Speakers often struggle with how to get the emotion they know they need to move audiences into a speech. Perhaps they’re not comfortable with emotion in the first place, or they don’t see the connection to their particular bit of the business world, or they don’t know how to get the right level of emotion set. Or perhaps it just feels too hard to do in the space of a 45-minute talk.

They should take a lesson from John Lewis.

That’s John Lewis the department store. In the UK in recent memory, Christmas starts with the John Lewis ad. Viewers know that it’s going to cue up a new version of a pop song everyone will be humming for the next couple of months, that it’s going to tell them a delightful little story, and that it’s going to tug at their emotions. And tug at their emotions tactfully, appropriately, just the right amount.

The 2014 Ad is no exception. It’s got a Tom Odell cover of a surviving Beatles’ remix of a John Lennon original song – “Real Love.” It’s got an impossibly cute story involving a thoughtful young boy, a penguin, and a search. And it’s got just the right level of emotion.

So here’s the video. Watch it now so I can talk about it and not spoil the story for you.

John Lewis Ad

Good, now you’ve had your heartstrings tugged and you know that it’s possible to tell an elegant, touching little story in 2 minutes.

What are the lessons for public speakers for working emotions into your speech?

1. Pick a classic story.  The story in the ad is – wait for it – a love story. You got that, right? Indeed, you could hardly miss it. After all, you already knew the story before it was told. It’s one of a very few basic stories that have been recounted endless times since people began telling them. It involves a lonely hero, longing for his or her true penguin love. It works. So don’t try to be clever and invent a new story structure that no one has ever before. Go with tried and true.

But there’s more to it than just the basic story structure. The reason that this little John Lewis ad works is that it strictly adheres to some essential storytelling rules, and it does so unobtrusively and economically.

2. The heart of the story is in the journey.  Even in two minutes, we go on quite a journey, from seeing the comradeship between the boy and his penguin, to the moments of realization on the boy’s part that his penguin is lonely, to the boy’s decision to do something about it – even though he is perfectly happy in his penguin love – to Christmas and the delivery of Penguin #2, to the withdrawal from his make believe world to the real one. Each step is important, and the longest part of the journey is not the big reveal of Penguin #2, but rather the boy’s happiness contrasted with the penguin’s longing. Suffering, in short. Stories are about suffering.

One of the classic mistakes that public speaking storytellers make is that they want to spare their audiences suffering so they jump into their information dump – let me tell you everything I know about how to improve sales in 2014! – rather than working through the audience’s perspective and exploring their need (to improve sales in this case).

3. A good story has a surprise twist – that is carefully prepared for. I hate the mindless shockers that too many TV shows and movies have these days. Suddenly, everyone turns out to have been dead all along! By contrast, the love story – and the boy’s empathy — prepares you for the reveal of Penguin #2. Unless you’re asleep, you’re not shocked.

4. Be clear and consistent about the emotions that the story carries. Good stories allow you to make a point, draw a lesson, or derive a moral. They also allow you to share emotions. But it’s important that you not muddy the waters. In this case, the emotion is love throughout – the boy’s love for the penguin, the penguin’s love for Penguin #2, and the mother’s love for the boy. So the story surprises, but the emotion is consistent.

5. A good story returns you to reality.   One of the loveliest moments in the ad is the reveal at the end of the mother’s perspective as she watches her son play with the two (now stuffed) penguins. What makes the moment so moving is that it tells us something profound about love. Imagine that – wisdom in a John Lewis ad. Love is all about empathy – the mother’s empathy for her son, the boy’s empathy for the penguin, the penguin’s empathy for the loving couples it sees throughout the ad.

We see this through a point of view that takes us out of the CGI fantasy world of the penguins to the real world of Christmas morning. A good story always returns us to reality, or to ourselves, or to the moment we’re in now. So does a good speech. It takes us on a journey, it has a surprise twist or two, it is clear and consistent about both message and emotion, and it returns us to ourselves, changed, ready to change the world.   Well done, John Lewis.