ep36 | the artisan podcast | ric krause | the importance of narrative

Ric Krause  | LinkedIn

Katty: Ric, thanks so much for joining me on this episode of the artisan podcast. Looking at your resume, the through line that I see through everything is really the impact of the narrative.  Where did this passion come from for you? How did you get started in this? 

Ric: Actually, in college, I was a music major. I was a composition major, and so even before I got to writing, I was working with form, and my composition teacher said, you could paint a room red and with one white dot, and that's okay, but you better defend that white dot, and that goes to the structure underneath creative,  and it was such a great exercise to get as free as you could, then pin it into a structural foundation.  And then in music, there's all sorts of rules for harmony, ease, melody, tonality. And so the concept is built into the structure immediately.  And that helped me with everything I did. So when I segued into writing, and I had written a play  and that got me represented, and then I started pitching and started to sell TV stuff and film stuff,  all of those, all the ability to think conceptually and grounded into structure came into play.

And at the same time, we are synaptically hardwired to engage with story. So if you can really use that to your advantage and get people to engage quickly and wonder what happens next, however, that translates into your messaging,  people are wired to be taken by the lapel and led forward,  and it's what you're utilizing with good storytelling.

Katty: You're going to invite people into that story with good storytelling.

Ric: Yeah, I would say more than invite them, you grab them. Really good storytelling and audiences on the edge of their seat, leaning forward toward you.  One, someone is leaning in. And within brand messaging, it's really within, I think, less than three seconds,  you've got them.  If they're already tuning you out, how do you make up for that difference when they're already leaning back out of your messaging? How are you going to pull them back in?

That's tough. Once you've got them, of course, you have to extend their engagement all the way to the end, which in a lot of CTA, but you have to grab them in, whether you're telling a thriller or a 30 second spot. 

Katty: Okay, so what's the How? How does a copywriter who's starting in their career path right now make that shift of saying, okay, just writing copy for the sake of writing copy is different than what Ric is talking about right now?

Ric: Yeah I, think that you have to always consider the one question that is the through line of all narrative, whatever that narrative is, and that question is "what happens next?" What happens next? What happens next? There are many tools that you can use to get there.  A reversal reversal expectation; A plot twist.  You set someone up to believe one thing and then it changes.  Use an interesting hero or antagonist, use a cliffhanger, use backstory. We're doing this because this happened before.  You can use all those tools and you're setting people up to track your message with the synaptic pathways that are already there for receiving narrative.

It's taking advantage of something we're already disposed to engage with. 

Katty: How do you do that in like a 30-second spot though? 

Ric: This is where the agencies are often really good at the 30-second spot. My question is what would go beyond that? You have to engage really quickly with, I think, both the right type of hero, heroine and the right type of world-building.  And world-building means that we're always trying to make our audience feel something.  It's not a dry exercise. We want them to feel they are the real heroes of the story. They're the stars of the story.

And we have to deal with how we want them to feel while using our product. If you're an Alfa Romeo buyer, you're a sexy soul and if you're a Jeep buyer, you're a rugged individual, right? They're different. Brands have different feels to them. So what we want to do from the get go is make them build the right world. If it's an ad for a Liberty Jeep, it's gonna have a rugged terrain in front of you. You want to build the right world immediately, show the right person in that world, because that is the aspirational leap someone is taking. I'm that guy. I'm that girl. That's really me.  Now we've got them. That's the first hook.

You can do it with crazy humor, like if there's a 30-second spot,Chewy's is interesting, because they have the dogs and the cats that talk to you, because they're members of your family, and they always have them saying funny stuff.

You're immediately in, and you also know the experience, because you love your dog, you love your cat, they're like your family.  You need to find some immediate hook.  The audience will jump into and see themselves as the star of that, 30 second spot, the old advertising saying is selling the dream.

And that's what you're doing. Really. 

Katty: So I want to pivot here on this conversation, obviously Artisan Creative is a recruiting company.  So my mind immediately goes to when a candidate applies, right? Or when where our clients write a job description. How does that piece….. it almost serves as their advertising piece…, right? How can that job description grab the attention of viable candidates?  And then the flip side of it, how can a candidate's resume or their portfolio provide the same "hook", if you will, so that it grabs the attention of interested parties? So let's start with the client side first, the employer brand, and just the narrative around that. 

Ric: I think that's great and it sets up a possibly great interview. If each party does it well, then you're opening up what I would call story court where people can really talk and the employer or the potential employer can really get a feel for whether this candidate can work for them and their requisites and vice versa.

The possible candidate is given not only the opportunity to show who they are and what they do, they can see if this job is a fit for them and everybody takes it from that moment.  I think employers need to talk about the specifics that are needed in terms of job, and skill set, but also be really clear on what their own brand story is.

It goes to what we were talking about a couple of minutes ago. What is the brand essence? What's the brand DNA? Because what you're doing in all brand messaging is taking that essence and putting it in motion. And that motion is going to be absorbed by us, your audience, and then we're going to feel it.

