Anecdotal evidence…

By Robbie Dale

The anecdote.

We all love them, we all have them.

There was the time ‘my friend Dave’ got locked in a freezer, and slept surrounded by waffles. The time ‘my friend Graeme’ convinced the doorman of a club he was the Pope’s son and they let him in wearing trainers. And, of course, the time someone you went to school with stole an otter from the zoo.

What’s great about anecdotes is they’re never told the same way twice. But then that’s human nature. You have longer or shorter to tell your piece. You have different audiences to sell the story to. You have different moods. What doesn’t change however, indeed what never changes, is the central core of the anecdote. The bit that makes it awesome enough to share.

And we can extend this to jokes. Nuggets passed on, more often than not by word of mouth, but by different people and with local variations. Think about the classic ‘Englishman, Irishman and a Scotsman’ set-up in British humour. The same jokes exist elsewhere, but they change the wrapping. In Scandanavia it’s a ‘Swede, a Dane and a Norweigan’ and in Canada the butt of the joke becomes ‘Newfies‘. Why? Simply because the message (in this case a joke) carries much better when it can be easily repackaged by the party passing on the message so that it may gain maximum effect.

And this is important to remember.

James has been talking about Labour’s so-called Word of Mouth election recently, whereby the party have claimed – among other things – that it had recently made its one millionth relationship this year. Not only is that verging on impossible in any practical sense, it’s certainly meaningless. You simply can’t share your vision, your passion and the core of your story with that many people. That many people are a wildly varied bunch.

However, if you have something ‘anecdote shaped’ to share, then you can reach say 100 people. Probably in batches of 10, using 10 different methods. Pensioners have different takes on Labour’s vision than teenagers I’d wager.

And those 100 people can, if inspired, then reach their own group of people. If you start with 100 people of varied background and influence, that could be another 100 each. That’s 10,000 people having a meaningful conversation. And if they’re engaged because they’ve been talked to on their level and in a way that will help them react, then they’ll tell another 10. That’s 100,000. If they tell 10 more you could say you’ve hit your million. And mean it.

Taking Labour as an example,  it doesn’t really matter if they reach every member of the electorate directly. They will still broadcast at everyone through traditional mass media of course, but this need simply enhance the personal discussion voters are having beyond the horizons of Labour HQ, not replace it.

If I’m being lobbied by my colleagues, best friends and the girl who works in the local cheesemongers about the future of the country, then I’m probably thinking a lot harder about my vote than when I’m watching three men bicker about policy.

This isn’t brain surgery of course, but it’s worth remembering. For Labour, for people trying to sell cars or shoes or insurance, for companies looking to build a decent reputation, for artists trying to get a name for themselves.

So, go on, what’s your favourite anecdote?

Like this?

Brought into the world on Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 and filed under 1000thoughts, Creative.

  • http://twitter.com/edpmary Mary Hamilton

    My favourite anecdote comes from a simulation action game I run regularly. It involves a man running away from a group of zombies up onto a stage, realising he was trapped, leaping 10ft over the heads of several people (and breaking all our safety rules) and running full tilt down a corrider infested entirely by the living dead – only to take a wrong turning and go down fighting in the locker rooms.

    We try really hard with our games to create anecdotes. Our events are so fast-paced that they can go by in a flash, so we try to give people space, time and encouragement to build their own stories around what happened. I see it as nurturing emergent narratives – encourating anecdote creation, helping give people the tools and the ability to create their own narratives, and ensuring everyone's experiences are recorded in their own words as far as possible. Helping people create stories encourages them to tell them, too, which makes our events far more spreadable. Is that something that could be incorporated into political campaigns?

  • http://twitter.com/aogw Robbie Dale

    Hi Mary, thanks for your comment.

    I, for one, would love to see Zombies incorporated into the political spectrum. I'm sure they could do a decent job of making certain sectors of society far more interested in the political landscape.

    I like your approach in helping people to create stories, rather than simply giving them to them fully packagedl. We often look to create frameworks for our clients, rather than only experiences, that do just this. If you create a story yourself, you have that much more ownsership over it.