8. Retell Tall Tales

Or How to Weaponize Stories and Tell the Hell Out of Them

Dead men tell no tales

Welcome to the fifth of five rounds, and now for the knockout. From the last four steps you have an idea of how you can rebel against the status quo, rewrite the rules to make them better, reorganize yourself to achieve scale rather than pointless growth, and redistribute power to protect your principles. But what’s next? What’s the final step to being more pirate? It’s about how you tell your story so the world listens. In this chapter we’re going to discover how pirates used spectacular storytelling techniques that made the whole world pay attention.

Pirates didn’t just tell stories, they creatively weaponized the art of storytelling. When they unfurled the pirate flag, the black background embellished with bones, skulls, skeletons, bleeding hearts and all manner of visual metaphors, they were taking the ultimate symbol of the Establishment, the flag (also the principal method of all maritime communications), and desecrating it so that it screamed rebellion and created a global icon. Pirates cultivated and curated their own myth, ably abetted by a new mass media hungry for great stories. They told fierce tales about themselves so that others would tell them again and again. Their stories wove into the fabric of culture and ordinary people’s imaginations. Using storytelling to pull together the last four steps of change, the pirates’ ideals infiltrated society and culture to influence the mainstream.

The pirates achieved a far-reaching legacy, and though you might not aspire to achieve their level of mythical status, there is a lot to be learned from the way pirates wrote their way into culture because today it’s vital to tell your story right if you want to get the attention you deserve and the audience you desire. Being able to communicate your idea effectively is often as important as coming up with the idea itself. And though you might think it’s better to test your idea or its message by placing it somewhere comfortable, somewhere you know your message will be well received, a pirate might recommend you do the opposite. The usual approach is to start somewhere friendly, such as with a receptive audience or by contacting someone you know will be sympathetic to your mission; maybe via the social media feed of a friend; or maybe you’d even pay a little to place your message in front of people you know will like it.

The unusual method, and the one I’m recommending you try, is to go the other way, the pirate way, and take your storytelling to the most dangerous, contentious or incendiary place possible, in order to magnify those stories’ effect. The Strategy and Creative Directors at Livity, Katy Woodrow-Hill and James Hogwood, came up with this method and called it ‘The Lion’s Den’.

The Lion’s Den approach encourages you to go somewhere unexpected, somewhere that scares you, where you might be likely to offend, where you risk being rejected but where you will inadvertently strengthen your story because the reaction of others will amplify it or their very criticisms will force you to tell it better next time. It’s a bold approach but it’s effectively what the pirates did: sailed their anti-Establishment symbol right into the Establishment’s view and used the repercussions to create the world’s first global superbrand.

Coca-Cola is usually considered the world’s first superbrand, established through its memorable logo and signature bottle design in the late 1800s, but, over a hundred years before, the pirates got there first. Pirates built a killer brand through their ability to tell a tall tale and raise a fearsome flag. They instinctively knew that a real brand is built on more than a clever logo or a cool name. A powerful brand is an emotional tool that demands the mental availability of its audience to signal a clear message. In their case, the pirate flag said ‘surrender or die’.

Scary as that sounds, the pirates pioneered reputation management so they could actually be less violent and command the high seas through fear, not fighting. Each captain and crew had a different flag, or Jolly Roger, flying from their mast, but there were common elements found across all pirate flags: a black background, bleeding hearts, knives and daggers, skulls, skeletons (sometimes dancing ones), bones and hourglasses coming together to threaten death, murder, and mayhem. Captain Jack Rackham (Anne Bonny’s boyfriend, if you remember him) is responsible for designing the specific flag that is now taken as the definitive emblem of piracy, the skull above crossed bones. The well-timed and dramatic display of the pirate flag was intended to strike paralysing fear into any target and was sometimes followed by the startling appearance of the entire pirate crew on deck, resplendent with face paints, smoking home-made grenades, actual rattling of sabres and bloodcurdling screams.

These theatrics weren’t employed because pirates loved melodrama and dressing up (well, maybe just a bit), they were employed to send a clear message to anyone who came in their path: ‘There is nowhere to hide, we’re coming for everything you’ve got. Surrender or die.’ This is branding, this is storytelling and this is how it’s done, pirate style.

