Copyright Copyright © 2018 by Robert McKee and Thomas Gerace Cover design by Jarrod Taylor. Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc. Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. Twelve Hachette Book Group 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104 twelvebooks.com twitter.com/twelvebooks First Hardcover Edition: March 2018 Twelve is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. The Twelve name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher. The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: McKee, Robert, 1941-author. | Gerace, Thomas, author. 1941-author. | Gerace, Thomas, author. Title: Storynomics : story-driven marketing in the post-advertising world / Robert McKee and Thomas Gerace. Description: New York : Twelve, [2018] Identifiers: LCCN 2017042100| ISBN 9781538727935 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781549167454 (audio download) | ISBN 9781455541973 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Marketing. | Storytelling. Classification: LCC HF5415 .M26125 2018 | DDC 658.8—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017042100 ISBNs: 978-1-53872793-5 (hardcover), 978-1-45554197-3 (ebook), 978-1- 54916745-4 (audiobook, downloadable) E3-20180215-JV-PC CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Acknowledgments Epigraph Introduction: The Marketing Crisis PART ONE: THE MARKETING REVOLUTION Chapter One: Advertising, A Story of Addiction Chapter Two: Marketing, A Story of Deception PART TWO: STORY CREATION Chapter Three: The Evolution of Story Chapter Four: The Definition of Story Chapter Five: The Full Story Chapter Six: The Purpose-Told Story PART THREE: PUTTING STORY TO WORK Chapter Seven: Story and the CMO Chapter Eight: Storified Branding Chapter Nine: Storified Advertising Chapter Ten: Storified Demand and Lead Generation Chapter Eleven: Building Audience Chapter Twelve: Storified Sales Chapter Thirteen: -Nomics Conclusion: Tomorrow Also by Robert McKee Notes Newsletters To Mia, Her love gives all things meaning. —Robert McKee To my parents, Ann Jones Gerace and Samuel Philip Gerace, who taught me to love a good story. —Tom Gerace ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We offer special thanks to Mia Kim for her inspired and tireless leadership of the entire Storynomics enterprise. We would still be outlining if Mia had not kept us on task. We are grateful to Linda Boff of GE, Raja Rajamannar of Mastercard, Caleb Barlow of IBM, Jeanniey Mullen of Mercer, Natalie Malaszenko of Overstock, David Beebe of Marriott, and Patrick Davis of Davis Brand Capital who graciously shared their time and wisdom with us. We owe thanks too to Tricia Travaline, Genevieve Colton, Adam Vavrek, Ruben Sanchez, and Dara Cohen who have done heavy lifting to make the Storynomics enterprise a success. We are grateful to Marcia Friedman and Tom Hardej, who edited our early copy and helped ensure consistency of voice, and to Carl Rosendorf, Ann Gerace, Darryl Gehly, Dan Baptiste, Rob Murray, Caleb Gonsalves, Lauren Meyer, Michael Gowen, Kent Lawson, Bob Dekoch, Jim Rossmeissi, and others at Skyword, Boldt, and beyond, who read early drafts of the book and provided invaluable feedback along the way. And we thank Jim Manzi, for his unwavering support and belief in the power of story to drive change. I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old and in a quiet moment of reflection, narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life’s story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. —Jeff Bezos, 2010 Princeton Commencement Address INTRODUCTION THE MARKETING CRISIS Look around. It’s happening. In ever-escalating millions, consumers are cutting the barbed wire of ad-imprisoned media and disappearing into a forest of paid subscriptions and ad blockers. No use searching for these people. They’re gone and they’re never coming back. Now look ahead. Before long, all public and private communication— entertainment, news, music, sports, social media, online searches—will be ad- free, leaving sides of buses as the publicity medium of last resort. Millennials, that vital under-forty market, are not only banishing advertising from their lives but sneering at the institution itself, denouncing its bragging and promising as deceitful, manipulative, the next thing to micro-aggression. In fact, a recent study revealed that over the past five years, television viewing by people under forty dropped 30 percent, while ad-free over-the-top services like Netflix skyrocketed.1 This massive consumer exit and the resulting drop in ad revenue has tossed umpteen media firms—Tribune Media, 21st Century Media, SBC Media, Relativity Media, Cumulus Media, Next Media, Citadel Broadcasting, the Sun- Times, Borders, Blockbuster, Reader’s Digest, and dozens more multibillion- dollar corporations—into the Dumpsters of bankruptcy.2 In 2015, 76 percent of marketers surveyed by Adobe claimed that marketing had changed more in the last two years than it had in all the decades since the birth of television. Many chief marketing officers swear they will never again trust advertising to deliver customers. Some CMOs condemn ad agencies for wasting time and money trying to be Super Bowl–creative instead of market- effective. Others blame the noise from free online ads that drowns out their paid ads. Still others complain that falling return on investment (ROI) and rising costs make advertising just too damn expensive. Of course, if advertising suddenly redelivered the mass consumers of decades past, all would be forgiven. The more the push strategies of bragging and promising lose traction, the more marketers turn to the pull tactics of effective storytelling. To support their