Blowing Up The Death Star - Using Urgency and Consequences in Business Storytelling
The climatic scene of Star Wars A New Hope is probably the most satisfying endings of any movie from my childhood. Luke believes in himself, in that moment becoming a Jedi, blows up the Death Star, saves the rebel base and the rebellion - all in one dramatic race against the clock. It’s iconic, repeated and replicated in popular culture throughout the years (even the star wars used it again more than once) .
If you’re reading this article you knew all this already. However, what you might not know is that in the original edit of Star Wars, the Death Star trench run was very different in two key ways:
The Death Star wasn’t about to blow up the rebel base
Luke had two runs at the exhaust port
Doesn’t sound as exciting as before, right?
This original version was so close to making the climatic scene of a New Hope a forgettable ending to an otherwise great movie. There’s no urgency, no reason why we should root for the rebels to achieve their objectives. If they fail, they could always try again.
We have editor Marcia Lucas to thank for creating the scene we know and love today. She realized that there was no tension for the climax. She had re-ordered the shots almost from the ground up and removed Luke’s first run. However, the most important thing she did was to add in the element or urgency - by adding in the fact that the Death Star was about to blow up the rebel base.
Rewatch the trench run scene - each line of dialogue related to this fact is delivered by a voice over and demonstrated by reusing footage that was originally used for films for the destruction of Alderaan scene earlier in the movie.
By adding in the suspense, when the Death Star is destroyed, we celebrate with Luke and the rebels in their success - we feel the relief and ecstasy. It turns the forgettable ending, into the iconic scene I am still talking about 43 years later. (Fun fact, it won the Oscar for best editing in 1978)
This sense of urgency is known as “The ticking clock”. In Storytelling, this is a simple plot device used to put a time limit on your hero as they work to achieve their goal – a certain task must be completed by a certain deadline or the hero will fail and suffer the consequences of that failure
No matter the genre, using the device of a ticking clock in your story is a great way to quickly and naturally raise the stakes in the story and for your hero. It's also an easy way to add urgency, suspense, momentum and ensure that your story is properly and quickly paced and is kept on track so that there are no serious lags. Without some sort of ticking clock, the stakes of what could happen in your story are hypothetical. The Death Star could destroy another planet at some point, in the future, maybe affecting the hero.
The ticking clock is also a very valuable tool in business storytelling. In fact, marketers and salespeople have been using the Ticking Clock technique for years to entice sales. To quote 95% of infomercials - “Act now to claim this limited time offer!”
If potential customers know there’s no rush to buy your product or service, there’s a chance they can put off buying it to weigh the pros and cons – and maybe forget about it forever.
In his book Influence, Robert Cialdini gives some examples of how a business/salesperson leverages the persuasive power of the lack of time:
Using a countdown timer at checkout (for example, Amazon countdown timers on their ‘lightened deals’ and on ‘guaranteed delivery dates’)
“Order in the next ten minutes and you’ll receive this item by August 1”\This lack of time results in more people willing to act to acquire the product/service.
However, anyone can put a simple countdown timer on their site. There’s something missing from this - How can businesses make customers feel the emotional weight of the countdown?
If you had watched just the climatic scene of Star Wars rather than the entire movie, the scene wouldn’t have been as heart pounding and thrilling as it was for those who had watched the whole movie. The countdown was impactful because we had previously seen how powerful and destructive the Death Star was earlier in the movie. We knew that if it had fired on the rebel base, no one would have survived - the Empire would have quashed the rebellion. This brings me to an often overlooked element with the Ticking Clock. To make the Ticking Clock as impactful as possible, the audience needs to know the worst case scenario if the clock hits zero.
With just a countdown clock, missing out on a product on Amazon might be frustrating in the moment, but the customer will survive and live on.
In your business story, your customer must also have an understanding of the ramifications of not acting asap - it’s describing the worst case scenario, and how it affects the customer directly. If your customer understands that not only do they miss out on your product or service, but their lives and potentially other peoples live will be worse off without it, then you are raising the stakes - and giving them an emotional drive to make sure they don’t miss out.
Loss Aversion, as researched by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, has suggested that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains - implying that a loss of $50 has as much of an emotional impact as gaining $100. Salespeople often have to show how their product or service brings way more satisfaction to the customer than the dissatisfaction of giving up one's hard earned money.
However, using the Ticking Clock along with a demonstration of the consequences of doing nothing can flip this on its head - it creates a fear of missing out, a fear of loss if the customer does not act quickly. We are more likely to buy something if we fear losing our opportunity to buy it because of loss aversion.
Let’s apply this with a B2B service. If you are speaking to a prospective client or partner, rather than using language like ‘Get more sales and leads with our product’, to language that emphasizes urgency and consequences ‘Everyday, you miss out on XX sales and leads’.
Every industry can benefit from this strategy.
During the Christmas period in 2017, Yoox Net-A-Porter created the “The World’s Most Exclusive Collection” campaign on YouTube. Yoox curated 400 products that were exclusive to the campaign and not otherwise available on their website. They then ran a series of pre-roll video ads that offered the one-of-a-kind item, but if they didn’t click on the ad quickly, the offer was gone forever. Yoox specifically targeted people who had demonstrated an interest in “bargain hunting” and people who had either recently searched keywords they deemed relevant. The campaign drove a view-through rate over 20% higher than the category average and led to significant sales for the business during the holiday season.
Charity Water does a lot of things right with its marketing - one of which is utilizing urgency (The Ticking Clock) and consequences. Messages like “Access to clean water and basic sanitation can save around 16,000 lives every week - you can save a life right now” turns the audience into a potential hero, in a race against the clock.
So if you are trying to create urgency in your business’ story, don’t just add a Ticking Clock. Ask yourself:
Does the audience understand the value of the product/service
Does the audience understand the implications of not buying the product/service
