How to Nail the Pitch through Storytelling?
How to Nail the Pitch through Storytelling?
6 Tips to structure your storytelling design process.
👋 Hello, and welcome to the fourth edition of ADPList’s Weekly Pulse - a weekly newsletter dedicated to helping our community members to learn and grow together. We will be sharing helpful design tips, upcoming group sessions, and community happenings.
🔥 Learning of the week:
How to nail a pitch through Storytelling?
Our mentor Ruchika Nambiar, has shared 6 tips to structure your storytelling design process that brings impact to your audience!! ✨
1. Blurb
A blurb is the first step to give a preview of your content beforehand. How are you inviting your audience in? How are you setting up their expectations? It does not have to be related to your pitch, it also can be something external. Think of this as an invitation card, you are not talking about the event itself to give some indication of what to expect at your event. Blurb is The What of the project. Without the bulb, it is hard for your audience to engage with The Why and The How.
It could be the log-line of your website banner, the overview in a project proposal, the title/designation on your portfolio. Give them a rough outline of what to expect. Get to the What while you still have their attention.
2. Hook
A hook is something that brings people into your story. What’s your bait? How are you drawing them into your thought process? This is the beginning of your narrative process. You can:
Start with a question; that makes them ponder
Start with a quote; that makes them aspire
Start with a What-if story; that makes them imagine, a powerful statistic that makes them surprised or shocked.
You want to elicit some kind of emotional response or intrigue, but you also want to ensure you resolve the hook at the end.
3. Premise
A premise is a problem that needs to be resolved. What is the context of your narrative? What problem are you trying to solve and why it is worth thinking about? One way to do this is to focus on your protagonist. This could be the user or consumer: paint points, journey maps, empathy maps, user reviews. It could also be the community; delve into their stories. Perhaps the world at large could be the protagonist through data visualization or statistics.
It could be anything; the point is you want to build up a sense of urgency.
4. Climax
What’s all this leading up to? What is the meat of your pitch? This is the most impactful stage of your storytelling flow. It could be by providing solutions/service: demo videos or explainer videos, product reveal: mockups, interactive prototypes. Zoom in into specific details on what makes your solution special. You could also present your climax through concept visualizations by presenting idea direction or design concept.
Even if it is just a written proposal, this is where you want to spend time fleshing out the What of your pitch.
5. Closure
What is the resolution that you are providing? How is this vision going to come to fruition? Resolve the hook you set up at the beginning. You want to give your audience a sense of confidence and hope in your ability in the closure section.
If you start with a Question, resolve the hook by asking yourself, “What is your answer, and why are you qualified to answer it?”.
If you start with a What-if, resolve the hook by asking yourself, “How are you equipped to make that vision a reality?”
If you start with a powerful statistic, resolve it by asking, “Why are you capable of combating this challenge?”
You can do it in a variety of ways such as through your services, recognitions, awards, success stories, plan of action, or testimonials. You want to close by giving them a sense of hopefulness and confidence that you are the right person for this job.
6. Cliffhanger
A cliffhanger is not necessary to apply in all of your storytelling, but it helps to build a long-term relationship with your clients. How can you prolong your engagement with your audience? How can you set up your bait for a future sell?
You can upsell or cross-sell other products or services so that people could remember what else you can do for them. You can share future ideas or phased proposals of a long-term solution, which gets the clients excited. Provide other services that you offer as your cliffhanger, which comes in handy if your clients need that kind of service in the future. Simply give a brief glimpse of what you could do for them.
You can view the full video on How to Use Storytelling to Make a Better Pitch here.
💡 Community Wisdom:
Tips to combat Imposter Syndrome and manage your career better by Mentor- Sakshi Shukla:
Set an adventurer mindset; accept & enjoy the process 🧗🏻♀️
Use the Imposter Syndrome to your benefit; to better yourself 🔥
Actively remind yourself of your worth 🥰
Top-rated Group Sessions:
Join this session to know more about the impact of community and mentorship in the Philippine creative scene. Happening on Thursday - 18 November 2021, 7 AM EST.
Join Designers and Coffee on Instagram LIVE for a chat on Cross-functional Collaboration. In this session, ADPList mentors and designers working in the industry share their thoughts, tips, and experience on effective cross-functional collaboration. Happening on Thursday - 18 November 2021, 6 PM EST.
Join this session with LU, Design Director at McKinsey & Company, who's had a really cool back story of how he went from being in the sports marketing space to arbitraging the design space and becoming a design director. Happening on Tuesday- 23 November 2021, 2 PM EST.
📅 Group Sessions Reminder:
✨ Remote Job as a way to live life on your own terms- Tue Nov 16, 11 AM (EST) (RSVP)
✨ Transitioning to UX Research + AMA- Wed Nov 16, 7 PM
(EST) (RSVP)
✨ Strategy meets UX - Fri 19 Nov, 6:30 AM (EST) (RSVP)
✨ Weird UX principles and how to find your own // UX - Mon, 22 Nov, 1 PM (EST) (RSVP)
View all our upcoming group sessions
🦄This Week’s Quote✨:
“Be mindful of all your experience, knowledge, and skillset-don’t undervalue them.”
Stefano Bellucci Sessa
Service & UX Design consultant
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