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How to use the 5 W and 1 H rule: from journalism to marketing
“I promised Luigi that I would write an article on the 5 W Rule on the Insight Agency blog by tomorrow, explaining its history and meaning”: this incipit is an example of how you can start an article clearly, using the Rule of 5W .
The incipit of an article must be the mirror of the topic that you will go into in depth in the following lines. With a few words you have to give readers the opportunity to find out if what they are about to read might interest them or not and the 5 W Rule helps you with this. Do you know it? I'll explain it to you now, in the article that I have to write by tomorrow, but which you are reading now.
1. The 5 Ws: the story of a scheme useful for incipits, articles, advertising and corporate storytelling
Keep in mind the saying: "Time is the measure of business as money is of commodities" (Francis Bacon). Save your readers as much time as possible and they'll be grateful. To do this, a schematically simple way to apply is the 5W Rule ; a technique borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon journalistic style , initially used as a guide to ensure that the news was given in a complete way (for this reason it was taught in journalism schools) and then became famous when, in the forties, it began to be commonly used to write the first paragraph of the articles (also called “lead paragraph”).
Its success is easy to explain: on the one hand it facilitates the writer, giving him an easy-to-follow scheme for starting a text, on the other it facilitates the reader who, finding the basic info in the incipit, can immediately decide whether the topic interested , and then continue reading, or not.
The method was described for the first time in the thirties by Harold Lasswell , a political scientist, with his famous definition of communication: " Who says what to whom in what channel with what effect " with what effect), but even earlier, already at the end of the nineteenth century, with the development of the telegraph, journalism adopted it in all respects as one of the pillars of the news story.
Here are the 5 questions of the 5W Rule and how I used them in my incipit:
1. Who ? (Who? = Luigi and I )
2.What ? (What? = I have to write an article )
3.When ? (When? = By tomorrow )
4.Where ? (Where? = On the Insight Agency blog )
5.Why ? (Why? = I promised and I always keep my promises )
6.How ? (How? = Explaining its history and meaning )
Have you noticed one H too many? It is no coincidence, it is the H of " HOW " (How), which invites us to deepen HOW an event took place, with which characteristics, phases, materials, processes, etc.
The addition of the H is by now consolidated as an evolution of the 5 W Rule, which thus became the “ 5 W + 1 H Rule ”, or “ Kipling Method ”, named after the famous writer R. Kipling (author among the other from "The Jungle Book" and "Captains Courageous").
The attribution to Kipling is due to this nursery rhyme written in 1902 which, as you can see, sums up our rule precisely with a metaphor:
“ I keep six honest serving men They taught me all I knew; Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who. ”
(I have six sincere servants who have taught me all I know; their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.)
The simplicity of this scheme makes it perfect for writing news stories and press releases, but it is also excellent as a starting point for writing informative articles, case studies or corporate storytelling .
The diffusion of the Internet has given a last push to this technique, especially in Web Marketing, where the 5 basic questions have become " The 5 Ws of marketing " and are used both to define the general strategies of a Web Marketing plan, than for the creation of content to be published.
After all, the basics of writing have been the same for ages. In fact , philosophers and orators of Greco-Roman antiquity already used a structure very similar to the 5 W Rules without having given it this name.
Thomas Aquinas , for example, had established 8 fundamental elements to describe an action: who, what, when, where, why, how much, how and by what means. A further demonstration of the fact that writing, using a clear lineup, stimulates creativity and makes it easier to collect and choose the information to enter.
2. What information to collect and what weight to give it?
It is important to follow a pattern to collect information, but it is equally important to choose what weight to give to individual information, since the length of your text, its structure, style and point of view depend on this choice.
Are you using the 5 W for journalism and reporting? Then your goal will probably be to inform. Are you using the 5W for marketing instead? Then your goal will probably be to persuade them to buy.
To help you unravel the infinite possibilities of choice, consider the Rule of 5 W and 1 H based on three considerations:
1) the difference between extension and depth;
2) the strength of classical rhetoric: ethos - pathos - logos;
3) the depth of the "why?".
3. The 5 Ws and 1 Hs for journalism and storytelling: extent and depth
Have you ever watched an eventful movie that leaves you with nothing significant to think about in the end? They are stories that evolve in extension but remain superficial.
This usually happens when the author focuses a lot on Who, When, Where and What , without going into depth (I didn't choose the verb at random) on How and Why .
Stories come out that sound more or less like this: “So-and-so went there yesterday, did this and that, met the guy with whom he did this other thing. Then they went to the other side and did etc. etc."
Lots of action, sometimes many characters, but nothing that explains the motivations that move them to act. This usually creates an uncomfortable sense of shallowness and no emotional involvement. It is one of the main problems of corporate storytelling, where we often find the facts and almost never the motivations .
