#178 – Get…To…By…
#178 – Get…To…By…
How to focus your stories
This is Adventures in Storytelling your weekly note with resources, insights, and actionable tools for better communication through storytelling. A bit more of the actionable today. Enjoy.
A simple tool for focused storytelling (and communications).
Advertising has a lot of acronyms, Most of them aren’t worth paying attention to. But there is one I learned early in my career in advertising that I continue to use today as I consider how to simply summarize my communications objectives and what I want my story to achieve.
It’s a classic for anyone who works in strategy but definitely a keeper.
The easy to use get/to/by. It’s the answer to the question, what do you want this story to achieve?
It’s actually pretty simple which is what makes it so powerful.
The Get refers to who. Who do you want your story to impact?
To is the action, what do you want them to do?
By is what you’re going to focus on doing to achieve the to. What are you going to do? This one should also be action oriented; focus on verbs here, friends.
I use it when I start any story, from marketing brand stories to fiction project. It’s the core of all the briefs I deliver back to my clients to help them move forward.
For my upcoming kids book, Amoya Blackwood is Brave, I wrote that I wanted to
Get: Women especially marginalized women (and the kids in their lives) who has ever been told not to take up space
To: See themselves in Amoya and buy the book
By: Showcasing the simple magic of Amoya’s story of losing and finding her confidence
And that’ll also be my goal in how I work with the publishers to market it.
Another example. For our Re-Work website we wanted to Get: Current and potential Re-Work community members and clients To: experience and invest in the Re-Work community By: creating a unique and engaging website experience that reflects the Re-Work ethos of Rest, Play, Create.
What’s your get/to/by for your current story? Try it out and let me know how it feels to use it. I find it offers focus and a reference point to go back to when I get lost in the weeds of a project.
I hope it helps.
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