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Rich & Evocative Brand Stories
Some brands, especially those in the premium end of the B2C market have really grasped the value of building rich and evocative stories around their brands.
The finest of their craft blur the line between advertising campaign and engaging entertainment – an incredibly rich place for brands to play. Dior have been slowly building a beautifully layered brand story on You Tube, displaying their skill and style in this brand communication channel.
Crisis in cocoa production threatens to transform candy bar into luxury good - Few have any idea how to solve this multifaceted crisis. But Mr. Mason has a notion. For half a dozen years, he’s been cobbling together a road map to relief that involves overhauling the current cocoa-business model. He outlined this last Thursday in a Ghanaian hotel conference before rapt cocoa powerbrokers and government officials.
If his plan actually moves forward, the future of chocolate might be saved.
One of the keys to creating something of value -- and building a successful business on top of it -- is developing a great story. In this talk, we'll look at the critical elements required for your story and why it's so important to focus your business around this story.
The mind works as both a camera and a mirror. We take in experiences (the camera) and those are processed and reflected back (the mirror) as we change and grow as an individual. Storytelling works the same way. It is the camera through which the reader experiences the story world. Story also reflects back the soul of the character, through story meaning, and impacts the reader at the same level.
Q: What did you come to most admire about the researchers working to develop Watson?
A: I found myself admiring their meticulous engineering. I’ve always enjoyed stories of great engineering, from the building of the Panama Canal to the rescue of Apollo 13. The work on Watson fits into that genre. It involves continual problem-solving, innovations, incremental improvements, and above all, endless patience. To do this work, the Jeopardy team had to break down the way we think, the way we understand sentences and concepts and facts, into tiny components, and then teach them to Watson.
Visitors are given the tools to discover content through their own actions, creating personal pathways through information, forging experiences as diverse as their interests. Second Story provides the stage, the imagery, information, and atmosphere that allow audiences to create unique stories and personal pathways through content.
In the spring and summer of 2006, Executive Editor Kim Nagy and I interviewed a group of scientists, architects, artists and writers who had gathered to create installations representing their work in an interactive park called Quark Park on a vacant lot in the heart of Princeton, New Jersey. One of the participants was molecular biologist Paul Schimmel whose work was cited by Nature Magazine as one of the developments that launched the Human Genome project.
Imported from Detroit was an advertisement. It was meant to sell cars. And yet it spoke to me on a deep emotional level, the way the very best films and novels do. --And given the public reaction, I don't think it's just because I'm from a town outside of Detroit, and I've stood in many of those places on my own two feet.
This struck me right between the eyes, since it is structure we used in Groundswell and Empowered. We tell a story, then we dolly back for the long view, and tell you what it means, how to interpret it. Many business books tell stories. Many have insights. But the ones that tell the story well, then layer the insight on top, are the ones you remember. So if you want to write a good business book, just copy that.
Surprisingly, it’s the storytelling skills I’ve developed as a novelist that have helped me most as a hotelier. Hoteliers are natural storytellers. We can often be spotted at social gatherings regaling crowds with tales of impossible guests and improbable situations, all the while carefully editing details to ensure discretion and inflate our importance.
Our stay in Edinburgh coincided with the birthday of Scotland’s beloved poet Robert Burns, on 25 January, when Burns Suppers are held around the country.
It’s nothing new to praise Hans Rosling for his amazing ability to craft an engaging story around [gasp] statistics. Garr Reynolds has repeatedly written about his talents, and a Google search for “Hans Rosling” brings his TED profile before his Wikipedia profile, simply because of how popular his TED presentations have become.
Are you guilty of information overload? Do you abuse Clip Art? Here, the experts weigh in on how to create a pitch-perfect PowerPoint presentation.
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When it comes to persuasion, companies traditionally appeal to left side of the brain, using logic and reason. However, persuasion occurs just as much (if not more) through emotion. Daniel Pink, author of Drive, writes, “Right-brain dominance is the new source of competitive advantage.” Tapping the right side of the brain allows for deeper engagement by uniting an idea with an emotion. The best way to do this? Tell a compelling story.
Your style of storytelling has been described as ‘kaleidoscopic’. Do you feel this is accurate? What attracts you to telling a story with so many strands?
With the former glory of old, linear media fading, Melody Ayres-Griffiths examines just what the new media artform known as ‘transmedia’ is, and how it will engage an increasingly discerning yet time-starved populace in an immersive and interactive way.
Supporters of a branch library are outraged over the city’s use of a $225,000 donation to pay a retired librarian $45 per hour for storytelling instead of restoring reduced hours at the facility or preventing its potential closure.
Pop stars still make the best celebrities, even if they can't sell records in anything like the numbers they used to.
What can they sell instead? Stories.
It’s always fun listening to photographers recount once-in-a-lifetime experiences that lead to once-in-a-lifetime photographs. In this short National Geographic video, photographer Brian Skerry describes what it was like to get up close and personal with a 45-foot-long whale. We only wish there was a little video to go along with his wonderful storytelling!
At a Touchdown Club meeting many years ago, Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant told the following story:
I had just been named the new head coach at Alabama and was off in my old car down in South Alabama recruiting a prospect who was supposed to have been a pretty good player, and I was having trouble finding the place.
Tamara: I’m Catholic. I kept imagining my Lebanese mother’s horror upon hearing of her daughter’s sleazy reporting adventure. I wanted to tell a good story, but my morals got in the way. Whenever I saw boobs, I saw Judgment Day.
Africa to Australia is an SBS interactive documentary that tells the stories of African migrants to Australia; it uses video, photography and text to share views about immigration, racism, family and the struggle to belong in a new place.
Stories make us laugh. Some make us cry. Some are so powerful they change us forever. But did you know that your story might be harming you?
First of all, a little context for this discussion that will make sense further on:
"Story is about respect, not disdain, for the audience."
- Robert McKee
So let's jump right into it. Although this post will be a condensed version of my talk, here are three questions I hope to answer:
Why is storytelling crucial to innovation?
Why are stories essential to brands?
How will strategic storytelling drive 21st Century business?
Listening to personal narratives helped control high blood pressure as effectively as the addition of more medications.
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