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You need to flip the script – about corporate/brand stories (part II)

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

(This blog post on “flipping the script” will consist of 4 articles on branding and storytelling. Stay tuned to catch’em all. Missed the first one? Grab it here.)

So is that easy? Just tell stories? I have been reading a lot about storytelling lately. And watching this video it made me think of the old AIDA communication model (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) and storytelling:

The acronym AIDA has been a handy tool for lots of communicators ensuring that your copy, or other communication, grabs attention. The acronym stands for:

Attention (or Attract)
Interest
Desire
Action

These are the four steps you need to take your audience through if you want them to buy your product or visit your website, or in this case to visited a dermatologist to have yourself checked, head to toe, for anything that might be of worry.

A slightly more sophisticated version of this is AIDCA/AIDEA, which includes an additional step of Conviction/Evidence between Desire and Action. People are so cynical about advertising messages that coherent evidence may be needed if anyone is going to act!

I believe the AIDA approach can be linked with the power of storytelling. Let us look at the 16-Year-Old Me campaign again and make an effort to do this.

Attention/Attract:

In our media-filled world, you need to be quick and direct to grab people’s attention. Through sharing stories, the campaign catches the reader’s attention and makes them stop and read what the organization has to say. It uses powerful words and images that resonate with the emotion of the audience. The audience becomes a player in the stories that are being told. In this case, the audience does not like in most cases become the hero. Quite the opposite, the audience becomes the anti-hero: … The words they use in the campaign had rhythm (repeating messages) and that made you swing from past to now to future. It uses metaphors to get the massage stick: Your skin is like an elephant, it never forgets. Later in this book you’ll see that all of these are important elements if you want your story to stick.

Interest:

This is often one of the most challenging stages. You’ve got the attention of a chunk of your target audience, but can you engage them enough so that they’ll want to spend their precious time understanding your message in more detail? Gaining your audience’s interest is a deeper process than grabbing their attention. They will give you a little more time to do it, but you must stay focused on their needs. Most traditional communication fails at this stage because it doesn’t clearly point out the messages that are relevant to the audience. This audience then finds it too hard to choose between what is important and what is not. Moreover, most business communication uses bullets, headings and subheadings, and tries to break up the text in all possible ways to make their points stand out. Do you recognize this? Then you know what the result is. Disconnect. Game-over.

What this campaign clearly shows you is that by sharing stories you not only grab the attention of your audience, but at the same time get their interest by making these stories their own!

Desire:

As you’re building your audience’s interest, you also need to help them understand how whatever it is you’re offering can help them in a real way. The typical way of doing this is by appealing to their personal needs and wants.

So, rather than simply saying “You need to get yourself checked”, the campaign does not explain (brain to brain communication) but shows (heart to heart communication) the audience what’s in it for them: “it’s one of the most common diseases with teenagers, and it can be deadly”.

So don’t build your audience’s desire for your product with communicating the features and benefits of the product or your organization. I know that today, when you describe your offering or when you communicate about your organization, you probably don’t just give the facts and features. You probably expect the audience to work out the benefits for themselves. You probably tell them how the benefits clearly are of interest to them by showing real life cases. But does this kind of communication works for you? Does it create that interest and desire you are looking for?

Action:

Finally, be very clear about what action you want your readers to take. For example: “Visit my website now for more information” rather than just leaving people to work out what to do for themselves.

“Send this video to anyone who is of turn 16. And check yourself! Educate yourself. You can download tools and information about melanoma here: www.dcmf.ca. Share this link. Tweet this link and post it to your facebook.” Can’t be any clearer. And more than 1 million people of taken up this action request. Thanks to the power of storytelling.

So now, what is your story on branding and storytelling?

I believe everyone has a story. You ARE your story. But does your story resonate? Does it stick to minds and hearts of your public? Does it engage and spark action? Let me get into this in more detail next time.