And the really clever bit about it is that they were not just communicating a message. They were also advancing a strategic goal. You see, the pirate’s ‘killer’ branding was first and foremost a technique that protected their valuable reputation, which in turn drove their profitability. Remember, pirates had no incentive for real violence other than in small doses to reinforce their brand. Ammunition and recruits were expensive to replace. Stopping for repairs was extremely risky. Pirates really didn’t want to damage a vessel they intended to steal, or one they might need to escape in. Pirates also had that unique and expensive policy of compensating their injured with financial payouts, so they didn’t want anyone getting seriously hurt since that would eat into their collective earnings. All in all, both strategically and tactically, it was far more sensible for pirates to avoid costly conflicts and put all their piratical storytelling efforts into creating panic on sight to achieve a low-cost, high-return surrender scenario. Admittedly, the reputation behind a brand has to be protected, and so pirates had to ‘live the brand’ from time to time. But aside from the aforementioned 5 per cent or so of psychopaths in their ranks, the terror they are so famous for was, in truth, used sparingly and strategically for brand building and, ultimately, to reduce their recourse to violence.

The baddest beard of all

There can be no greater example of an individual pirate for whom this general observation rings true than the infamous Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. Of course all of us have heard of him, the most badass beard in piratical history, the greatest seafaring strategist, the most revered leader, the lustiest old swashbuckler with fifteen or so ‘wives’ to his name and the most villainous and salty sea dog. At least, that’s what we think we know. But you could sail a galleon through the gap between what we think we know about Blackbeard and the actual truth.

Blackbeard wasn’t the most successful pirate of the Golden Age (that would be Black Bart), nor the richest (that would have been Sam Bellamy), nor did he score the greatest haul ever (Henry Avery) or have the longest career (Henry Morgan). In fact, his career lasted about two years and his most famous raid (the blockade of what is now Charleston, in South Carolina) ended up seizing a box of medicines. But when it came to telling tall tales, Blackbeard didn’t just punch above his weight, he became the reputational equivalent of a knockout in the first round. Blackbeard’s reputation as lover, fighter, rascal and rogue was, of course, helped by the fact he had a massive ship. Commanding a stolen slave boat he pimped up for pirating, loaded with cannons and renamed Queen Anne’s Revenge, in two short years of infamy he took the pirate ‘brand’ to the next level and became a household name.

As Angus Konstam states in his biography of Blackbeard:

Almost single-handedly he engineered the pirate crisis that swept North America in the summer of 1718 … The panic Blackbeard created was out of all proportion to the number of ships he seized or the goods he plundered. Blackbeard’s notoriety – the reason he couldn’t be allowed to live – was at the expense of the confidence of an emerging nation. That is what made him such a fearsome figure, and why his image, if not his exploits, is still remembered today.1

Blackbeard had some trademark techniques that contributed to this most fearsome reputation. (I’ll let you assess which you might be able to use in your next meeting.) He took the pirate flag and, like many captains, made it his own. His version showed a skeleton toasting a glass to Satan in one hand and skewering a bleeding heart with the other, adding a macabre devil-may-care air to a symbol that could already only mean death.

Blackbeard’s three rules of branding

Rule 1: Find the singular message and make it unignorable.

One of Blackbeard’s signature fear-inducing techniques was to set light to sulphurous fuses at the plaited ends of his long and famous beard to create a smouldering, fizzing, crackling and pantaloon-staining vision of fear. It was designed to help him appear to live up to the reputation he himself cultivated, that he was indeed from hell. This, added to an all-black get-up, a brace of pistols across his chest and cutlasses at both sides, ensured his reality lived up to his stories and froze his enemies in fear. In his 1724 account of all things piratical, Captain Charles Johnson, the co-author of A General History of Pyrates, wrote:

Captain Teach assumed the cognomen of Blackbeard, from that large quantity of hair, which, like a frightful meteor, covered his whole face, and frightened America more than any comet that has appeared there in a long time. This beard was black, which he suffered to grow of an extravagant length; as to breadth, it came up to his eyes; he was accustomed to twist it with ribbons, in small tails … and turn them about his ears: in time of action, he wore a sling over his shoulders, with three brace of pistols, hanging in holsters like bandoliers; and stick lighted matches under his hat, which appearing on each side of his face, his eyes naturally looking fierce and wild, made him altogether such a figure, that imagination cannot form an idea of a fury, from Hell, to look more frightful.2

Blackbeard clearly took fancy dress, I mean branding, to a whole other level. He would cast such terror into the hearts of his victims, that those who lived (which was most of them because, ironically enough, either despite his ferocious reputation or because of it, some historians argue there are no verified accounts of him actually killing anyone) would be sure to tell the tale … which was, of course, the whole point. It’s not enough just to tell tales, you have to tell tall tales. Tell stories that make people shit the bed, not just bedtime stories. Build legends, build myths, build a legacy.

