By @ThamKhaiMeng, Worldwide Chief Creative Officer, Ogilvy & Mather

1. Telling
By @ThamKhaiMeng
WWCCO, Ogilvy & Mather

2. Telling
By @ThamKhaiMeng
WWCCO, Ogilvy & Mather
A
long with sex, shopping
and watching sports,
storytelling is one
of the world’s most popular
recreational activities.
Man has been hard at it for ten
thousand years or so without much
sign of letting up. All over the
world everyone loves stories,
especially advertising folks.
Since telling stories is the
heart of what we do, shouldn’t we
understand what they are? And why
are they so popular?

3. Telling
By @ThamKhaiMeng
WWCCO, Ogilvy & Mather
The latest neurological
research shows that
Man is essentially
the Storytelling Ape.
Evolution has hard-
wired us to tell stories,
and we use them to navigate
the world. Put someone in
a MRI scanner and watch
what happens when you tell
them a story: you will see
sections of the brain light
up with pleasure.

4. Telling
By @ThamKhaiMeng
WWCCO, Ogilvy & Mather
It’s a hotly debated topic why this is so, but one
thing seems fairly certain: stories help us make
sense of a complex reality. People tell stories
to make sense of the world. If you consider the
control centre inside your head, at any given
moment it is a centre of chaos with thousands of
different pieces of sensory data coming in. But
telling a story, putting the various pieces of data
into a narrative sequence gives shape and meaning
to the chaos. We do it every moment of our waking
lives, and of course while we are asleep too.
A+B B+A
Start

5. Telling
By @ThamKhaiMeng
WWCCO, Ogilvy & Mather
Storytelling is like
whisky: it gets distilled
over and over again
until it is right. The
distillery is the human
heart and over the course
of tens of thousands of
years we have arrived
at what you might call
an accepted grammar of
storytelling—a set of
conventions. It’s the way
storytelling is done, and
it is this way because it
works.

6. Telling
By @ThamKhaiMeng
WWCCO, Ogilvy & Mather
That’s why so many Hollywood movies
feel the same. And although some movie
buffs might complain, the studios know the
people who sit in the movie theatre don’t
mind at all. As long as they get something
that is the same only different.

7. Telling
By @ThamKhaiMeng
WWCCO, Ogilvy & Mather
There have probably been as many stories told
since Man first started telling them as there
are stars in the night sky. But in one sense,
remarkably few stories have been told.Or
rather it always seems to be the same handful of
stories told over and over again. Some people talk
of the seven basic plots. One of the so-called
basic plots, for example, is “Rags-to-Riches,”
which is the paradigm for Cinderella, David
Copperfield, Great Expectations and ten thousand
more. Another is “the Quest” which includes the
Odyssey, King Solomon’s Mines and Water Margin.
Another is “Journey and Return” which includes,
among a million others, The Lord of the Rings and
Journey to the West. And what about James Bond?
Well, James Bond is “Overcoming the Monster.”

8. Telling
By @ThamKhaiMeng
WWCCO, Ogilvy & Mather
It’s not just the pattern of the story that is
the same. They also all feature the same
characters. Have you ever noticed the
similarity between Gandalf and Obi Wan Kenobe
from Star Wars? They are both examples of what
has come to be called the Mentor figure. An older,
wiser, very experienced person – often wearing
a robe – who gives counsel and help to the hero
on his journey. The mentor is an archetype and
movies are full of them. Others include the
Shadow (=bad guy) Shapeshifter, Trickster, and
Threshold Guardian. (These archetypes were
initially catalogued by Joseph Campbell in his
book The Hero with a Thousand Faces.)

9. Telling
By @ThamKhaiMeng
WWCCO, Ogilvy & Mather
Over the years, Storytellers have also
evolved a specific set of tricks to
keep readers or listeners hooked.
The foremost of these is curiosity. This
is the thread that draws the reader
on through a tale and makes sure she
doesn’t bail out early.

10. Telling
By @ThamKhaiMeng
WWCCO, Ogilvy & Mather
And why do all those terrible things happen to the
hero? Because the hero is us. We inhabit his skin.
And during the ordeal he changes. He
learns. He sees the world differently
at the end. He may discover all sorts of
things about himself and the world and
life and the human condition. The story
teaches him these things, and
this is called growth. Growth
is good, we all need to grow
spiritually. But who wants to
fight T Rexes? It’s much better
to let the hero do it for us.
That, is what stories do. They
teach and entertain, and the
best ones leave us changed
forever.