I recently watched a TikTok video that one of my Facebook friends had shared. I trust this person because they share good poems and feel-good stories as well as the occasional lefty power-to-the-people sort of stuff. The TikTok video contained snippets from a documentary Educating Yorkshire mixed together with viewer reactions to the documentary. The tag line to the video was something along the lines of “don’t trust anyone who doesn’t cry watching this.” I cried while watching it – so you know you can trust me.
You can watch the video here at least until a TikTok ban goes into effect.
There are several versions of the video on YouTube and TikTok. If you want one without the viewer commentary, go here.
They’ll both make you cry.
After watching the video, I got a shower – which is where I do some of my more robust thinking. I was thinking about the nature of the video and what might have made it effective. I was thinking about this in the realm of storytelling, and to a certain degree marketing. I work in the nonprofit sector and I’ve been interviewing for jobs that involve fundraising and storytelling.
The traditional push-pull dynamic in nonprofit fundraising is often one of striking a balance and making editorial decisions – choosing between the negative and the positive (images, narrative, messaging). Though I suppose the same could be said for political ads. As storytellers, we can focus on doom and gloom (things are bad, this is why you need to support us) or we can focus on triumph (look at what we can accomplish with your support). I can’t speak for anyone else, but beyond feeling a sense of outrage, I’m seldom moved when I see negative media. Conversely, I feel much more powerfully moved by the hope conveyed in positive media.
In the imaginary LinkedIn post about how to be an effective nonprofit marketer that I was mentally writing in the shower… tip number one was stay positive. If you found yourself crying over this video – you know the power of uplifting and positive messaging.
As I continued to dissect the video, I began thinking about what parts of the story weren’t be shown and why. To “heighten” the sense of triumph, the editors and producers could have focused more attention on the adversity side of the story. They could have spent a lot more time portraying some of the bullying that the student in the video experienced… But, I think it was a really smart decision to not focus on that aspect of the story. The video assumes that we’re already familiar with the horrors of bullying, and I suspect, by leaving it out, it didn’t dilute our empathy with outrage. Had they focused more on bullying, we would have been given villains in the story, and the triumphal narrative would have shifted from a personal triumph to one of comeuppance. Tip 2 then is: give consideration to the kind of story you wish to tell and edit accordingly. I’m quite convinced that had they introduced a very unlikable bully into this story, our empathetic (and cathartic) responses would have been different – we might have cried less.
If I have a third tip or a third observation, it’s that I think including the viewer reactions in the TikTok version is effective. By doing so, I think it gives us a sense of community. By showing us other people who are having similar emotional reactions – it may be telling us that it’s ok to get mushy over this stuff.
I’m not confident enough in my analysis or in my writing to share this on a platform like LinkedIn. I’m not sure that I’ve uncovered any secrets to effective messaging or storytelling that would useful to anyone else – other than if you can make ’em cry, you’ve done something to touch the human spirit… and I like thinking about things that touch the human spirit.