Rule 2: Don’t just live the brand, be the brand.

Whilst he may have avoided unnecessary death, Blackbeard is said to have indulged in the odd show of violence, all in the name of brand maintenance. Philip Gosse said in The Pirate Who’s Who that: ‘there was that little affair in the cabin, when Teach blew out the candle and in the dark fired his pistols under the table for no other reason, than “if he did not shoot one or two of them now and then, they’d forget who he was” ’.3

Rule 3: Protect your reputation; give people something to gossip about.

Blackbeard told stories to aid his strategy. He was all about the profit, all about the plunder, all about the pieces of eight. The image he created for himself and the pirate way of life stopped people in their tracks and prevented them from challenging him. So successful was Blackbeard’s storytelling that his reputation far exceeded his deeds. With the help of the Establishment, the hungry and salacious media presented Blackbeard as a murderous villain, but in reality Blackbeard never killed a soul whilst a pirate. Colin Woodward explains: ‘In the dozens of eyewitness accounts of his victims, there is not a single instance in which he killed anyone prior to his final, fatal battle with the Royal Navy.’⁴ Some might go so far as to say that this was Blackbeard’s single biggest achievement: that the most feared pirate of the Golden Age never actually killed anybody is a testament to his storytelling power.

Well-told stories

The pirates told thermonuclear stories that made superior and stronger opponents take note and in some instances allowed them to avoid a fight altogether. Their stories infiltrated society and their ideas were woven into common culture. But how does a simple, well-told story compound interest, gather momentum and go on to change the world? How do the radical and experimental ideas aboard the chaos of a pirate ship have any connection to the civilization we enjoy today? Back in Chapter 2 we explored the crucial role that piracy plays in driving innovation. Remember the pirates’ approach to injury compensation which developed into social insurance, pirate radio that led to the BBC opening up more channels and online music piracy that led to iTunes? Well, it turns out the pirates weren’t just influencing the mainstream because they were shouting about their ideas and weaponizing storytelling. They were directly influencing the mainstream because some of them were actually in cahoots with the established powers of the day, telling them their stories face to face. In his book The Pirates’ Pact, author, academic and historian Douglas Burgess Jr put forward a meticulously researched argument that even though the British governors of the American colonies were officially at war with the ‘enemies of humanity’, in reality it seems there was extensive collusion between them.⁵ When Blackbeard was killed in combat, numerous letters were recovered from his cabin and many of them carried the seal of the Royal Governor of His Majesty’s Colony North of Carolina, Governor Eden. This correspondence indicates that deals were being done between the King’s officers and at least one of the world’s most notorious pirates on an ongoing basis. Blackbeard was public enemy number one yet there he was having regular correspondence with a state governor (who would soon form a coup against the King). Philip Gosse in The Pirate Who’s Who even cites evidence that puts the same Governor Eden as a guest of honour at one of Blackbeard’s many weddings.6 The two sides thought to be in opposition weren’t just providing protections to one another, they weren’t just doing a few under-the-counter deals, they were forming deep, meaningful relationships with each other. And as their stories would evolve, so would their significance; the role the pirates played on behalf of the colonial governors was one of undermining taxes, trade and ultimately economic independence away from their British rulers. You see, in a way, the colonial governors of America wanted the same freedoms the pirates had snatched for themselves and, in a far more covert fashion, were adopting some of the techniques they’d learned from the pirates’ tall tales.

It was the entirely fictional pirate Captain Jack Sparrow who said ‘You can always trust the untrustworthy because you can always trust that they will be untrustworthy. It’s the trustworthy you can’t trust,’ which feels ironically adept for summarizing the revelation that in some small way the story of pirate independence is a precursor to American independence.

