Conflict = Drama!

by Pamela Jaye Smith

Commercials, documentaries, and information media are only interesting and effective if there is some "us against them" element. Whether "them" is the environment, a bureaucracy, a disease, or a situation, you will only engage our interest and stir our actions if you show us conflict, choices, and resolutions.

Every good story requires at least two of these three basic conflicts: the hero’s internal flaw, an antagonist, and an external impersonal threat to the hero. These all need to be appropriate, balanced, believable, and capable of contributing to a satisfactory resolution.

In media designed to promote a product or service the internal flaws are the needs we have that are not being met  (cleaner homes or teeth, faster internet or cars, more flattering hair or clothes); the antagonist is a presumed lack of awareness, money, or choice; the external threat is competition and time. The product or service is then presented as the perfect resolution for these conflicts.

One of my favorite ads to illustrate this concept shows a picture of germs and says, "If your armpits have germs like this" [internal flaw], then a picture of a guy and a girl about to kiss and says "Good luck ending up like this" [antagonist: being clueless], and then a picture of the deodorant "Until you use this".

One of the old classics was the mother-in-law [antagonist] coming to visit and running her white-gloved hands over the furniture, checking for dust so she could criticize the daughter-in-law. The daughter-in-law cringed [internal flaw of insecurity and conformity].

In information-based media for organizations the internal flaw is new employees or outsiders' lack of knowledge and/or interest; the antagonists may be foot-dragging insiders, institutional inertia, territorialism; some external threats are competitors, regulations, bureaucracies, and resistance to anything new. The information is offered in such a way as to attract interest, encourage alignment, and ensure sign-on.

In an awareness video we did for an international aerospace and electronics corporation to demonstrate Business Ethics, we showed a new hire going on a sales trip with an associate who'd been with the company for years. The new guy's naivete [internal flaw] about the regulations for international business and ethics [external impersonal threat] could have gotten him and his more seasoned partner into lots of legal trouble. We played the conflict out against an international trip with golf courses, airports, shuttles, hotel rooms, and outdoor cafes [attract interest, encourage alignment and ensure sign-on]. Thanks to efficient location scouting and production planning we were able to shoot all the scenes at one hotel in one day.

For General Motors and its Employee Purchase Plan, we created a comedic video showing employees how to navigate the system and purchase a GM car with the least hassle. Our main character, Bruce Brassknuckles, was a bundle of insecurities [internal flaws]. He and other potential customers had to overcome the cumbersome inertia of people's ideas about how to buy a new car [antagonist]. The external threat was the astonishing idea that a huge corporation might actually provide an easy way for its employees to partake of its products [external threat]. We presented the information in a comedic way, gave plenty of financial explanations, and told people exactly how to find out more [attract interest, encourage alignment and ensure sign-on].

Take a look at your own favourite commercials or informational media and see if you can find at least two of these components in them:

- the hero’s internal flaw
- an antagonist
- an external impersonal threat to the hero

No matter the medium – commercials, documentaries, information media – without vivid and believable internal flaws, antagonists, and external threats, there can be no heroics - whether of the heart, the sword, the will, or the pocketbook - and hence no real story to stir us to thought and action.

Next Month: The Call-to-Action.

You can find a rich collection of conflicts, antagonists, oppositions, lures, methods, and confrontational tools in Pamela Jaye Smith's new book, THE POWER OF THE DARK SIDE. Designed for easy reference and offering specific solutions as well as suggestions to spur your own imagination, her book can be a valuable addition to your content-creator's toolkit.

THE POWER OF THE DARK SIDE is available at your local bookstore, Amazon, or at MYTHWORKS, where you can also read the Introduction and check out the Table of Contents.