Hollywood producer, founder and creative force behind Super Bowl ads for Microsoft and T-Mobile, Andrew Panay, tells us how leaders can win attention.
Your story problem is not a strategy problem
Our guest this week has quite a portfolio of leading in pop culture, producing breakout films for stars like Ryan Reynolds, Bradley Cooper and Addison Rae. He's discovered that if you want an audience to listen, you have to lead, and that the way you lead your audience is with the stories you tell. He's had an early and profound insight into what we're all facing now: everyone is on all the time, and no one is listening.
To cut through the noise and reach stakeholders where the decisions are being made, you have to tell a story you have to sell it fast. Whether you have an external audience or an internal one you always have one. So how do you engage them?
It's story, story, story
Andrew tells Dan:
- What leaders don't understand about strategy and storytelling
- Why the best stories start from a problem, not a solution
- How a real attention deficit mask people seeking out slower, higher engagement experiences
- Where Gen Z is unanimous on AI
- Creating workplace safety that goes well beyond the things that go without saying
Watch the full episode here
What do leaders get wrong with strategy and how does storytelling help?
How are you going to execute that strategy if the stories don't resonate? One of the misconceptions is that consumers are paying attention to your strategy. They're not. They never will. They'll only pay attention to your story. Eventually they'll start to catch on that you're selling both a feeling and a specific data point. You can even see it inside a boardroom meeting. If you’re bored in a meeting because the story that's being told is not hooking you in, you're not going to pay attention. We’re raised with stories. You bring people along with story. They're getting blasted every 30s, every 15s, every 10s being offered everything under the sun. Well, what's going to separate you? Why should they listen to you or believe you? You have to tell a great story to hook them, so they actually get to the point where they want to listen to your quote unquote strategy for them.
How do you know if your leaderships fits the story you want to tell?
There are times I ask why you? What specifically have you created where I should walk into a ditch for you? And I say that humbly because I won and I've lost. I'm always looking for perspective, and I turn that camera around on myself and go, well, why me? Why should I? Why? Even myself. So, ask yourself why your opinion is right. Do you have the data and the emotional intelligence to make that decision? Or should you go and ask the questions? There are times that leaders I work with, because of the position that they're in, may not always recognize that their ego is getting in the way. And that will be something I encourage every leader at every organisation to check at the door, because when you do that, greatness can come of it. It’s a very difficult subject because sometimes you need a point of view and you have to stick with it. So, you have just got to make sure when you're doing that, it's not because you're trying to anchor into something because you want to be right. You have just got to make sure that you want to get what you want, which is to win, and not be right for the sake of it.
Describe the trend you see with Gen Z pushing back on AI use, and wanting more human experiences?
It’s more than a trend, it's unanimous. I can't go into a room and not get eviscerated for talking about it. I'm not saying they're not going to use it. They just don't want it forced upon them. They don't want to be told that they can't have experiences. They don't want to be told they can't go to the movies. You're not going to tell that generation what to do. So, they're saying, you know what? You're not going to stop me from going to an EDM concert with 200,000 people. You're not going to stop me from going to the movies and watching Obsession. I'm also going to play with AI, but you're not going to tell me to be home and be isolated and play with my computer and my robot that's coming eventually. They don't want that.
You partner with a lot of big brands, what advice do you have for organisations considering partnerships?
Internal thinking is amazing, however, external thinking is extremely important. The companies that start to devalue external thinking and think they can do it all themselves are at risk. I don't want to do that with my own company. I have external thinkers. I don't want to become internal. I want to hear what the young kids are thinking. I want to think about what Gen Z is thinking, and older audiences - I want to know about everything but myself. I'm too curious. I want to hear and listen what the buzz is. The leaders out there are where they are because they're willing to listen. The only advice is to be careful not to get stuck in a bubble.
Bonus insight: the secret to Hollywood storytelling
All the years of learning how to tell a story properly has taught me this: the first act gives you a problem, the second tries to solve it -almost solves it - before everything falls apart. In third act it all comes back together. And that's every story in every movie. The ones that are big hits are the ones that twist it just a little bit around here and there throughout to throw you off the story telling device that we all use in Hollywood, because it's what we know from childhood. It's what we know in our books. It's what we know from the Disney stories we have. We all understand it and it's the journey that we all want to go on. We want to know that it's almost lost, but that we can always get it back together, because that's a daily basis of life.
Listen to the episode on Spotify
Head to Impact's YouTube / Spotify channels to catch up on previous episodes, including…
Leading in complexity with Professor Sudhanshu Palsule, The Møller Institute