During the Golden Age there were secret relationships forming between established enemies that cast a shadow over who was on whose side, and who was on the ‘good’ side. In a tale-telling double bluff, both parties continued to let the public lap up the widely publicized story that bloodthirsty pirates were outmanoeuvring His Majesty’s Royal Navy and plundering Spanish gold. But behind the curtain, there were players writing an alternative script on both sides. Some governors provided protection from the law, a blind eye here and there along with the odd royal pardon, and in return the pirates provided them with an income from the gold they stole and protection when they needed it. Pirate ideas found their way onto the desks of power and were written into history because they were in cahoots with the men in charge who were officially their enemy. Whilst the British at home had, in Burgess’s words, ‘failed to reckon with the powerful lure of the colonial anti model; piracy not as a crime, but as a legitimate occupation; pirates not as “enemies of the human race” but as respected members of the community acting with the cognizance and collaboration of powerful gubernatorial patrons’, the American governors under British rule were more open to it.7

After more than a hundred years of colonial rule in America, rebellion was in the air. Governors were starting to express their frustration and war with the British and the consequent independence of the United States was just decades away. These governors, some of whom would go on to be the Founding Fathers of the United States, needed the help of insurgents who held no allegiance to the crown and could keep a secret – they needed nothing less than a militia. Now, where to find a well-armed militia for hire that could secretly engage in early and underhand manoeuvres to frustrate the British …

The future Founding Fathers, some of whom had investments in the plantations of the Caribbean and had set their sights on achieving power, had taken note of the success that the pirates’ alternative community had gained, both financially and socially. They had witnessed the proto-democratic pirate republic bubbling up under their noses in Nassau, and they had learned its lessons. They understood why it had gained such popular support and won the hearts and imaginations of ordinary working people, but they also saw why and where it failed.

They harnessed the power and potency of the pirates’ techniques and well-told stories to establish the defining moment in American history in the eighteenth century, that of boxing Britain into an ever-tighter corner in an explosion that would usher in a new age of independence.

Now, it would be naive to draw too direct a line between the pirates’ inspirational tactics and American independence, but it would be equally naive to imagine the governors’ interactions with pirates did not have some effect and influence.

In the absolutely brilliant Pirate History Podcast, its host and historian Matt Albers explains his strongly held view about the lineage from pirates to Founding Fathers, from the role they contributed to subverting taxes and economic independence from England through to the growing weight of the threat they represented of a new order. Albers provides an eloquent indication of how strong the pirate story of rebellion became, and how far its reach was felt:

The tree of American Republican Democracy is rooted in West Indian Piracy. The Caribbean pirates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries practised the crudest and purest form of democratic self-rule that gave each crew member a vote and a voice, regardless of race, religion, gender, or sexuality. Those outlaws who had been cast out from the polite society of old Europe were forced to see the world through pluralistic, democratic eyes and that view erupted in a century of revolutionary violence that would shake the foundations of empires and culminate in the Age of Revolution.8

The ever effacing Albers pays all credit to his sources, but his analysis of the material is both entertaining and enlightening, and on this topic he pointed me towards the aforementioned Douglas Burgess for further evidence.

Burgess makes an in-depth assessment of the alliances between pirates and the colonial governors, some of whom would become the Founding Fathers, in a way that suggests the influence between the two was undeniable, even if it took another fifty years or so to transpire into anything as specific as the Declaration of Independence:

Piracy – forever maligned, obscured, or misinterpreted as the pirates’ rebellion against the status quo – was indeed a radical challenge to the English state. Yet that challenge came not from the pirates themselves. It was their patrons, the earnest colonial governors, who through quiet accord and longstanding practice signalled the limits of crown law and the germination of a distinct Atlantic community. A community that would one day be known as the United States of America.9

There’s no doubt that the pirates’ innovations and forward-thinking attitudes influenced mainstream society. The Golden-Age pirates were master storytellers and they established their legacy by permeating the culture of the day. From pioneering the world’s first superbrand via the Jolly Roger to creating their own mythical image via body paint and smoking beards, their storytelling tactics captured popular imagination and earned them their place in history. The pirates took their story right into the lion’s den when they formed alliances with officials who had the power to have them tried and hanged. As a consequence, not only did they make more money, more efficiently, but also their values and ideas were granted another lease of life on an even bigger stage.

The remarkable tale of Daryl Davis

It might not be immediately clear why a blues pianist from the 1980s is a modern pirate, but if you don’t know his story, hold on to your tricorn hat for a lesson in weaponized storytelling. However, inspiring though his story may be, please do not try this at home.