So you need to be able to talk to your potential candidates in a way that is hands-on and not 30, 000 foot up. If you tell me something general in a, in, in or communicate to your recruiter, something that's general,  it's very hard for a candidate to really respond.  And, that goes all the way to writing briefs as well.

All of the on the employer side is the onus of specificity,  of a hierarchy of ideas, communicated correctly,  of,  Telling your candidates, what is the feel of the creative you want from them? You have to find out from them. How they can create in your playground.

Katty: Yeah. Obviously skills and software that somebody knows that goes without saying, if the job requires it, the job requires it. But what I'm hearing from you is the storytelling piece of it, or the narrative piece of it, excuse me, on the employer side is really kind almost like the soft skills or the EQ side of the equation. You may have the skills, but you need to also be able to buy into the story that we have about our brand.  Who it is that we are what, is it that we stand for.

Ric: Exactly, because if you just were to dump a huge style guide onto somebody.  You will absorb some of the things, but it's not going to give your candidate or your employee a real feel for what you want from them. You need to know it internally, I think, personally, that gives your candidate a place to start from to know what the tone and the attitude of your messaging. And that comes from understanding your brand DNA backwards and forwards. 

Katty: How is a candidate going to really be able to differentiate who they are, if they have not had a chance yet to have a face-to-face or a Zoom interview, but this is purely just on the merit of their resume and or their portfolio, how can narrative and storytelling play a part in that?

Ric: I would say imagine an interview. Imagine before you do it if you haven't done it. Imagine what you would say if you had to be the hero of your own story. What would you say?  Not just the details, but what the details add up to. You need to know your brand. Everything's branding. The process from the brief to the deliverable to the end, Endpoint is all about that communication.

Katty: Love that. Thank you. Thank you for that insight. Because I think, we, try to work quite a bit with candidates to get them ready for their interviews and to just put their best foot forward. And to be able to tell the authentic story of who they are is just so important when it comes to not only the resume but also in the interview and be able to have a thorough line as to their career path, right? 

Ric: Yeah. And I also in all of this emotion is important in all of that and all of messaging, whatever you're messaging about, you can't leave the emotion out of the equation.  People hook into it or they don't. So know who you are. Don't be afraid to show your passion about things. 

Katty: Great words. Thank you. So what are you working on these days?

Ric: Yeah I, took, I  think it's now been seven months off. I created in a wonderful recording studio in LA called The Village.  I created, hopefully, this makes sense, think of a play with a live concert built into its narrative. And that's what I, did quite a while developing, recording, and mixing. And, now we actually have a first offer from a theater in Detroit. It ties together everything I've done all my life, because it's about, music. The lead is a musician, it has literally a concert woven into the story, and the how of that is a story in itself.  The storytelling involves the audience, so it has an immersive quality to it.  And so it gives you a story and a concert in one. And that's what I've been doing,  for the last seven months of my life. 

Katty: Story and a concert in one. I'd love to dig into that. By the way, The Village is just up the street from where I live.T

Ric: Oh, you know The Village? Awesome. 

Katty: Yeah.  Infamous recording studio. I think Madonna's recorded there, Zeppelin's recorded there.

Ric: It all hangs, you feel like the notes hang in the air, all the great notes that have been played there.  It is such a feel. We were in John Meyer's studio. It is, it's just a great place to create. 

Katty: I've always wanted to just see the inside. I've only seen it from the outside. Next time you go, let me know.

Ric:  I wish if I'd known you sooner, cause people don't get to go in and it is, magical. There is a zillion platinum records everywhere. They are so aware of who they are and what their legacy is that they showcase it really beautifully.

Katty: It’s their brand, so they can stand behind that brand.  So let's go back to your play with a live concert within it.   Tell me more. 

Ric:  Okay, it's called The Goldtop, and that's a Les Paul Goldtop guitar. It's about a 1952 Les Paul Goldtop guitar that this down-and-out musician finds in a pawn shop way out in the Valley, and he scratches the money to get it, and his career starts to go on an uptick, and he gets, finally starts to realize all the things he's always wanted to realize. It is a very subtle ghost story. so it works, I think, as a dynamic piece of narrative, but when I wrote it,  I wrote a very hyper-condensed script that left room for the music. 

If you know an album called Back to Black by Amy Winehouse, it takes off from where she left. She did an amazing thing. She combined Motown and R&B, she was a genius and so we have picked up from there. and built our sound from that. And so that's the music. 

Katty: Oh, I Love that.  when, it's live in Detroit and, or it goes on tour and it comes here in LA, just definitely keep us, posted.  In addition to what you're doing with the play tell me more about your, copywriting, your and storytelling. 

Ric:  I was a founding partner of a branded content firm called StoryPoint and pre-pandemic, as many stories in advertising are, we were the content engine for Be Grizzly, which is Chiat Day.