Tags: AIDA, brading, brand story, corporate story, personal story, story model, storytelling
Posted in Blogging and storytelling, Impact of stories | 1 Comment »

You need to flip the script – about branding and storytelling (part I)

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011

(This blog post on “flipping the script” will consist of 4 articles on branding and storytelling. Stay tuned to catch’em all.)

I’ve heard the phrase “flip your script” or “flip the script” in various hip-hop songs.

It often means to do the unexpected, to deviate from the norm. I would like to link to storytelling. Before telling you why I would like to share this video with you.

Dear 16-Year-Old Me is Canadian campaign for skin cancer awareness sends a powerful message about what it means to be an adult, reflecting on the past and realizing there’s so much you needed to say before it was too late. The video got over 1 million views in less than 10 days. And all of this with no paid media for this campaign.

The campaign flipped the script!

The video is one long story brought by a cast of survivors openly addressing themselves when they were 16. This story is good example of what I call “Storynomics” (I am writing a book about this). The makers of this video understand that we are living in the new experience economy where the most trusted people and organizations are the ones that build, produce and tell stories we can connect with. These organizations use stories as a product.

Let’s go back to the video. Sure, it’s a typical “talking heads” online PSA which features different people. But it’s pretty inspirational. The concept and the content have really struck a chord. Why? Because it works with the power of storytelling. The video clocks in at just over five minutes. In terms of online viewer attention span they sure flipped the script. Even with its 5 minutes long, it’s kind of hard to tear yourself away from it. So instead of making a 30 or 60-second version they decided to tell the full story. I watched it from start to finish and looking at the comments I was not one sitting it right through to the end.

The makers of this campaign probably were a fan of the “Dearmebooks.com site.

If you were to write a letter to your 16-year-old self, what would it say? In DEAR ME: A LETTER TO MY SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD SELF, some of the world’s best loved personalities have written just such a letter. They range from the compassionate to the shocking via hilarity and heartbreak, but the letters all have one thing in common: a story that offers a unique insight into the teenager who would grow up to be…. Stephen Fry, Kim Wilde, Annie Lennox, Paul O’Grady, Jackie Collins, Peter Kay, Debbie Harry, Yoko Ono and Emma Thompson… to name but a few!

Where the Dear-16-Old Me campaign really flipped the script was here: Dear 16-Year-Old Me = The Reverse “It Gets Better” Campaign. Don’t we all know these traditional “get better communication” most pharmaceutical companies send out? They sound like this: I had a fantastic life… enjoyed going to the football with son … man, did we had a great time … than I got sick… it was really bad … the worst part was that I couldn’t go to the football with my son anymore… but luckily company X was there … and taking their fantastic medication I started to get better. End of story.

This 16-year-old me campaign is sort of like the reverse these “It Gets Better” campaigns. Like, “Hey kids! Enjoy your lives while you still have it, because eventually you will succumb to the single disease taking away more lives than anything else.” And they bring this message through real stories of survivors of disease.

So is that easy? Just tell stories? Well, let me dwell on this a little bit more in my next blog post: Storytelling and the old AIDA communication model.

Tags: brand story, branding, corporate story, Dear 16 year old me, definition story, storynomics, storyonomics, storytelling
Posted in Blogging and storytelling, Digital/Multimedia storytelling, Impact of stories, Storytelling and Social media, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

WHY I do what I do (that corporate story stuff)

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

I like Simon Sinek.

I feel like I know him. He probably doesn’t know me. I don’t care, I still like him. Let me explain WHY.

Simon has a great book “Start with Why”. He spends a lot of the book looking at the diagram – the Golden Circle.

WHAT: Every single company and organization on the planet knows WHAT they do.

HOW: Some companies and people know HOW they do WHAT they do. Whether you call them a “differentiating value proposition,” “proprietary process” or “unique selling proposition,” HOWs are often given to explain how something is different or better.

