M a r k e t e r the seven plots all stories must follow



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SMQ Issue3 digital


WHAT IS ATTENTION WORTH?

Content marketing strategies are only complete if they come 

with a clear idea of how content-led engagement will flow 

through into revenue; how the value that you’re exchanging for 

people’s attention will go on to create value for your business.

LinkedIn recently took part in research into the impact of 

thought leadership content on business buying decisions. 

In the study, 52% of business decision-makers said that 

they use thought-leadership content to vet an organization 

before deciding to work with it, 37% said they had added a  

company to an RFP as a result of such 

content, and 45% said that it had led 

them directly to award a supplier a 

piece of business.

That’s a powerful argument 

for the strategic value of thought 

leadership content and its direct 

impact on the bottom line. But it’s 

not enough for a content market-

ing strategy to know such value 

exists. It has to know that the value 

is flowing through in the way that 

it should. Strategies have metrics and 

measures for this, and content marketing 

strategies should be no exception. That’s why 

LinkedIn has emphasized developing tools like 

Conversion Tracking, which connect exposure to content with 

eventual business outcomes.

 

WHY CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY MATTERS

Tracking impact and effectiveness matters because of another 

key finding in our study: that poor thought-leadership content 

can quickly damage a business’s prospects. In fact, 30% of 

decision-makers had removed companies from consideration 

because of content that disappointed them.

The businesses that tend to deliver content that connects, 

impresses and creates value are the businesses that have done 

the hard yards in thinking about how content fits into their 

overall business model. They create value for their audience 

because they’ve considered carefully what that audience 

needs – and they’ve thought through how their business can 

provide it while enhancing its own prospects. They aren’t 

using content simply as an ad-hoc marketing tactic. They’re 

using it as a business asset and a revenue driver that they 

expect to track through to the bottom line.



HOW TO SPOT A CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY

You can spot the businesses with a content marketing strate-

gy not just by the fact that their content is worth consuming,  

but by the fact that they are distributing it regularly. After all, 

they’ve identified a role for content as a business driver – so 

why would they only use that driver intermittently?

I’m not saying that single pieces 

of tactical content can’t be effective. 

A well-executed piece of content in 

the feed will often engage more effec-

tively than a display ad even without 

a complete content marketing strat-

egy behind it. A compelling piece of 

video storytelling often engages far 

better than a 30-second ad. These are 

examples of effective content being 

used as an alternative to other market-

ing tactics. A content marketing strat-

egy is at work when these one-off 

successes become a sustainable driver 

of growth for the business.

You can’t buy 

an audience’s 

attention just 

by paying to 

interrupt them



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64      S o p h i s t i c a t e d   M a r k e t e r

What four “Best Picture” winners can  

teach you about telling  

Oscar-worthy brand stories



OSCAR 

WINNING  

FILMS 

W0RDS BY JASON MILLER



HOW WATCHING

CAN HELP YOUR  

CONTENT MARKETING

 

1.



 CRASH

BEST PICTURE (2006)

Crash is an excellent study in storytelling. Set in Los 

Angeles, the movie shows how the lives of sever-

al characters intersect around a single carjacking 

incident. As the plot develops, the narrative switch-

es between viewpoints so that you see events unfold 

from multiple perspectives over a two-day period.

Watching Crash, it’s easier to identify with some 

characters than others. While you may not agree 

with or understand some of the characters’ actions, 

you are forced to experience the story from foreign 

perspectives.

LESSON: 

EMPATHY

Examining your content plan from the perspective of 

your various audiences is critical. Your brand’s story 

will be more engaging when it is individualized to fit 

within the context of specific audience segments.

As you work on content, think about the needs, inter-

ests, experiences, and potential biases of the people 

you are trying to reach by truly immersing yourself 

in their world.

 2. 

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

BEST PICTURE (1992) 

In this classic thriller, Hannibal Lecter dangles bread 

crumbs of information to Clarice (and the viewer) 

into the misdeeds of serial killer Buffalo Bill. Teasers 

pull the audience along as Clarice must tell Lecter 

about difficult parts of her past in exchange for infor-

mation that may help her catch the killer.

