Just Story It

Communicating on behalf of a brand can be tricky business. A decent idea once passed through the brand’s filter and massaged and molded to hit key messaging targets can come out the other side a shell of its possible self.

In just one day top companies will pay $3.5 million for each 30 second spot to air their Super Bowl ads. At a bare minimum, a whopping $245 million is being spent this year by companies to pitch their products. Wow! The difference this year? The ads are stories!

Read the rest of my recent blog post about the fundamental shift into storytelling that is occuring these days with marketing, advertising, and branding.

Big bucks are being spent on Super Bowl ads and it's all about ads as stories. Read more about what advertising execs are saying and how this pertains to your business.

If you look back across the history of mankind, storytelling has played a vital role in propagating culture, from community to community, across generations.

I'm a little late in curating this article, but I'm glad I waited because when paired with another recent article in this collection, you'll get a double-whammy of ideas and tips.

Let's start first with this article.  I like how the author lays out the importance of storytelling in advertising. And when he says, "In the strictest sense, a story has a narrative ark, a beginning, middle and end; however in advertising we can be looser in our definition" he's actually talking about using story triggers, i.e. bits of material that trigger a story within us.

He then goes on to point out how the UK company Sainsbury has combined ads with rich content.  Are these actually stories?  I couldn't tell.  But the idea is there: link ads and stories in content modules that flow together!

For additional ideas on how to do this that creates more engagement, go read the next article on "3 Powerful Game Dynamics That Create Brand Superfans." It's a winning combo.

Yeah! Raf Stevens' new book "No Story No Fans" is finally available.

I had a chance to review an advanced copy and loved it.  The focus of the book is how to use storytelling to grow your business.  Perfect!

This is a next generation book on business storytelling.  We've had fabulous books written on business storytelling over the years.  They set the foundation for biz storytelling, and gave us some tools to help us.  

Raf's book gives concrete ways to use stories in marketing, branding, and advertising your business. Combined with Annette Simmon's book "Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins," you've got a powerhouse of help to accelerate your business resuls.

Here are just a few things that I like about the "No Story No Fans" book:

1) That Raf shared lots of stories, and modeled good storytelling.
2) The concept and language of story trading -- the true power of business storytelling.  I've used the terms 'story sharing' for years, but I like Raf's term better and will start using that.
3) His process for working with story circles -- it is very well articulated and you can use it too.
4) The different types of story applications talked about.
5) And of course, all of the points Raf discusses, explains, illustrats and brinhd home to us about the importance of storytelling, why/how it works, and how we need to shift our thinking/practices about branding, marketing, advertising. 
6) That I got to see my esteemed colleagues and friends in his book: Gregg Morris, Annette Simmons, Steve Denning, Kat Hansen, & Cynthia Kurtz.
7) I also love that Raf used crowd sourcing and the cloud along with the QR codes to create and share his book, plus offer you tools to grab. It's really cool and as you read the book, you'll see what I mean.

Good job Raf!  And readers, I encourage you to add this book to your resources.  I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Last month, I learned what Dian Fossey must have felt like in Gorillas in the Mist, surrounded by mysterious creatures and unknown dangers, and yet compelled to edge ever closer.

This article proves my point EXACTLY about my criticisms of framing storytelling as a war (see the article and my review on "Empowerment Marketing") -- or any marketing as a war or battle.

I just posted a review of another article on the 'Story Wars' material that has just hit the scene ("Empowerment Marketing"). The author makes great points, but the framing of war totally undermines his basic premis.

Here's the article that explains why -- and offers a different metaphor to use to shape our marketing.

How we think about our marketing and our business storytelling shapes our actions and the types of stories we tell. So read this article's points about a better alternative metaphor to war. Everyone will benefit!

PS -- an don't forget to read the many comments posted at the end of this article. Very illuminating!

Review written by Karen Dietz for her curated content on business storytelling at www.scoop.it/t/just-story-it 

Marketers should make use of the Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues.

Hey -- not all marketing messages need to appeal to our higher virtues! So here's an article about crafting content and marketing messages that appeal to our vices.

This might not be your approach, or this approach might not work all the time. Or you might want to slip a few messages in that appeal to our vices while still focusing on our virtues. Or it might work best for you to be all about vices and forget those pesky virtues!

In any case, enjoy reading this article and then figure out what mix of virtues and vices will work best for your content and marketing.

Thank you Grace Decker @TheBoardroom for sending me this article!

Now I'm stopping work to sin with a glass of wine :)

In the world of copywriting, there are plenty of arcane formulas. Some are useful. Some are absurd. But all of them are interesting. I’ve collected copywriting formulas over the years and would like to share 15 of the very best.

Now here's a list of writing formulas that could easily be used to structure your biz stories, or used to structure marketing pieces where you add a series of mini-stories!

What a great post to get our creative juices flowing.  And I like that these are proven formulas. I'm taking this post with me to my 2012 biz planning session and will pick a few to use in next year's marketing & story campaigns!

In advertising, the art and craft of storytelling is central to building, maintaining and strengthening the bonds between consumers and brands.

I agree with 99% of what is in this article.  It is a meaningful discussion about storytelling, branding, technology and how much branding/ad professionals need to get better at the whole storytelling thing. The authors are Randy Rothenberg, the president-CEO of IAB and Mike Hughes, the president of the Martin Agency.

I actually got even more insights from the 4 comments other people left on the site -- so don't forget to read those also.

Here's my only quibble and it's something I've noticed in many branding articles.  It's the notion that TV, the news media, radio, etc. are the only ways people have been receiving stories for the last several decades.  The notion is that people are now liberated because they can actively create and share their own stories due to technology. That's silly.

Of course people have been making up and sharing stories with each other for millenia.  So let's keep in mind that when professionals in marketing/branding/ad/pr industries talk this way, they are really only sharing about the mindset of their worlds.

Up until recently that mindset has been about the pushing and telling of messages.  Now there is a revolution underway that is about corporations engaging in sharing stories back and forth with customers.

Which gets us back to the point of the article -- we need to think better about our stories, build storytelling skills, and understand the dynamics of story sharing.