WHY: Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. When I say WHY, I don’t mean to make money—that’s a result. By WHY I mean what is your purpose, cause or belief? WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?

The simplicity of understanding WHY and making sure your HOW and WHAT connect with that has really helped me and my story work.

So yes, I am asking the question “WHY” a lot.

It’s about connection

People have to connect with your “WHY”. A lot of companies have a purpose (WHY) that has come from the leader, which is how it should be – but, and this is a big but, people have to connect to that WHY. If your WHY is to build a large, profitable and successful company – people won’t connect with that. People aren’t interested in helping you to build a company and become more successful. WHY has to connect with their heart.

A story of failure?

My story is not much different from a lot of other young entrepreneurs. Armed with a vision of how I could do it better, a lot of passion and the right amount of insanity, I set off to do something with an over 90% statistical change of failure: start my own business.

In all of this it was necessity that helped me articulate the “Why.” It was my need to understand what was causing my frustration and my need to get out of the corporate world. I knew what I had been doing. I knew how I had doing it, but I didn’t know “Why.” Success and happiness can only fully exist if all three of those things are in balance.

Only when I learned to articulate “Why” I do what I do — to inspire people to do the things that inspire them – would my life start to turn around. I literally stopped talking about what I did and only started talking about what I believed: the power of storytelling. In the beginning my story had no connection what so ever with the world of business and clients. But people who believed what I believed wanted to learn more. My friends started talking about my “Why.” They invited me to their homes for informal gatherings to talk to their friends. I started to get invitations to more and more places, from more and more people — everyone who wanted to learn about this thing called the “Why.” My “Why” became social and was working all the new social media channels. And learned using these as I things evolved.

My life profoundly changed and I had a new direction.

I started doing things and meeting people I never imagined I would. In fact, there’s not a single thing I’m doing now that I imagined doing, let alone wrote down in any plan. I never imagined I would become a speaker, yet now I get two to four speaking requests per month. I never imagined writing a book. I never imagined working with CEO’s and senior managers on defining THEIR story. Yet I now and then and I sit down with leaders of all kinds of companies.

Which brings me to the most simple big-why-point: I am not an academic, nor am I some consultant with some “proprietary process.” I’m just a guy who discovered something that profoundly changed my life — a new direction. I made a decision that I would work to share what I had discovered because if more people could also find clarity of “Why,” it would make the world a better place, and this was a totally selfish pursuit because I would prefer to live in a better world — a world filled with optimism and inspired leaders.

So yes, I believe this why stuff is important.

I am (not) that guy!

I was in Prague a few weeks ago -speaking on a conference about Brand Journalism- with David Henderson –a guy I have been following quite a bit on his blog. David is an award-winning journalist and communication strategist. David asked me to join him in this conference to talk about storytelling. Just four years ago, I was starting up a little out of-the-box-local-communication-consultancy-business. The big dreams I had then was of making a living out of working with storytelling in a bizz environment. I never thought of becoming a more international oriented (and bigger) communication consultant. I never imagined doing what I do now and especially never imagined doing what I did a few weeks ago at the conference. Besides, even if I did imagine something like it, no one would have taken me seriously.

What makes the whole experience even more surreal is that I wasn’t there as an outsider. David asked me to join him in leading the whole conference as an adjunct key note speaker. In other words, I was there as an equal.

I’m not that much more experienced than I was four years ago. The only thing that changed — the thing that changed the course of my career so dramatically — was the introduction of a clear Why into my life.

Why this why stuff changed my life

I did not invent the concept of Why; I just discovered it. It is a naturally occurring phenomenon that exists deep in the human brain and influences the behavior of every one of us. It is what drives our behavior and is where our inspiration comes from. The discovery happened by accident, not because I was looking to fill some market segment, but because I needed feel inspired again. I had lost that feeling and I wanted it back.

