Life mantra

• Culture change happens only if people consume your story

• Number of consumers is your best indicator of whether you can affect culture change*

• Financial and strategic outcomes are the best indicator of how many people consumed your story

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What makes a good story

• Traditional story foundations; character development, plot development, crisis and resolution

• Strong characters; batman versus superman*

• Strong visual storytelling even if there aren’t visuals

• Authenticity* 

  • Success of doc and reality TV is that people like real stories that are authentic

Stories that effectively drive action on behalf of social impact issues--whether that action be to increase donations, activate partnerships, advocate for legislation, or motivate volunteers--must be designed with purpose and emotion. They cannot be haphazard. Students will gain practical hands-on knowledge as to how to strategically define the purpose of stories they wish to create that align with the overall objectives of their social impact organization or setting. They will also learn and evaluate the five essential building blocks of effective social impact stories--character, trajectory, authenticity, action-oriented emotions, and a hook--by analyzing practical examples from nonprofits, responsible businesses, and social movements.

Utilizing knowledge gained in the previous two courses, students will create a custom story portfolio in this course. They will identify and develop four strategic types of social impact stories: personal, organizational, symbolic and issue specific. While creating their portfolio, students will receive one-on-one advising from the instructor and learn from the experiences of peers within the cohort by participating in review sessions.

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1. Identify types of stories

2. Build a story from the organizational point of view

3. Compose a story based on a physical object that represents a social impact topic

4. Develop a personal story

5. Design a story that frames a topic within the social impact sector in a new way

Audience

• Demographics: who is consuming what and how are they consuming it

• Length and pacing (a bored audience is an un-engaged audience)*

• Display of those stories (mobile, TV, theatrical, podcasts)

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Platforms and devices

• Traditional devices; written word, audio, video, photography

  • The value of each

  • Overview of outlets for each; print, blogs, podcasts, YouTube, theatrical, social media, books

New technologies; understanding VR and AR*

Don’t make the market come to you, go to the market*

• Assimilating content into popular media versus your website

• Strategies of bringing them back to your domain (website, etc.)

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Social media

• Did they read, watch or experience your story

• Tracking the data 

• Analyzing the effectiveness

• True engagement vs passive consumption*

• Learning from your mistakes