By Charmaine A. Tadalan
FOR ACADEMY-AWARD winning producer and co-owner of the Golden State Warriors Peter Guber, telling stories can go a long way.
Looking back at his career, one would think Mr. Guber has a formula to success written at the back of his hand; but even he believes there is none.
“I always thought there was some magic to increase the audiences’ success over failure, but I keep looking for it, but I couldn’t find a guarantee,” Mr. Guber said during the annual ANC Leadership Series, themed “Telling Stories, Winning Games” held at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza on Tuesday, March 20.
But he found a powerful tool that required only the use of words.
“When information became soulless, I realized it was effervescent,” he said. “Everybody has information now, so information can’t be the reason that makes you successful, it’s how you manage the information — what it means, how you work it together, how you forecast the future.”
The key is going beyond data and information, and creating value that will move people into action through emotional transportation.
“When entrepreneurs and executives emotionalize the message through the powerful narratives of story, they give meaning to all of that and people hold on to it,” he said, adding this can turn people into advocates that will move the business for you.
How he realized the value of emotional transportation in business is simple: he stopped looking at clients as customers and started treating them as audiences.
Through this, Mr. Guber was able to understand his market. He connected to them, engaged them in his narratives and in return, people opened up to him.
“At the end of the day, [as human beings] we are all analog. We’re not digital,” he said. “We are not moved by 0s and 1s, we are moved by You’s and Us.’”
And this was his tool, “Motivating your Audience to your Goal Interactively with good Content,” his MAGIC.
Mr. Guber’s approach is evident in his work, both in the film and the sports industry. He shared that in the initial process of choosing a narrative for movies, he’d often asked for story pitches to be summed into three sentences.
“People do not remember movies, they remember scenes from movies. They’ll repeat three scenes from a movie, two scenes from a movie, or a joke from a movie,” he explained, noting that in the end, the question will always be “is this an emotionally connecting narrative?”
True enough, Mr. Guber proved just how good a storyteller he is during his talk, catching the attention of his audience not by laying out his resume as CEO of Mandalay Entertainment and as owner of the reigning NBA champion, but by telling his share of failure.
“I failed at every venture that I’ve ever entered, every single one,” he said and almost instantly he closed the gap between him and the many others in the audience who are likely billions of dollars away from fitting his shoes.
“Destruction is part of the business, and taking major risks and learning from the failure is key to being the leader of the pack. And if you’re not the leader of the pack today, the view never changes,” he said, emphasizing that failure is a sign of hard work in attaining success.
Mr. Guber shared, for one, how his team hurdled past obstacles in the construction of the new arena for the Golden State Warriors. The planned 18,000-seat arena was supposed to be built in downtown San Francisco, but was halted after critics opposed the project.
Mr. Guber recalled the time he almost gave up. “We can’t do this, so I guess we stay there — NO, we’re gonna move the stadium, we’re gonna find another place where we can put IT.”
“And it was the key.”
Comparing the experience to the 1989 film Field of Dreams, Mr. Guber said “If you have a dream, and you believe it ferociously, build it and they will come.” To date, the warriors’ new den, called the Chase Center is nearing completion and is set to open in time for the 2019-2020 season.
Mr. Guber, before becoming CEO of his own entertainment business, was chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment and Polygram Entertainment, co-founded Casablanca records and produced independent films.
Among his films are Academy Awards Best Picture winner Rain Man and box office hits The Color Purple, Midnight Express, Batman, Flashdance, The Kids Are All Right, and Soul Surfer.
Mr. Guber has ventured further in the sports industry as owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Football Club, in eSports and gaming as co-chairman of aXiomatic, and owner of Team Liquid, as well as in virtual reality, as investor and chairman of NextVR.
He continues to narrate his stories and moving people as regent and professor of the University of California, Los Angeles, and as the author of best-selling book, Tell to Win: Connect Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story.
