Learn To Tell Stories II

Last time I wrote the following:

Over the years, it’s become increasingly clear to me that the best marketing and advertising focuses on evocative storytelling. If done well it not only makes the product appealing, it makes the brand compelling, which can mean the difference between a customer and a lifelong customer – someone who becomes your brand advocate and who helps build you a tribe.

It’s my intention to periodically add to this series, as the mood strikes me, by diving into ad campaigns amazing storytelling, at least in my opinion. The very strategic schedule for these series updates is based on Tim Urban’s new post model. I’ve arrived at this through meticulous testing, as I’m sure Tim did. I’m sure Tim Ferriss would be proud of me. So many Tims, but on with the post.

One Company Who Gets It

Let’s take, The Skimm, for instance.  Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin started their community in 2012 after leaving their dream jobs at NBC. Targeting millennials, women in particular, who are hoping to remain or become politically astute, Zakin and Weisberg are building a media empire around the idea of delivering concise political news via email and podcast in the millennial vernacular. The brand’s ambassador is the “Skimm Girl,” a character who has her own style, down to a favorite drink. New Skimm employees are required to learn all about her, because she’s part of the brand – part of the story.

Here’s Zakin’s take on who they are:

To this day we’ve never even thought about ourselves as a content company. We call ourselves a membership company, but that’s like our buzz word. But, I think what we’re really about is storytelling.

The clip above picks up with Zakin’s response to the interviewer referencing “content” companies. In particular, she mentions AOL becoming a content company at a time when “no one wants content,” and then goes on to praise them for being ahead of the curve in terms of determining what their audience wanted.

How do the scrupulous editors of Wikipedia describe The Skimm?

The Skimm (styled theSkimm) is an American media company, founded in 2012 by Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin, providing a subscription-only newsletter. The newsletter is a digest of news stories intended to be simple and easy to read.

So, why? Why is a company predicated upon being a daily news digest for millennial women all about storytelling?

For one thing, they’re called “news stories.” If you Google the term… well, see for yourself.

Secondly, Zakin and Weisberg understand their audience, because they are their audience. This allows them to tell news stories in a more entertaining and relational way that resonates. But, let’s not mistake what they do for reporting the news. There is most certainly a voice. From start to finish, The Skimm brand is telling one big story, one little story at a time.

I don’t subscribe to The Skimm. I did at one time. I genuinely tried to like it, too, because I’d heard in an interview that they had assembled a panel to discuss politics in a non-partisan way. I respected that. However, I’m not a millennial. As clever as I think the idea is I just couldn’t get into delivery, which comes off as condescending to me. Chacun à son goût. It’s clearly tremendously successful.

What I do see though, is an understanding that the storytelling aspect is absolutely essential to developing an audience, tribe, or whatever marketing buzzword you want to use. At some point I’ll probably dig into the science behind storytelling and why it’s so powerful. But for now, I’ll close with a quote from Stewart Butterfield from his Masters of Scale interview with Reid Hoffman.

If there was one piece of advice I wish I could phone back and give to myself, was just concentrate on that storytelling part, on the convincing people. Because if you can’t do that, it doesn’t matter how good the product is, it doesn’t matter how good the idea was for the market, or what happens in the external factors, if you don’t have the people believing. (emphasis mine)

Sales as storytelling? Sounds like material for another storytelling post.

Cheers.

Learn To Tell Stories

I have a friend whose father tells jokes and funny stories that never end… literally. There is supposed to be an actual punchline somewhere, but as the storytelling progresses his initially mild chuckling gradually builds to utter delirium. By the time the end rolls around he’s completely unintelligible. But, here’s the kicker: it’s okay, because you’re laughing so hard at his contagious laughter that the missing punchline becomes irrelevant.

One of the reasons I’m so enamored with photography is its storytelling potential. The photo series below of my daughter and Hank was entirely spontaneous. We were having a deep discussion (my daughter and I, although Hank is quite the conversationalist when he’s hungry, wants to go out, etc…). As I sat in my chair, our discussion winding down, I noticed her position was remarkably similar to his. She noticed, too, so I grabbed my camera and the silliness ensued.

Hey… why don’t you lick on someone your own size?

I love stories; I always have. Back in 2011, I left my position at a marketing firm and embarked upon an entrepreneurial journey to start a business on the basis of storytelling. Sketch video was our primary creative medium, although we did other content development, branding, and design as well. I called it InkBlot and premised the company on distilling our clients’ vision/mission/goals, concisely and compellingly telling that story to their audience, thereby creating brand advocates. We focused on local businesses and non-profits for clientele, and it was some of the most fun I’ve had in my professional career.