The emotional involvement in the stories (those who use the 5 w to do journalism know it well) is usually given by the "how" and the "why" the protagonists act, two factors that are closely linked to each other, given that the "why" of the our actions (usually our core values) have a decisive influence on “how” we act.
Do you know the protagonist of the Breaking Bad TV show? At some point he changes his lifestyle, changes how he does things (and also changes his name). But why is this change happening ? It happens because (without spoilers) he feels he has to do something to secure his family financially, which is the most important value for him. It is the value that affects how he decides to behave and change .
Even in corporate storytelling, as in journalism, if we want to involve our readers more, we must give more space to the HOW and WHY. There are many examples, but here I take the case of TOMS shoes.
• HOW does TOMS make its shoes? He produces them paying attention to sustainability, as he explains well here: https://www.toms.com/us/environment.html
• WHY did TOMS make certain choices? Because, he tells us: "We're in business to improve lives". Based on this motivation, his story (the trip to Argentina where he personally sees the difficulties of kids without shoes) acquires thickness and depth: https://www.toms.com/us/about-toms.html
Summary: do you want to write a lot? Then, starting from the Rule of 5 W and 1 H, put many "WHO" (characters) and many "WHAT" (facts and actions), with abundant sprinklings of "WHERE" and "WHEN".
Do you want to give depth to what you write instead? Then make the readers reflect on the "HOW" and "WHY" the facts unfold.
4. The 5 Ws and 1 Hs for marketing and the strength of classic rhetoric: ethos, pathos, logos
Aristotle (Stagira, 384 BC or 383 BC – Chalcis, 322 BC) had already indicated more than two thousand years ago, in his “Rhetoric”, the three basic ingredients which make a message or a story interesting and persuasive (forgive my Greek teacher if I summarize and simplify so much):
• Logos : the presence of data and information
• Pathos : the presence of emotions and feelings
• Ethos : the presence of profound values
What does this have to do with the 5 W and 1 H rule and with marketing? It has a lot to do with it, because it explains well how every story (even advertising ones) needs:
1) of basic data and information to be framed and made plausible; data that we usually find by answering the questions: WHO? WHERE? WHEN?
2) of emotions and feelings , to create the right tension when we tell WHAT happens in our story.
3) of values that give depth and substance to history; values which, as we said in the previous paragraph, we usually discover answer the question: HOW did the events take place? WHY did they play out that way? What values drive the protagonist to act in a certain way?
Here's an example of this ad:
Look at this advertisement from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and put it to the test of 5 W and 1 H.
Beyond some simple answers (it's a contemporary story, which takes place in an indefinite periphery), you will easily notice that the WHAT (what the protagonist does) acquires meaning only in relation to WHY he does it . I won't reveal more, to leave you all the pleasure of the surprise.
Now pay more attention to the commercials that pass on TV and you will realize that the most engaging and exciting ones are always those that leverage deep values, such as friendship, family, culture, good for others, etc.
5. The depth of the “WHY?”
Of all the questions, the “WHY?” is the one that will help you the most to give substance and depth to what you write, but on one condition: that you don't stop at the first answer, but that, starting from that, you continue to ask yourself many more "WHY?".
Here is a good method, if you are about to write a case study or to tell something that happened in the company: start from the elements of the 5W+H Rule and ask yourself "Why?" for each of them:
• WHERE did the story happen? And why right there?
What was there in that place that favored the development of the story? For example: if Blake Mycoskie, the founder of TOMS, instead of going to Argentina had gone to any country in Europe, would his company have had the same characteristics?
• WHEN did the story happen? And why at that moment?
What was there in that period that favored the development of the story? For example: how many companies were born in the spring of 2020 to respond to the need for masks to protect themselves from COVID-19? A historical period (a dramatic historical period, unfortunately) without which many of these companies would not have been born.
• WHO is the protagonist of the story? And why him?
What are the characteristics that put him in a position to become the protagonist? For example: few know that Francesco Illy , a famous entrepreneur in the coffee sector, is also an artist and loves photography. Without your attention to beauty and art, I wonder, would the Illy Art Collection have ever been born that makes coffee cups true works of art?
• HOW are the actions characterized? and why exactly like that?
For example: HOW does the beauty products company create its advertising campaigns WHERE? He creates them without ever using professional models. AND WHY? Because he believes that every woman is beautiful when she's authentic. From this idea, her invitation "Be yourself at your best" and the series of campaigns " Authentic Beauty " are born.
As you can see, by answering these WHYs you can give meaning and depth to every event that happens in a story (the WHAT), avoiding it being just a sterile succession of facts that follow one after the other without an explanation.
FUN FACT: the question "WHY?" it is so powerful that it is the basis of a formidable problem solving technique called " 5 Whys ". It's about describing a problem and then asking yourself why it happened, going deep at least 5 times to find the real cause.
When you watch a movie or read a story, test the facts that are described by putting them through the “5 whys?” test. You may have some surprises.
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