At the heart of who you are as a person, you will find what truly motivates you.

Is it happiness or sadness? Is it good times or bad? Is it success or failure?

Don’t rush to answer this question. You need to be honest with yourself… truly honest. Think hard about what genuinely motivates you to create change.

My suspicion is that your initial response will be that you believe you are motivated by passion, by achievement, and by belonging. That you are an eternal optimist. A glass-almost-full kind of person.

I don’t believe you have dug deep enough if that is your answer. Try again.

When you dig deep, and truly understand yourself, you start to expose the rawness of what truly inspires you. It is an exercise worth doing, andI believe it is a powerful practice for you when developing your next marketing campaign. (Hopefully, I didn’t lose you with that sharp left turn).

Last week I opened the Infopresse RDV Sponsorship and Event conference addressing this topic. My talk, titled From The Edge of Darkness, is my take on how pain, tension, and suffering can be powerful fodder for the best storytelling.

First of all, I believe a marketing story should do three things: it should Entertain, Educate, and Inspire. The Inspiration is crucial, as it will lead to action.

To create a great story you need many components. You need a heroine faced with a significant challenge. You need stories about how that heroine battled adversity. You need a triumphant moment when they succeed or fail. Then, you need to wrap it all up in a neat and tidy package.

But how do you communicate that great story? I believe that in order to tell a powerful story, you must first know and understand your own. Next, you need to understand the pain and challenges of the person who you are telling that story on behalf of. Lastly, you need to understand what is troubling your audience.

This requires a new approach to briefing, creating, and producing.

Your brief needs to talk about the true pain your audience faces. Why do you care how old they are or how much they make? Wouldn’t you rather know what it is they fear?

Once you know that, it is time to talk about the tensions between your audience and the brand. The first step is to take some time to understand the pain of your coauthors, both personally and professionally. Adding self-discovery to the process will spark new thinking. With the pot now stirred, mine the tension that exists between all the parties – You. The brand. The audience. The brand owner. The agencies and partners. The consumers. The distribution channels.

Finally, it is time to write your story. It should be a movie script. Full stop. Writing a movie script, and sticking to that principle, will ensure you tell a great story. Not just an ad with a nice twist.

Consumers today want brands and companies to operate with a purpose in everything they do. Marketers today claim to be responding to this demand. I have my doubts.

Marketers today claim to be creating authentic content. The words that comprise that sentence disprove this claim.

Marketers today claim to be in touch with what consumers needs. Yet they shy away from things that truly matter.

“Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything. Just Do It.”

I don’t have to show you the NIKE Colin Kaepernick creative to secure your agreement that this was a story truly written from the Edge of Darkness.

There is nothing more powerful than a story well told.