Over the years, it’s become increasingly clear to me that the best marketing and advertising focuses on evocative storytelling. If done well it not only makes the product appealing, it makes the brand appealing, which can mean the difference between a customer and a lifelong customer – someone who becomes your brand advocate and who helps build you a tribe.

If you’ve followed other posts of mine, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of the Harvard Business Review. Check out this 2014 HBR article touching on oxytocin release and the neurobiology of storytelling. Just in case you promptly decided to skip the article as soon as you read “oxytocin” and “neurobiology,” I’ll leave you with this quote from the author, Paul J. Zak:

My research has also shown that stories are useful inside organizations. We know that people are substantially more motivated by their organization’s transcendent purpose (how it improves lives) than by its transactional purpose (how it sells goods and services). Transcendent purpose is effectively communicated through stories – for example, by describing the pitiable situations of actual, named customers and how their problems were solved by your efforts. (Emphasis mine)

There’s a word for the italicized portion from the above quote: testimonial. A testimonial should be brief, compelling narrative of how one person (who could be any person reading it) was positively impacted by said company.

This is a topic that is in my blood. Storytelling in general, but particularly its role in business, entrepreneurship, public speaking, branding, marketing, and advertising I find to be endlessly fascinating. If it holds the same luster for you, please join me in the coming posts for a deep dive into some brilliant stories and the companies, people, and campaigns behind them.

To close out the series, we’ll dig into how we can learn to tell more compelling stories. Why? If you learn to tell stories, you will always have an audience.

Until next time!

The Problem With Problems

Here’s my mini-post for the month of May, perhaps better suited to P2. Nonetheless, I sit here on the verge of a blogging hiatus in order to tackle a few challenges I am facing – a few problems that need solving. The hiatus is based upon the following bit of wisdom:

“A problem well-stated is half-solved.”

I’ve seen this quote attributed to Charles Kettering, as well as a variation (“A problem well-put is half-solved”) to John Dewey. Either way, we must fully understand the nature of the problems we’re facing if we hope to find the right solutions.

Here’s to problems fully solved. Until June. . .

My Nemesis?

Thanks for joining me for this two, possibly three, part series.  Let’s get right into it.

For years I was engaged in a fight – nay, a war with a clandestine enemy so insidious that it grew to threaten my very way of life. However, what would become constant conflict began innocently enough in my elementary school classroom. Back then, I would even laugh and joke about it. “I’m getting by rather well,” I thought. And I was. So, I never stopped to ponder whether or not its influence might have a negative impact on my life, despite repeated appeals from my parents and teachers to consider this possibility.

Upon entering high school, however, the once innocent interaction with this enigmatic force became less and less benign. As responsibilities increased and school work became more challenging, I found myself increasingly subject to its power. This impacted my grades, relationships, and motivation. I fully realized the severity of the situation as it plagued me during my undergraduate years, but unsure how to escape, I convinced myself that it was a “school thing.”

Thus, I began my professional career believing to have left behind the foolish ways of my youth and all the struggles thereof, but there it was awaiting me in the workplace, poised to foil my plans of building a healthy, successful adult life.

This epic conflict waged against an unseen foe wreaked greater havoc on my life than nearly any other. And yet, this is a fight with which millions are intimately familiar. Indeed, my nemesis is the nemesis of many. Who, you ask, is this invisible villain known the world over?

Procrastination.

For those who are unfamiliar with the struggle, it is real. And I don’t mean that in the ironical, internet meme kind of way. What took place in me early in my life was a kind of causational apathy brought on by procrastinatory tendencies, or the classic good vs. evil battle playing out as work ethic vs. laziness. Understanding this, and learning how to utilize some of my natural character traits, I’ve grown to understand how procrastination can actually be a tremendously helpful creativity and productivity tool both in my professional and personal life.

Okay, I may have lost you there. In the second installment of this series, we’re going to define some terms and come to a better understanding of this whole procrastination thing.

For now, please enjoy this brilliant TED Talk by Tim Urban exploring the scientific side of this struggle (click the image to go directly to the talk). While I can’t recommend all of Tim’s work, this really opened my eyes to the neurological complexities of the chronic procrastinator’s mind. I hope you find it to be as enlightening as I did.