Davis has spent years playing the piano alongside musical legends like Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. One night in 1983 he was playing in a ‘white’ bar called the Silver Dollar Lounge when one of the audience came up to him to tell him that he’d never heard a black man play as well as Jerry Lee Lewis. When Davis told the guy that, actually, Lewis had learned to play from listening to black boogie-woogie musicians and was a friend of his, the conversation took a turn. Davis started to get the feeling that his new acquaintance had never really spoken to a black man before. So, he asked the man if this was the case, and if it was so, then why? The man replied, ‘Because I am a member of the Ku Klux Klan,’ and then showed Davis his membership card to prove it.

Rather than run for the hills, Davis decided to do something not all of us would do but could do with doing more often. He didn’t step away, he stepped up. He invited that Klansman to share a beer and swap stories about music and musicians. That night, a deeply unlikely friendship was established. Years later, when the two met again, Davis found himself the first black American to own a Klan cloak, because its owner had handed it over to him in surrender to the power of a well-told tale.

Davis continued to share stories with the Klan, in senior members’ homes but also at their events and rallies. These conversations and storytelling sessions were his way of fighting one of the most powerful, well-organized, terrifying and violently racist groups ever to have existed. And it worked. It worked really well. As Davis said:

You challenge them. But you don’t challenge them rudely or violently. You do it politely and intelligently. And when you do things that way, chances are they will reciprocate and give you a platform. So he and I would sit down and listen to one another over a period of time. And the cement that held his ideas together began to get cracks in it. And then it began to crumble. And then it fell apart.10

Davis weaponized storytelling to deweaponize racism in his backyard. Using his anecdotal approach, he changed perspectives of ingrained prejudice and took the robes of the three most senior Klan members in Maryland, since when the group has been unable to reorganize itself back into any sort of power across the whole state.

You’d think the institutions whose remit it was to tackle racism would be interested, supportive and keen to build on Davis’s success but unfortunately they didn’t see eye to eye with his pirate approach. As Davis tells it:

I had one guy from the local NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People] branch chew me up one side and down the other, saying, ‘You know, we’ve worked hard to get ten steps forward. Here you are sitting down with the enemy having dinner, you’re putting us twenty steps back.’ I pull out my robes and hoods and say, ‘Look, this is what I’ve done to put a dent in racism. I’ve got robes and hoods hanging in my closet by people who’ve given up that belief because of my conversations sitting down to dinner. They gave it up. How many robes and hoods have you collected?’ And then they shut up.11

The lengths Davis went to were extreme and admirable, but also dangerous – he literally entered the lion’s den to tell his story. Hopefully, you won’t need to put yourself in harm’s way to make waves with your tales, but keep Davis in mind as you think about how to distil your message and tell your story in a way that will evoke an emotional response in your target audience and resonate far further than if you’d just tried to appeal to the most obvious audience. Davis proves that we don’t have to tell the loudest story or speak to the biggest audience to achieve great results.

Speak softly, but carry a big can of paint

Banksy has used the way he tells stories to change the world. He is a master amongst modern pirates, changing people’s perceptions, mocking the Establishment, altering institutions, amassing legions of followers and opening up new rules for art. Through his signature stencil street graffiti he has become a world-renowned artist, whose work criticizes practically every institution you can think of, including the art industry itself. The first of his stencil pieces was a picture of a teddy bear hurling a Molotov cocktail at three riot police that appeared in his home town of Bristol in 1997, and his most recent work can be found on the streets of Palestine. Banksy routinely parodies all forms of the Establishment, from the military to the monarchy to the police force, with iconic and emblematic imagery that usually represents society through the invocation of either children, the elderly, monkeys or rats.

The rats are amongst the most consistent characters Banksy uses when it comes to ridiculing the rules. Some observers have suggested Banksy’s liberal use of the humble rat is because it’s an anagram of art; others believe it’s a representation of Banksy himself, as the animal emerges at night to cause a nuisance. The ever-quotable rebel has his own explanation that speaks more directly to rule breaking. ‘If you feel dirty, insignificant or unloved, then rats are a good role model. They exist without permission, they have no respect for the hierarchy of society, and they have sex fifty times a day.