Today I continue to work hard to focus my career around my Why, which is both to inspire people to do the things that inspire them and to not worry about what I would do or where it would take me. This was the opposite of what most of us are raised to think from hearing: “Figure out what you want to do and focus on that.” I still don’t know what I want to do, but I know Why I do the things I do. It is this open-minded approach that has opened so many doors for me.

That is my story.

I’m actually quite uncomfortable talking about this stuff. Still I did decide to tell you my experience with this “why” stuff because I believe it is crucial in defining YOUR story and to make sure your story would stick and resonate with your audience. So stay close to yourself when you work on your story. In defining and working your story forget all the this crazy and complex positioning talk of classical communication consultants. (I still most of the time don’t want to be called a consultant because of the negative stories that circulate around this kind of business.) Just connect with your big “why”, try to write it down and you’ll see that you will not be a long way from mnailing down YOUR story. And all sort of happy connections will automatically follow…

Do you know this consultant joke?

The Oldest Profession…

A medical doctor, an engineer, and a management consultant were arguing about what was the oldest profession in the world.

The doctor started… “Well, in the Bible, it says that God created Eve from a rib taken from Adam’s body. This must have required surgery, and so I can claim with a high degree of confidence that mine is the oldest profession in the world.”

The engineer responded, and said, “But earlier in the book of Genesis, it states that God created the order of the heavens and the earth from out of the chaos. This was the first and certainly the most impressive application of civil engineering. Therefore, dear doctor, you are wrong: mine is surely the oldest profession in the world.”

The management consultant leaned back in his chair, smiled, and then said confidently, “Ah, but who do you think created the chaos?”

Don’t be that guy and start your own WHY thing today. Start looking at your BIGGER story.

Note:

Few days after this blogpost I read this great article from Clay Forsberg “Don’t fool yourself, your customers don’t care about you“. I think you should read it.

Tags: Brand Journalism, brand story, corporate story, David Henderson, Simon Sinek, Start with the why, story, storytelling
Posted in Blogging and storytelling, Brand Journalism, Career stories, Change stories, Impact of stories, Uncategorized | No Comments »

How new is the new gold? And where can I find it?

Friday, March 25th, 2011

Is Brand Journalism the new gold?

Not necessarily.

But make no mistake, the essential elements of brand journalism are today more important than ever.

If you are an organization who strives to create unique and valuable content and share it with the world, then you’re probably already doing brand journalism.

This is what Larry Light, McDonald Corp.’s chief marketing officer of McDonald’s said in 2004:

“Mass marketing no longer works and no single ad tells the whole story.”

Although this is not a new message I see a lot of companies struggling with exactly that today. And they are asking themselves this question:

“how can we tell our story so it sticks in the minds and hearts of our audience?”.

So Larry Light adopted in 2004 a “new” marketing technique that he called brand journalism.

Speaking at a conference at the New York Sheraton Hotel and Towers in 2004, Mr. Light described the concept as one marking “the end of brand positioning as we know it.” He went on to say that effective marketing should use many stories rather than employing one message to reach everyone. In effect, he declared that McDonald’s was abandoning the universal message concept.

“Any single ad, commercial or promotion is not a summary of our strategy. It’s not representative of the brand message,” he said. “We don’t need one big execution of a big idea. We need one big idea that can be used in a multidimensional, multilayered and multifaceted way.”

He went on to define brand journalism, which he also referred to as a brand narrative or brand chronicle, as a way to record “what happens to a brand in the world,” and create ad communications that, over time, can tell a whole story of a brand.

The concept of brand journalism was first used by David Meerman Scott at the beginning of the 2000s. At the same time, David Henderson, an awarded former news correspondent with CBS and a communication specialist started using the concept in order to enhance the value created by corporate online newsrooms.

David Henderson says:

“The ultimate key to success for next generation online newsrooms is a constant flow of fresh, credible and appealing news updates, features and photos together with unceasing promotion through social media communities.”

So I let me ask you this question: is brand journalism new to you?