A kidnapping, Lecter’s escape from jail, and other 

twists keep audiences hooked into the mystery as 

more and more is revealed.



LESSON: 

SUSPENSE

You can add suspense within one piece of content 

or create a series of assets that progressively provide 

more information. Tease the launch of your ‘Big 

Rock’ content assets, and plan sequences of content 

that build towards revealing your value proposition 

rather than leading with it from the outset. The key 

here is relevance. To build suspense, your audience 

needs to care about the subject. You’ll also need to 

keep making good on your promise to provide value 

for the audience.

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S o p h i s t i c a t e d   M a r k e t e r       65

L O N G   F O R M

 

3. 

FORREST GUMP

BEST PICTURE (1995)

Forrest stumbles through life and unknowing 

accomplishes more than most people ever try to 

do. Among his feats are showing Elvis Presley how 

to dance, being named an All-American football 

player, serving as war hero in Vietnam, meeting 

three presidents, and helping to expose the 

Watergate scandal.

But the movie wins people over with the way it 

evokes emotion around interactions and events 

we all go through. Forrest Gump captures the joy 

of triumphs, the frustration of setbacks, and the 

heartache of loss, all through the experience of a 

person thought unable to acknowledge or under-

stand it all.

LESSON: 

EMOTION

Consumer brands have long made emotion a 

staple of marketing, but B2B brands have tradi-

tionally struggled. However, marketers targeting 

businesses are making increasingly innovative 

use of content that connects with customers and 

prospects at an emotional level.

 

Don’t only look 



to successes for compelling stories. Addressing 

failures and lingering challenges can make for 

great storytelling while casting your brand in a 

more authentic light.

 

4.

 GLADIATOR

BEST PICTURE (2001)

Profiling fictional Roman general Maximus 

Decimus Meridius, Gladiator is a hero’s tale. In the 

course of avenging the murder of his mentor, the 

Caesar, Maximus demonstrates love for his family 

and the men with whom he fights while refusing to 

pledge loyalty to the tyrant Commodus.

The harsh hero’s journey that Maximus must 

endure includes imprisonment, exile, and the death 

of his family. Only with great trial and strength is he 

ultimately able to gain revenge on Commodus.

LESSON: 

FIND YOUR HERO

Just as Gladiator casts Maximus in a heroic 

light, brands have the opportunity to make their 

customer the hero. Your content marketing 

can paint a fascinating picture that accurate-

ly depicts customer challenges, along with the 

hero’s journey. In some cases, that hero may be 

your brand, a key figure within your company, 

or one of your products. In many of the most 

important examples of marketing storytell-

ing though, it’s the customer. Look for ways to 

include empathy, suspense, and emotion in a 

story that you know that your customers and 

potential customers will relate to.



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S o p h i s t i c a t e d   M a r k e t e r       67

Megan Golden examines the  

formula behind a compelling  

emotional rollercoaster that TV  

audiences can’t resist



FROM THE MOMENT IT PREMIERED,

  

NBC’s drama This Is Us captivated the 

hearts of viewers across the United States. Known as an instant tear-jerker, 

the hit drama covers emotional storylines riddled with betrayals, triumphs, 

and painful histories that viewers have become invested in. Even though we 

know it will be an emotional journey with plenty of ups and downs, we still 

watch because we care.

As content marketers, we understand the value of creating a story that 

audiences don’t want to miss. It’s a worthy goal. How can we create something 

worthy of such a strong personal investment from our audiences?

To help you create content that generates deeper engagement we took 

a deep dive into the world of This Is Us to share their evocative storytelling 

secrets. We shed many tears to bring you this advice, and hope you appreciate 

our emotional sacrifice.



 Craft Relatable, Relevant Moments

Part of what makes This Is Us such a success is the way it tackles tough 

topics impacting countless lives. From suffering a miscarriage to battling 

weight loss to facing a fatal cancer diagnosis, the show addresses hard 

situations that anyone can relate to. Recognizing these common threads, 

the audience has greater empathy for the characters and becomes deeply 

invested in their storylines. Then, when something bad or good happens 

to the character, the reaction is all the more heartfelt.

