here are some of the questions I’m going to ask you. Because she was so ready to go, it was like taking a test — I started going, geez, how am I going to answer that? I better write these things down. That’s a story. Most people wouldn’t recognize that as a story until they go — you need to start noticing that everything that happens to you today is in a way something you learned from or suffered through or made a mistake about. Making mistakes is a really great source of storytelling because your mistakes humanize you. So my first thing that people encounter is: I don’t have anything to talk about. Well, you do if you will start to notice. Please get yourself a notebook and start writing down interesting things that happened to you. You can even do it at lunch. Take stock of what happened to you that morning. Has anything meaningful happened? Anything small you noticed? Stories are all around you.

An example for me of a very popular video that I did was for a place called the Restaurant of Mistaken Orders in Tokyo. I had nothing to do with this company. I only noticed that this thing had happened — this guy, Shiro Oguni, had started a restaurant where the entire wait staff was suffering from memory loss. There were older people going through early or late stage dementia. And yes, 37% of the time the orders were wrong, but everybody left the restaurant perfectly happy because they had found a way to include these people in society. And they were improving the lives of those people and keeping them alive and lively and entertained and laughing and smiling. I found that so inspirational that I wanted to tell that story. So stories are everywhere if you’ll only notice.

The second thing that people will often say to me is: I’m very self-conscious about telling stories. I’m terrible in front of audiences. Yeah, of course you are. Because there was no time in nature when it was ever a good thing to be standing in front of a hundred eyeballs all staring at you, alone, unarmed, with a spotlight on you. We all survived as a species because your ancestors learned to flee from that situation. The only way to get over it is to simply get enough reps in where it has stopped bothering you. Public speaking is aversion therapy — you keep pushing your tolerance until it doesn’t bother you anymore.

The thing most people don’t want to hear is: to get good at storytelling, you have to do it a lot. It doesn’t mean you have to do it in front of an audience, but it does mean that you have to take advantage of this fabulous technology we’ve all been given — you can film yourself telling a story, making a presentation. The problem is most people cringe watching themselves back. Yeah, I get it. It is cringe inducing at first — like jumping into a cold pool. But you get used to it. The day you can get comfortable watching yourself back — that’s the day you turn pro, because that’s the day you’re going to get better.

I do a lot of posts on social media and people are very impressed by how clean the delivery is. You think that was the first take? No — generally speaking, it’s about 30 takes, 31 takes to get a good clean thing, the one I like. Do you think it’s an effort for me to go through 31 takes? No, I’m used to it. Take 16? I’m not angry. I’ve been through this rodeo enough to know, if you’re getting it on take 16, that’s pretty good. People say, I hate the sound of my voice. I hate the way I look on camera. Do you want to get better at this or not? You don’t have to be superhuman to get good at it. You just have to be willing, under conditions that nobody else can see, to practice it. And people really underestimate how much practice they’re going to need to get good.

Kelly: That 10,000 hours rule, right?

Neal: How many tennis balls do you think Andre Agassi used to hit? You’ve got to be willing to say, I’m willing to go on this journey. And the good news is that every time you practice, you get a little bit better. Most presidents and CEOs come off like a stiff anodyne robot because they didn’t put in enough energy. They didn’t think they had the time. Every time you get up in front of an audience, that is your brand up there. You are making a commercial for yourself. How much is that worth?

I watched young people make their way through Toyota’s organization right to the top. The people that made it to the top were really good in front of a room. And you think it’s because they had a natural instinct? No, it’s because they were willing to practice. They were back in their hotel room, late into the night, doing it over and over and over again. So that when they walked in front of that room, the nerves were not nerves from nervousness. The nerves were from excitement. I cannot wait. They were like that racehorse at the beginning of the Kentucky Derby that won’t settle down — I’m going to kick everybody’s ass. The nerves were excitement. They own that room.

I had a CEO in Canada, part of a petroleum company, who was going to do an earnings call. He was new and he really wanted to say to all the reporters and all the investors, don’t worry, everything’s under control. We rehearsed the crap out of him. And it was brilliant. He was casual and he knew exactly how he was going to answer questions. No prevarication. He would own up to things that were not great — and he would own them. And what he broadcasted to all of those reporters: this guy’s not a liar. I’m talking to a real person. The difference between that performance and an average performance was literally millions of dollars in stock. Literally millions. So how much was that preparation worth?

You are a young creative person and I can help you get 20% better at the way you tell your stories. If you’re 20% better, you’re selling 10% more work — and not your worst ideas. You’re selling 10% more of your better ideas, the ones that are harder to sell because they’re new and they’re more interesting and they’re provocative. If you’re selling 10% more of your best ideas in five years, you have a completely different portfolio of work. You get promoted to creative director. They do not get that promotion. When layoffs come around in the ad business — and it’s the hunger games in the ad business — you’re not the one that gets laid off. You tell me what that’s worth. That is almost priceless.

The CEO said, wow, man, you don’t charge enough. He sent his CFO to me — this woman was fabulous. She had a very thick Ukrainian accent and she was very self-conscious about it. She wanted to get rid of it. I said, sister, you do not want to get rid of that accent because it speaks volumes about you. It talks about your bluntness and your toughness. They don’t speak Ukrainian. You already got a leg up on these people. You know things they don’t know. You know what they think you are? They think you’re a chess champion every time you walk in that room. Don’t get rid of it. Embrace yourself. Be the person you are.

Kelly: The last question I have for you — I watched your TEDx talk, the ROI of Kindness. And out of that came something you developed called the Conspiracy of Kindness, which is a platform for storytelling about ordinary people doing quiet, generous things. Can you tell us about it?

