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One Story Beats
a Dozen Adjectives
Pick up a good magazine
and glance at a few stories. You may spot a pattern that tells you something.
Today, most nonfiction
writers begin their articles with an illustrative story. It’s a device so pervasive
there is a name for it: synecdoche.
Trial lawyer Gerry
Spence always makes a point with a story. Spence knows that for all the enormous
changes in Western culture since the Greeks, today, almost 2,500 years after
Euripides, our primary form of entertainment is still the dramatic narrative--the
story.
More marketers should
discover the power of stories. Just as stories make articles more interesting
and make Spence's arguments more persuasive, they make marketing communications
more effective.
Synecdoche works
because people are interested in other people, and stories are about people.
Gerry Spence's story of a person wronged by excessive police force does not
need the words "pain" and "injustice." His vivid story makes jurors feel
the pain and injustice.
Like clever journalists
and great lawyers, marketers who tell true stories make their presentations
more interesting, more personal, more credible, and more felt--and more persuasive.
Don't use adjectives.
Use stories.

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