Encourage emotional reactions to your own content by helping read-

ers or viewers see themselves in the stories you tell. Make them the 

protagonist or main character in your content by describing situations 

or experiences they’ve likely had themselves. You can also tap into their 

nostalgia by creating a recognizable setting or scenario. The more your 

audience can empathize with your story, the more emotionally invested 

they will become.

 Strike a Chord With Symbols

Symbols have universal meanings that elicit emotion in audiences, from joy 

to grief and everything in between. This Is Us employs symbolism throughout 

each episode to evoke such feelings. For example, the show used a washing 

machine to represent the Pearson family’s churning cycles of life. There’s also 

a scene where Jack is doing pushups with his son, Randall, on his back, which 

is symbolic of a father carrying his child through life.

Use storytelling tools like symbols, metaphors, and analogies in your own 

content to trigger emotions from your audience. For the best results, incorpo-

rate symbols that have universal meanings like colors, fire, night, water, and 

more. Symbolism goes beyond written content as well. Bring symbols into 

your video marketing, podcasts, or social images to build deeper connections 

with your audiences across several channels.

 Above All Else, Know Your Audience

Knowing what your audience values makes it much easier to create an emo-

tional rollercoaster. The team behind This Is Us does emotion better than most 

thanks to their intimate understanding of their viewership, and their personal 

struggles. This is really seen through the three main characters, a set of tri-

plets that are easily identifiable for anyone struggling with their appearance, 

career, or identity. Sound familiar?

People react differently and the only sure way to evoke the desired emotion 

is to know your audience. Before you create content, identify and define your 

audience personas, and craft characters that will be relevant to them. Content 

ideation shouldn’t stop with a relevant story. It’s a good start, but if evoking 

emotion is your goal, try telling your story through a relatable character.



Subscribe to the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Blog for a 

regular dose of content marketing inspiration

T H E   D E B R I E F

 How to

 Inject Emotion



 Into Your

 Content With

 

This Is Us



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S o p h i s t i c a t e d   M a r k e t e r       69

All marketers tell stories, as Seth Godin puts it in 

the title of his classic 2012 book. However, not all 

marketers have the passion and dedication to 

a story that’s the hallmark of a great storyteller. 

Minter Dial, a former Senior VP at L’Oréal and 

the founder of the Myndset consultancy, is one 

that does. The commitment involved in telling a 

family story of heroism and tragedy has shaped 

him as a thinker and a marketer, and given him 

an insight on building brands through purpose-

ful stories that few have.

The Last Ring Home is available as a book and 

documentary film on iTunes and Amazon  

(a great example of multi-format storytelling  

in action)

T H E   D E B R I E F



The Last Ring Home is the story of Minter’s namesake 

and grandfather, and the Annapolis Naval Academy 

ring that he wore, and which miraculously made its 

way home 17 years after he was killed as a POW of 

the Japanese in WWII. Minter spent 27 years telling 

it. He first began digging into his family history when 

starting out as a marketer for an equities analyst. He 

kept digging, researching and piecing together the 

strands of this tragic and remarkable tale during 16 

years working in the cosmetics industry. He finished 

it off while launching Myndset and building a 

reputation as a unique marketing thinker.

The result is a critically acclaimed book and 

documentary film that has been winning awards 

at festivals across America. It’s a superb example 

of how committing to a story doesn’t just engage 

audiences, it changes the storyteller themselves.

THE STORY OF 

THE LAST  

RING HOME

Can marketers train themselves as storytellers? 

Minter Dial found a remarkable family story and 

then devoted himself to telling it right  

Minter Dial spent 27 

years researching The 

Last Ring Home

Clockwise from top left:  

Lt. Minter Dial reading to his 

son (1940),  The Last Ring 

Home

, a book and award-

winning short film, Minter 

and family (1923), a replica 

of Lt. Dial’s 1932 Annapolis 

ring, on board the USS Napa 

(1941), at The World’s Fair 

New York (1938)

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S o p h i s t i c a t e d   M a r k e t e r       71

T H E   D E B R I E F

Are you tucked up under the duvet? 

Have you brushed your teeth 

properly? Then I’ll begin… Here’s how 

LinkedIn has explored storytelling  

in our own content marketing:

handful of children’s books, including The Leprechaun Who Lost 

His Rainbow, The Bear Hug, and Shannon and the World’s Tallest 

Leprechaun), I came up with a unique approach to making the 

LinkedIn story as simple as possible: a bedtime story. 

