If your role involves being responsible for marketing, communications and business decisions, then this course is a must-do. Business storytelling enables you to position your organisation using the appropriate language to produce effective copywriting, PR and other business communication, including marketing campaigns.
Our Compelling Copywriting & Business Storytelling course will teach you the vital elements of persuasive writing and narrative fiction in a business context. In copywriting courses like ours, you will learn about character, tone of voice, plot development, context and delivery. You will also discover how to create marketing and brand “stories” that are empathetic and relatable across a range of communication channels — from ads to blogs and vlogs.
Learning Outcomes
Outcomes achieved by undertaking copywriting courses include:
- Learning about how we tell stories, why stories matter and how we connect through stories
- Exploring oral versus written traditions and storytelling at work
- Gaining an understanding of the difference between storytelling and story writing
- Studying the application of storytelling including blogs and social media
- Gaining insights into business development, personnel management and storytelling with data
- Understanding sales and marketing, storytelling in commercial situations and what you are selling or promoting
- Learning about character development and brand ambassadors and influencers
- Exploring mega, macro, micro and nano influencers
- Gaining an understanding of customers in the story
- Studying customers in the story, customer profiles and customer avatars
- Gaining insights into developing characters
- Examining plot development and the seven basic plots
- Understanding the audience, conflict, overcoming the monster, and rags to riches
- Learning about quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy and rebirth
- Exploring the seven point plot structure and the literary technique of the “hook”
- Gaining an understanding of inciting incident, complications and the halfway mark
- Studying additional complications and obstacles and climax and resolution
- Gaining insights into I and We
- Examining how to identify and develop a theme, common story themes, universal themes and themes and brand messaging
- Understanding storytelling for work
- Learning about style and technique
- Exploring how to select a narrator and first-person and second person
- Gaining an understanding of social media/online content
- Studying how to select a tense
- Gaining insights into oral, written and visual presentation
- Examining your storytelling style and how to plan your story
- Understanding how to be natural, emotions and how to satisfy the audience’s curiosity
- Learning about common story types
- Exploring literary devices including similes and metaphors
- Gaining an understanding of personification, symbolism, colloquialism, archetypes and rhetorical questions
- Studying Chekhov’s Gun and other literary devices
- Gaining insights into building dramatic tension including rising tension and how to introduce tension
- Understanding environmental, plot and external tension, character and internal tension
- Learning how to build trust and rapport
- Exploring delivery and how to engage with your audience
- Gaining an understanding of in-person delivery, telling our verbal story and voice
- Studying pacing and emotion, value and tone and the importance and use of silence
- Gaining insights into text and visuals
And more!
Australian Effie Awards 2020
Introduced in 1968 by the New York American Marketing Association, the Effie® Awards have since become recognised by advertising agencies and advertisers as the pre-eminent award in the advertising industry. The annual awards are presented to recognise the year’s most effective marketing and advertising communications campaigns. Here are some of 2020’s winners that will inspire you to undertake copywriting courses like ours!
Award: GOLD – The Grand Effie
Client: ALDI Australia
Title: Aldi Good Different
Agency: BMF
Award: GOLD – Beverages
Client: Beam Suntory
Title: How Canadian Club Became the Boss of Summer
Agency: The Monkeys
Award: GOLD – Financial Services
Client: NRMA Insurance
Title: Every Home is Worth Protecting
Agency: The Monkeys
Award: GOLD – Insight & Strategic Thinking
Client: NRMA Insurance
Title: Snapping Australians Out Of Their Home Insurance Apathy
Agency: The Monkeys
Award: SILVER – Travel, Leisure and Media
Client: Accor Hotels
Title: Wintervention – Reinventing a tired offer
Agency: Thinkerbell
Award: SILVER – Government
Client: Victoria Police
Title: When You Need Us, Not The Sirens – Creating New Ways To Contact The Police
Agency: Thinkerbell
Award: SILVER – Other Services
Client: Telstra
Title: You Don’t Need Australia’s Best Network Campaign … Until You Do
Agency: The Monkeys
Award: SILVER – Long Term Effects
Client: Mitsubishi Motors Australia
Title: How Mitsubishi Has The Time Of Its Life Again and Again
Agency: Richards Rose
Award: SILVER – Retail/Etail
Client: ALDI Australia
Title: How a Campaign For One Convinced Australia to Give Aldi Another Go
Agency: BMF
Award: BRONZE – Food, Confectionary and Snacks
Client: KFC
Title: Secret Menu
Agency: Ogilvy Australia
Award: BRONZE – Most Original Thinking
Client: KFC
Title: Michelin Impossible
Agency: Ogilvy Australia
Award: BRONZE: Most Original Thinking
Client: Samsung
Title: Microcodes – How a Tiny Idea Generated Massive Results
Agency: CHE Proximity
Award: BRONZE – Health and Wellbeing
Client: Amgen
Title: The Big O: Speaking Out Against a Silent Disease.
Agency: The Works
Award: BRONZE – Travel, Leisure & Media
Client: Tourism Central Coast
Title: Building a Billion Dollar Tourism Brand Through Little Adventures
Agency: Affinity
Award: BRONZE – Financial Services
Client: Bendigo Bank
Title: Four Big Reasons To Try Number Five
Agency: AJF GorwthOps
Award: BRONZE – Brand Value
Client: NRMA Insurance
Title: How a Koala Added $96m of value to the NRMA Insurance brand
Agency: The Monkeys
Award: BRONZE – New Product or Service
Client: Sydney Children’s Hospital
Title: Curing Homesickness
Agency: CHE Proximity
Chekhov’s Gun
Also known as “Chekhov’s Rifle”, this is a dramatic principle that was recorded in letters by Anton Chekhov. Chekhov was a Russian physician, playwright and author who was born in1860. He is widely regarded as one of the great masters of the short story .
As you’ll discovery in copywriting courses like ours, it states that every element in a story must be necessary and unnecessary elements should be removed. Elements should also not appear to make “false promises” by never coming into play. As he noted:
- “Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter, it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”
- “One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.” Here the “gun” is a monologue that Chekhov deemed superfluous and unrelated to the rest of a
- “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.”
How to use it in your writing
If you are writing storytelling copy and mention cars on a busy street, it doesn’t create the automatic assumption that they will play a significant part in the coming scene. This is because cars on a street are commonplace in describing a city scene. However, it is always wise to pass over inessential details more briefly and linger on significant ones. An item plays an important role in a story when you introduce it to the reader in a way that suggests dramatic significance. There are three ways you can do this:
- Showing an object that has inherent significance. For example, if your character holsters a gun before going out, it implies there will be a shootout later. Guns inherently signify the potential of violence and aggression.
- Implying significance through the way you describe an object. An item may become significant to your reader due to the way you focus on it. For example, if you make a point to describe or mention someone’s wedding ring in detail, it signals to the reader that something related to it or a character’s marriage will happen.
- Introducing an ordinary object in an unusual context. For example, if a character turns up on a snowy day wearing a short-sleeved dress, the reader expects an explanation as the object does not fit its context.
- Be intentional with red herrings. In some types of writing (mystery fiction in particular), authors foreground certain symbols or objects to deliberately mislead the reader. In a mystery, they can be used to throw the detective (and the reader) off the trail or send them down the wrong track in terms of solving the mystery. However, even here, Chekhov’s Gun theory should apply, as red herrings shouldn’t appear without their own causal relationship to the rest of the story.
Gain a comprehensive understanding of how to create a brand-consistent, cohesive and compelling story with copywriting courses like our Compelling Copywriting & Business Storytelling