Banksy’s work on public walls has included rats as paparazzi, rats announcing the end of the world, rats as businessmen and rats as rats carrying placards giving advice to humans that range from ‘If graffiti changed anything it would be illegal’ to ‘Let them eat crack’. As his work caught the public imagination, it didn’t just stimulate interest and awareness in street art, it also planted the idea of creative activism in the public mindset. He’s continually used the platform of his art to provoke debate on important contemporary issues. The greater the taboo, often the greater the challenge: a lynched Ku Klux Klan member in a white hooded suit stencilled on a wall in Birmingham, Alabama, a child in a sweatshop making bunting for the London 2012 Olympics on a wall just outside the arena ahead of the opening ceremony, and even a life-sized dummy wearing an immediately recognizable orange Guantánamo Bay jumpsuit with a sack over its head chained to a fence in Disneyland, causing the park to be shut down. I mean, Lion’s Den, anyone? In December 2011 he unveiled ‘Cardinal Sin’, a bust of an eighteenth-century Catholic priest with his face pixelated out using the same technique used to protect the identity of victims of sex offenders. This was before widespread acknowledgement of the Church’s history of institutionalized paedophilia had been made and public outrage was growing. Banksy’s official explanation, as reported by BBC News, only added fuel to the fire: ‘At this time of year it’s easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity – the lies, the corruption, the abuse.’ To Banksy’s credit, every time his popularity or accessibility catches up with him he takes another step away from the mainstream and opts to push boundaries even further. When the ‘Banksy effect’ led to an explosion of interest in street art, some of his work achieved record figures at Sotheby’s auction house. Banksy’s response was to release a stencil of a crowded art auction centred around a canvas emblazoned with the words ‘I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit’.

Most recently his work has moved to the infamous West Bank Wall, the contentious 400-mile barrier separating Palestine and Israel. What began with provocative, imaginative and bitingly funny observations has resulted in a pop-up hotel called The Hotel Walled Off, where you can stay in Banksy-adorned rooms, take stencil-art masterclasses and put your own statement on the wall alongside Banksy’s masterpieces.

This culminated in late 2017 with an event typifying the classic British street party with cakes, bunting and Union flags to satirize the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration that first promised a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The centrepiece of the ‘performance’ was the unveiling of a ‘royal apology’ subverting the royal initials into the message: ‘ER … Sorry’. Banksy’s statement read: ‘This conflict has brought so much suffering to people on all sides – it didn’t feel appropriate to “celebrate” the British role … The British didn’t handle things well here. When you organize a wedding [referring to the promises made by the UK government], it’s best to make sure the bride isn’t already married.’12

Banksy has stood up to so many aspects of the status quo, created a following, a platform and a movement, turned society’s gaze onto the powerless and delivered weapon-strength messages and stories, none more powerful than the one he never told, his identity. Banksy’s true identity remains to this day a mystery. When it comes to breaking the rules that others feel obliged to follow, Banksy is a pirate of the highest order. In his own words: ‘The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules.’ For us pirates, ready to catapult our ideas into the stratosphere, there are many lessons to draw from Banksy’s work. First, if emotion is key to good storytelling, so too is humour, intrigue and irreverence. Try to include and provoke a couple of these sentiments in the stories you tell.

The rest of the lessons are best delivered by the master pirate himself, from his own book of quotations Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall:¹³

• Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

Know which side you’re on and tell your story accordingly to give confidence to and grow your community, and at the same time strike some fear and uncertainty into the heart of your enemy.

• Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a fucking sharp knife to it.

Do all you can to expand your thinking, don’t tell the obvious story and, once you’ve found it, enter the Lion’s Den and tell it to the person or group least likely to buy it. Spend as much time thinking it through as you expect to spend shouting it out.

• A wall is a very big weapon. It’s one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with.

The medium you choose is always part of the message; and many have said the medium is the message. Choose it carefully, use it wisely and your audience will pay as much attention to where and how you share your story as they will do to what you say.

Back when I was running DON’T PANIC, we collaborated with Banksy on a poster that would be distributed for free all over London. We had decided to attack the big oil companies, so Joe Wade (now the CEO of DON’T PANIC) and I wrote the words and Banksy created one of his trademark pieces to go with them. It was a family on a beach holiday about to blow themselves up as the father was lighting a cigarette right next to an enormous oil spill on the sand. When I explained I was hoping the project would ‘politicize consumers’ Banksy laughed quite hard at my naive optimism. I imagine he’d laugh even harder if he ever sees I’ve tried to turn his quotes into any sort of lesson, so I’ll stop here. We can’t all be Banksy.

From rebel to retell, you’ve gone the full five pirate change-inducing rounds. You are armed to the teeth with techniques that many generations of pirate-like individuals and organizations have been adopting and refining in order to change the world. And so here ends the five pirate stages of change. But before we move into Part Three to discuss the power of the Pirate Code, I invite you to complete the following exercise.