I worked with illustrator Daniel Howarth — he and I had 

previously teamed to create A Wild Day With Dad — to produce 

The Marketing Genie. Using the conventions of a bedtime story, 

maybe the oldest of storytelling forms, The Marketing Genie 

tells the tale of an intrepid marketer who journeys to the ends 

of the earth (or at least to Las Vegas) to get the answers to three 

questions that are keeping her up at night:

 

  Where can she reach her target audience at scale?

 

  How can she engage her prospects?

 

  How can she optimize her marketing ROI?

The story borrows liberally from the classic hero’s journey as de-

fined by Joseph Campbell. Like mythical heroes such as Ulysses, 

the hero in this story, a marketer named Liz Ceese, must go on 

a heroic journey, descend into a hellscape (in this case, an in-

dustry conference) and return a changed woman full of more 

wisdom than she had at the tale’s beginning. We won’t tell you 

how the exactly story ends, but you can probably guess that it 

does involve a Marketing Genie, a happy marketer, and a few 

LinkedIn products. 



Want to know whether this tale has a happy 

ending? You can find out by downloading The 

Marketing Genie at lnkd.in/genie  

You just might find a piece of content marketing 

that you’ll want to share with your kids!

W0RDS BY SEAN CALLAHAN



 

CONTENT 

 MARKETING

 

 

 

AS A BEDTIME

 

STORY 

t its most effective, the concept of storytell-

ing puts your customers at the heart of the 

tale, empathizes with their problems, and 

ultimately provides a solution (ideally one 

that involves your product or services).

At LinkedIn, we have purposefully included storytelling in our 

content marketing. We’ve told stories about effective digital 

marketing in a variety of formats: videos, blogs posts, case stud-

ies, podcasts, and more. 

Last year, we were challenged to simplify the LinkedIn 

Marketing story. As a writer of children’s books (I’ve authored a 

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Live with Marketers

A morning talk show 

hosted by marketers for marketers

Tackling challenges top of mind for 

marketers, broadcasted live from 

the LinkedIn Sunnyvale Studio



AWARD

WINNING

SERIES


Tune in at: 

lnkd.in/livewithmarketers

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S o p h i s t i c a t e d   M a r k e t e r       73

he mission of a DJ is to engage an 

audience and provide fresh spins on 

content we might already be familiar 

with. A marketer can often have similar 

objectives. So it perhaps shouldn’t be all that 

shocking that one of LinkedIn’s very own market-

ers moonlights as a popular local DJ around San 

Francisco, and believes working each of these jobs 

makes him better at the other.

Ish Verduzco is Global Social Media Marketing 

Lead for LinkedIn Talent Solutions, where he has 

worked since 2014. His passion for DJing dates back 

further. “One of my friends, he’s been deejaying since 

he was like, 12 years old,” Verduzco recalls. “It wasn’t 

until 2008 or 2009 when I started asking him like, hey, 

this is pretty cool stuff, do you mind teaching me?”

These days, Verduzco keeps a busy sched-

ule, managing several social media platforms for 

LinkedIn by day and juggling his duties as alter 

ego DJ Ishh by night. He spends a majority of his 

weeknights practicing and promoting, then works 

as many as two or three gigs each weekend. He 

describes his sound as a mix of Latin (owing to his 

Mexican heritage), electronic, and hip-hop.

 WHERE THE MARKETER 

 AND DJ HIT SIMILAR NOTES

Hobby. Side job. Personal calling. Whatever you 

want to call it, Verduzco feels the DJ avocation 

blends perfectly with his main profession.

T H E   D E B R I E F

“For me personally, I like to constantly be 

learning and growing,” he says. “I get that through 

social media at LinkedIn, because it’s a pretty big 

challenge at a huge global company. But I also like 

entertaining people and bringing people together, 

which I get through deejaying. So, in a weird sense 

they support each other because without one, I 

would feel like there’s something missing.”

Not only do these dual roles make him feel more 

complete, they also complement each other in 

terms of applicable skills and goals.



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