In all seriousness, Urban’s talk is hilariously tragic. That said, I think it provides some important context for the next procrastination post.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on your own struggles with putting off the important.

Thanks for stopping by!

I’m a writer.

I can’t help it. I just am. From age seven to 13, all I wanted to do was write. I wrote stories about cats at war with dogs. I wrote about adventures happening to everyday people. I wrote beginnings to unfinished stories, long since lost. Fiction, non-fiction, and combinations thereof – I just wrote.

By the time I reached 15 years old, I was planted firmly in the present and operating solely therein. I hadn’t bothered to conceive of life after high school. Story-writing and soccer occupied the majority of my time, and while I was being urged to consider soccer scholarships to Division I schools, the thought of making a living doing anything was simply nowhere on my radar.

Around this time, I dated a particular girl until I was told by her parents that I’d no longer be able to see her because I’d done something incredibly foolish (nothing illegal, mind you).  Like any creative worth his salt, I put pen to paper and crafted a compelling entreaty in which I apologized and took full responsibility for the aforementioned foolishness.  Of course, her parents relented.  Upon my absolution and the official reinstatement of our relationship her mother told me, “You need to be a writer when you get older!”

“Yes,” I thought. “I will become a writer!”

Once the idea was birthed, it seemed like the only natural path to take.  I was, for the first time, considering my future.  Not only was this liberating, but the thought of getting paid to write was inexplicably exciting.

Feeling as though I had stumbled upon something profound that opened up my world beyond the here and now, I went immediately to a family member whom I greatly admired.  Now, you should know that I am the lone creative in a family of realists, but it never even occurred to me that he might not share my enthusiasm.  Alongside my creativity was a strong dose of naivety.

Hopeful (and vulnerable), my guard was completely down.  Heck, I didn’t even have a guard.  Emotionally wide open and riding high on anticipation of all that awaited me, I said, “I know what I’m going to do when I get older.  I’m going to be a writer!”  I hadn’t even had time to fully exhale as he uttered nine piercing words deeply inimical to my epiphany:

“You’ll never make a decent living
as a writer.”

Our Great Dane, Hank, a talented method actor in his own right, gives a moving performance as the 15 year old me getting my writing dreams crushed

Crestfallen would probably be a good way to describe me in that moment.  Highly impressionable, naive, and in need of affirmation, I took those words to heart and never questioned the veracity of the statement.  As he went on to decry professional writers and extol the virtues of other careers, my eyes glazed over.  Nevertheless, I sought to conform to the advice proffered by those older and wiser.  And besides, who doesn’t want to make a ‘decent’ (whatever that meant) living?

Armed with this disheartening news, I set about high school life and sought to fill the void.  A host of other activities rapidly crowded the space previously enjoyed by my creative literary drive.  Awash in a sea of school, sport, and sociality, my literary love and I drifted apart.  I rationalized this as my first attempt at pragmatism.  The only way I knew how to apply this was to move on entirely.

In reality, my abandonment of writing was only quasi-abandonment.  While I had attempted to emotionally distance myself, it is in my blood.  As such, I gravitated toward a major in college that was heavily weighted toward essay writing.  I pursued business as a career but consistently found myself taking on roles in the organizations that involved writing of some kind.  And although it took me roughly a decade to recognize it, there are a variety of ways one can fulfill the creative drive to write in a business environment.  The advent of the modern internet has, of course, made that all the more possible.

I’ve come to understand two immutable truths about writers, and I believe these hold true for other forms of artistic expression as well.  These are not novel (no pun intended) ideas, but when I came to understand them, my view of writing and of myself changed.

So, here they are:

1. Writers write because they have to.  It is simply in them, and it must come out one way or another.  Jeff Goins has a post about this, which you can read here, in which he expands upon this notion as it pertains to getting published.
2. When one truly has a gift for writing, it can be applied to all kinds of media, industries, careers, etc… in a way that fulfills the writer and contributes to the mission of the organization.

For the past decade of my career, writing has been a function of work.  That’s not to say it hasn’t been enjoyable.  In a sense, you could say that in each of my career forays, writing has found me again and again although I’d made a misguided attempt to move on from it long ago.

Abhor mediocrity is me finding writing.  It represents my first attempt to write purely for the sake of writing.  Here, I hope to generate ideas as well as entertain and inspire all who stumble upon it.  I hope you will join me for the ride by reading, commenting, and sharing.