And they took our slate and we're going to sell it through a Hollywood agency.  And I'm now trying to get them just to fund one of those projects, which is called Same Frame. And that uses a variety of influencers that are, we pick their names out of a hat, we match them, we send them a roll of old-fashioned film, not digital film, real film.

And they shoot it on that film, whatever the thematic is. Then we take that same roll of film and we give it to the other one and they shoot on the same roll of film. So we're inviting double-exposure and it's all about how different points of view can come together and create something startling and beautiful.

I've seen the work, and it's extraordinary. And none of the influencers know who each other are, and at the end of the season we have different shows where they all come and they see the results of their work, and so it has a live component to it.  You get to see different influencers that you know operate in the sphere.

There is a, really interesting sub-pocket of people who still photograph and Jeff Bridges and people who are less well-known but equally interesting, had signed up to do this with us. So that’s the project that I'm trying to get going. That's one of the more unusual ones.

Then, in terms of brand, really, when you're a hired hand you're, doing the best you can with what you got.  When I was at a company called Legal Shield, they had, it's a legal insurance where people spend 30 bucks a month to have access to a lawyer. The problem with that is no one wants to think about that moment.

No one wants to think about creating a will, no one wants to think about the time your neighbor breaks their leg on your property and is going to sue you, it's not how we think, and if you catastrophize in messaging, I think you're running a real risk.  And we persuaded them to do it with humor.

Like the insurance companies do, like GEICO, where there are all these stupid laws on the books in all 50 states. If you're in Louisiana, you can't send an unsolicited pizza.  In the state of Connecticut, you can't bounce a pickle off the floor. It's against the law.  So we use these things to make these little spots about you can't, did you know you can't do this? Did you know you can't do this?

And that's a lead into talking about how we can help you know things. And so in terms of what I always hope to bring to brand is that type of thing, where you use a way to deal with human emotion that engages as opposed to anything else, because I don't think anything else works.

Katty: Yeah. And so, many of the other ones are fear factor based, like eliciting fear and it is catastrophizing, but you say  you, you bring up the funny laws and I had heard about some law somewhere, I forget which state it is, that you can't have ice cream in your pocket.  Yeah. Who has ice cream in their pocket?  Or, but I guess there's a law somewhere for it. 

Ric: There are, there's an insane amount of laws. You can Google them. There, there are an amazing amount of silly laws everywhere. 

Katty: So funny.  Let's go to inspiration and creativity. 

Ric: My most favorite brand that has always inspired me the most is Apple. Apple is my personal Mecca because they perform this magic act of taking a sleek piece of tech and telling us it makes us exponentially more human.  That is a brilliant stroke and they do it over and over and over and their ads like the history of sound is the one I love but  they're just wonderful. They're so smart and it's an illustration of again personalizing something that could have been so im

And I, a lot of what I've done, and I always try to bring when I'm doing brand messaging, comes from that.  Not literally, but figuratively. That I always try to find, as I say, the old advertising motto, sell the dream. How do I do that? What's the emotion involved? What do I want our audience to feel?

And that's where you start.  And I think that all copywriters should be tasked with imagining the hero image because they have to start thinking that way. And designers can start thinking about the message and they usually do.  And if you collaborate from the get-go, present, get your notes, and collaborate again, you're going to get a much better product, but it's going back to it, I really love images and I work on it because I edit.

Katty: Sounds like filmmaking and watching films, just being around other creatives, whether it's through a medium of film or working together is really what's an inspiration point for you.

So one final question building on what you're just saying. What happens in this remote workspace that we're in that a lot of people are working in a silo?  Yes, we have zoom and so on and so forth. But, many people are no longer sitting next to someone else in the office. Any advice or experiences that you can share around that? How to continue collaboration and inspiration?

Ric: Yeah, I think one thing for sure, maintain your network, and it can be outside the company you're in. In fact it should be outside the company you're in, as you go through the various jobs  that you have, if you meet a colleague that you vibe with, that you riff with well creatively, stay in touch.

My suggestion is, since we're in the siloed-off world, grow your own network, like a garden.

Katty: So you can be siloed, but just don't be solo and this whole thing.

I'm glad that we got a chance to meet, and be in one another's network and continue, what would you call it? A garden?

Ric: Yeah, you got to grow your networks, your network like a garden.

Katty: Yeah, I love it. Love it. That was, beautiful. So with that, Ric, I just want to thank you for being here and sharing your experience and your wisdom with this group.

And remind us one more time about the name of your play so that when we see it on billboards, we'll know, who it's from.

It's called The Gold Top.

The Artisan Podcast is brought to you by the good people at Artisan Creative, a digital, creative, and marketing recruitment firm with 27 years of experience, placing freelance and full time talent across multiple verticals.  For more information, check out Artisan Creative.  com and we look forward to meeting you