My son is in French Immersion, but will only respond in English. He likes Pokemon, basketball, anything that’s food (except beets and eggplant), and riding his bike.
Dug into the archives for this one…
As much as it’s easy to characterize my role as his father being a one-way information street as he learns about the world (and, by the volume of questions he’s been asking, we’ve covered quite a bit of ground), the reality is that I’m learning as much as he is.
For those with children, I expect my experience is universal. You may see some of yourself in my short list of what my son has taught me, but the reality is storytelling is equally universal. We do it with our children, and organizations do it with their audiences.
In launching anything new into the market - product, program, brand - you’re initiating an information transaction. With the audience’s attention, your goal is to educate and inform.
So, here’s how my son taught me to do that a little better.
Be patient and never, ever assume a baseline understanding. My son asked me what he needed to do to drive a car. I explained he could start taking lessons at age 16, but would have to get his licence, buy a car, and get insurance. He responded with: “What’s insurance?”, which then led to “Why do I need insurance?”, and “Why does it cost money to repair things?”, and so on. Perhaps an extreme example, but every launch involves bringing a new element into being, which will inevitably lead to questions and follow-up. While you’ve been dealing with the focus of the launch for months and may be weary of the subject, to your audience it’s brand-spankin’-new.
Spend some time with word choice. I wrote about this before, and it applies here and ESPECIALLY when speaking with my son. Everyone is working with a slightly different vocabulary, sometimes in more than one language, so an organization’s storytelling must be composed in a way to help rather than hinder. That new employee may not yet be familiar with corporate acronyms; customers may characterize your products differently; media will scrub proprietary lingo to the chagrin of marketers everywhere.
Visuals provide a frame of reference. In the “driving” example above, when my son saw my driver’s licence it helped materialize the concept immediately so he could move into the more abstract areas that confused him. Video and images help move people along in the learning journey. Visual storytelling is immensely powerful and should play as big a role as the language in any launch planning.
Hope this helps!
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