Neal: Yeah, so the conspiracy is that in a world where AI is sending out anodyne slop and where the algorithms are rewarding division, rage baiting, provocative, ugly things — in that world, the conspiracy of kindness is: don’t be a part of that problem. Be the solution, be the antidote. Talk about positive things, share stories from your real life about the generosity of strangers, about the nice things people have done. Let’s be the real people talking about real things, small people, small things, little things, to remind people that human beings are not so bad. And the reason I call it a conspiracy is I know there is a conspiracy among the algorithm writers who know perfectly well that they are making people angry and they know perfectly well that they are dividing us and they know perfectly well that they are making teens suicidal. They know it and they don’t stop. It’s a conspiracy. So ours is also a conspiracy — everywhere you go, to everyone you speak — in your business, with your clients, and online. Let’s remind each other that human beings are not so bad and that we don’t have to be alone. Don’t retreat into the rabbit hole and scroll all the time with your device. Get out and be friendly and make like a dog. Make the first move. That’s the conspiracy of kindness.

The ROI of kindness is — you’d be shocked at the return you get on small, sweet acts of generosity. I always use as an example a car dealer that I knew whose unofficial slogan was, I’ll lose a little money to make a friend. In the car business where they are expecting to get thumped by some aggressive, obnoxious, self-interested pirate who sees every customer as a sheep to be fleeced — if in that business, if I’m nice to people, I will stand out like a shining city on a hill.

So he would do nice things for people. On the New Jersey Turnpike in spring, after winter, all that road debris comes up again and you’ll be behind a semi — it’s guaranteed you’re going to get a rock in your windshield. If you can catch the crack before it gets too big, you can stop it from ever getting bigger. So what this car dealer would do — if you pulled into his parking lot even without you asking and certainly without him charging you — he would fix the crack in your windshield with a little hypodermic of adhesive. He wouldn’t tell anybody because he wanted to create a kind of urban myth — that there are leprechauns over there at this Toyota dealership that will fix your windshield for free. Just the fact that people would abuse that and he didn’t care. He wants them going out into Passaic and going, that sucker down there fixed my windshield for nothing. What a sucker. What an idiot. Really? You think he’s being an idiot? Because now everybody knows where he is and what he’s doing.

How powerful is it when somebody thinks you’re a sucker in the car business? If they think you’re a sucker, they’re coming to you to buy their car because they think they’re going to get one over on you. A second thing he would do is he was very hard on his salespeople saying, I want the customer in and out of here in less than three hours. If you have to lose $500, I want them out of here in three hours or less. I want the urban myth to be true that this person is going to have you out of here in a heartbeat. And they’ll lose money to make a friend knowing that if they’re that way on the sale, they can come back to you for service — and services is where they make the money. Because to gouge somebody in service means they won’t come back. No, they’re fair about it. It’s all of these gestures that they don’t have to do, but they’re nice about it and they make it nice. And what happens? You can’t stop the traffic going in there. They’re busy all the time.

And he used to — if an older woman came in and she wasn’t made of money, she was driving a 20 year old Corolla — he would just tell the service writers, listen, do me a favor. If her charge is less than $150 or $200 bucks, she’s just in for a tune up or an oil change, or she just wants an inspection — do me a favor, just give it to her. Don’t charge her for it. But don’t tell her it’s from me and don’t tell her it’s the policy of the store. Because I don’t want people coming in thinking that’s the policy. I want her to think that it’s you. I want her to think she’s got a guy. Because what’ll happen is, Mrs. So-and-so is going to go back to her bridge club and tell everyone.

Kelly: Yes, she will.

Neal: She’s going to tell her son, she’s going to tell her daughter. And you know what they’re going to think? They’re going to go, wow, not only did they not chisel my mom, they kind of watch out for my mom. So if that’s how they treat vulnerable people, I’ll probably get a pretty good deal. The statistic is he reckoned that for every time he gave away a free tune up, they sold 11 cars because the neighbor heard about it. The brother-in-law heard about it. All the kids heard about it. The coffee clutch, the bridge club, the tennis club, the golf club, they all heard about it. You can see how quickly that fire would spread. That’s the ROI of kindness.

So it makes good economic sense. And if you saw my TEDx talk, then you saw the story of these trolls — a little thing like that can go a long way at improving the day of a forward facing customer service person. The abuse they take — you know how tough it is to do a job that faces customers. Because not every customer is sweet. All it takes is two swamp donkeys and your whole day is ruined. But if you get a customer who shakes you up by being so overly nice to you and funny and sweet and tries to restore your faith in humanity, the ROI of that kindness will get repaid. They said that if you really want to make a server happy, just laugh and smile, get them one of those scratch offs. If it’s a buck or it’s five bucks, if you become famous for that at your restaurant, they’re going to go, I want that table. Because for all I know, they’re going to make me a millionaire. Could happen.

Kelly: You are filled with all sorts of ideas and stories. This is amazing.

Neal: That could be a hundred thousand dollar tip for all you know. And by the way, I never stick around to see what comes out of the scratch off. I don’t, because I don’t want to know if I just lost a hundred thousand dollars.

Kelly: Yeah, eventually you’d see it on the news. Well, thank you so much for sharing your storytelling insights today, Neal. We’ll provide links to your website, your social media channels, and your contact information in the transcript. Don’t forget to subscribe and share. Thanks for joining.

Neal Foard: Thank you. And I just want to tell your listeners one more time how glorious you are as a person and as a podcaster, how well prepared and how personable. Kelly, big fan. Big fan of yours.

Kelly: Ditto. Thank you so much.