Ira’s third video on storytelling is by far the most popular.

So much so that it has been featured on numerous blogs and even been turned into a Kinetic Typography video. Take a look:

 

Basically, Ira Glass is describing the positive side of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

The Dunning-Kruger effect basically says that the perceptive abilities, sensitivity, and awareness necessary to know that you suck at something, are the same perceptive abilities, sensitivity, and awareness necessary to (eventually) become skilled at that very thing.

So if you have good taste — the aforementioned perception, sensitivity, and awareness — then you have the potential to become good, or even great. But you’re stuck making stuff that you know kind of sucks until your craft skills catch up with your taste and ambition.

Believe it or not, that’s the positive side of the Dunning-Kruger effect. The negative side is that the totally incompetent lack the ability to sense their own incompetence. They suck like a hoover, but think they’re great.

But the positive side is only positive if:

  1. You retain your ambition to be great and don’t settle for becoming a hack, and
  2. You work through that awful feeling of knowing you are consistently creating stuff that’s “not that great,” as Ira puts it.

And while this might have very self-evident relevance for creatives and craftspeople of all kinds, including copywriters and advertising professionals, this video’s relevance to advertisers and business owners might not be so evident.

So I’m going to give you my spin on it…

From an advertiser’s perspective, I think this video speaks to:

  • Linear, no-threshold thinking,
  • Minimum Effective Dose, and
  • Cumulative Effect

Linear, No-Threshold Thinking

Linear, no-threshold thinking assumes that a function is predictably scalable. That if you do twice as much, or half as much, you’ll get double or half of the result.

But more often than not, there are thresholds and inflection points and diminishing returns that make linear, no-threshold thinking dangerously misguided. If you buy a ticket halfway to Europe, you don’t end up with half a European vacation; you just end up stranded at sea. 80% of the parts of an engine don’t get you 80% of the horsepower.

And to borrow an example from my partner, Roy H. Williams, if…

“Reliable data tells us exactly how many motorcycle riders have died trying to navigate an S-curve at 100 miles per hour. The straightforward logic of traditional accounting, with its linear, no-threshold thinking, predicts one-tenth as many deaths at 10 miles per hour.

But we know this is ridiculous. The number of riders that die at 10 or 20 miles per hour is likely to be zero. There is a threshold speed at which the curve becomes dangerous. Any extrapolation that crosses that threshold is certain to be inaccurate.”

These kinds of thresholds are inevitable when dealing with human response. Especially when it comes to advertising. There is a threshold of interest, relevance, and impact for ads: the threshold which moves an ad from background noise into conscious awareness. If any ad fails to reach that threshold, it becomes essentially invisible and would require nigh-unto-infinite repetition to get results.

And assuming that you have given your ad writer something worth saying, then the factors which determine whether your ad crosses that threshold are what Ira Glass might call the taste, ambition, and honesty of your ad writer.

If your ad writer is a hack — if he accepts adspeak, hype, and advertising cliches, or tries to bluff with fluff on the production side — then your ads are never likely to cross the threshold of impact. And no matter how much frequency you load into your ad schedule, your ads won’t move the needle on sales.

If your ad writer aspires to be great and has a modicum of talent and craft skills, then your ads will likely cross the impact threshold. As Leo Burnett said, “When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.”

And of course, it’s not only a matter of impactful vs. not impactful. It’s also a matter of how impactful. The more impact your ad carries, the less repetition is required. LBJ’s “Daisy” ad is a classic example of an ad so powerful it only required one airing to make an impact (pun intended):

 

And this is where talent and craft really take over from taste and ambition. The more skilled and talented your ad writer, the more impact he (or she) can bake into your ads.

Minimum Effective Dose

What do you think will happen to your headache if you take 20 mg of ibuprofen?

Nothing, right? Because while ibuprofen can be a godsend for getting rid of headaches, the minimum effective dose is 200mg, with most adults taking 400mg or more.

If you take significantly less than 200mg, you’ll receive no benefit.

Similarly, if you go to the gym for a day or even a week and complain that it didn’t work, you simply didn’t meet the requirements of the minimum effective dose. You’ll see some benefits at the end of a month, but plan on 90 days for real changes that others will comment on.

And it’s no coincidence that Stephen King compares writing to weightlifting. Want to be a professional writer? Better be prepared to put the time in every day to become a “stronger” writer. Just like Ira Glass says about doing great creative work.

The same thing applies to advertising.

Most mass-media branding campaigns require enough frequency and duration—enough of a minimum effective dose—to really work their magic. You might get lucky and see some results in 90 or 180 days, but plan on a full year or longer at a high enough frequency of ads to get a minimum effective dose.

And just like with working out (or, in Ira’s case, with doing great creative), there’s a certain level of frustration and chickening out you just have to work through. Be prepared for this chickening out period, and take Ira’s advice: fight your way through it.

Cumulative Effect

Cumulative Effect is the other side of the coin from Minimum Effective Dose. Assuming your ad passes the threshold for relevance and impact, and that you’ve scheduled enough frequency to give the audience a minimum effective dose, the persuasive power of your ad will build over time.

You might just be starting to see results at the end of a year, but those results will accumulate and build. You’re not starting over each year; you’re standing on the persuasive results you gained from the year before.

For Ira Glass, the cumulative effect of doing a lot of ambitious work and working through your frustration period is to break through into the ability to speak in your real, authentic voice, and to do interesting and special creative work that matters.

For advertisers, the cumulative effect of your advertising is certainly about increasing your market share and moving the needle on sales. But it’s also about finding your advertising voice and hitting peak stride in your ads and campaigns.

Most TV shows, and especially most comedies, get better after a season or two. The Simpsons first season wasn’t as good as what was to come. It took a season or two to really hit its stride. Same thing with Seinfeld. And most advertising campaigns are like that. The results build with time, but so does the authenticity of the voice and the impact of individual ads.

And that, folks, is what I took away from Ira’s third video on storytelling. If you saw something else in the video, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Read Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.

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