And a even more relevant question would be: is brand journalism useful for you as a person/company/organization/brand today?

Lately I hear a lot of people talking about content and content strategy. Is content and brand journalism the new gold for marketing and communication teams?

Let us have a look at what David Henderson describes as essential elements in Brand Journalism:

social media tools – built into each story to provide for easy commenting, posting to Twitter, e-mailing to a colleague or connecting to any number of social networking sites;
news stories – written by working journalists in a concise, balanced and legitimate news style, free of sales pitches and self-promotion;
profiles of employees, executives and experts – drafted as appealing features;
photos – shot by accomplished photojournalists in order to provide the media with easy access to high-resolution images;
contact links – instantly alert specific staff members assigned to media inquiries or questions from customers;
search engine optimization (SEO) – runs invisibly and automatically to ping or alert every search engine to new activity and stories and boost all-important search engine ranking.

If you look at content in this way I would say “yes, brand journalism is the new gold”.

But I also see a lot of people today producing content for content’s sake. That’s not brand journalism!

What you really need to do this:

You need to start building an emotional and engaging story. This story tells your audience who you are and what you stand for. And you need to tell your story in a compelling and authentic way.

It is that simple to really become a connected company or a connected person in today’s hyper-connected world.

This is the way people connect in today’s new world.

Want to know more about how to use the power of story and brand journalism?

Join me at the “Brand Journalism International Workshop” in Prague, April 14-15.

Tags: bedrijfsverhaal, Brand Journalism, storytelling, The New Trade
Posted in Blogging and storytelling, Change stories, Digital/Multimedia storytelling, Great storytellers, Impact of stories, Storytelling and Social media, The New Trade | 1 Comment »

A new movement to start re-humanizing corporate world?

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

Dear Believers of The New Trade,
A few weeks ago some of you funded real money to help me get my message out. Thank you.

No I mean… THANK you!

Yes, we made it. My book-writing-project ‘The New Trade’ reached its target of 9000 euro.

So today it is my turn to help you. That seems only fair.

A quick reminder for those of you who have forgotten why they funded this project anyways. Well, you wanted to get involved in writing a book together. Maybe you were just being friendly (no worries, much appreciated).

So what again is this book project all about: well, the last couple of years I have been reading about all aspects of storytelling. How it influences the economy, the society, leadership, authenticity, social media and so on. Interesting stuff. I have also been guiding quite a few international companies in using storytelling as a business tool. I have given a dozen workshops and lectures about this theme to blue chip companies. They all seemed convinced about 1 thing: the power corporate storytelling. No, it’s not a marketing tool. No, it is not business as usual. I have been calling it “the new trade”. And I believe the new trade IS the new business as usual!

Futurist Rolf Jensen predicts, “Companies will thrive on the basis of their stories and myths”.
For myself I have been intrigued with stories and storytelling ever since I was a very young boy. Stories are how we convey our deepest emotions and talk about those things that we value the most. Everyone has a story to tell. And exploring these stories is my business imperative.
Actually, it’s more than that. It’s a moral duty. Because I believe that corporate life manifestly dehumanises us, mechanises us into robots. It seems strange that any attempt to infuse it with a soul -with a story- seems bizarre and widely out of place. I believe in breaking down the walls of corporate-dom. Typical management talk does not interest me. Not in companies, not for myself. I focus on stories. Real, authentic stories that help each organisation with its change processes, its strategies, its communication and its position within society as a whole. Is your company touching people’s minds and hearts? Are your leaders sharing the stories that will create the future they envision?

Mmm… don’t get me going here.

So I decided to write a book about all of this. And to make it simple and concrete I try to summarize my view in one sentence:
The New Trade: is all about people – connecting with other people – by sharing their stories for everyone to repeat – hoping to inspire the world and ultimately make it a better place.

You can still download the Manifesto (pdf) that I have already written about it..

If you want to be part of ‘The New Trade’ movement you can start by joining me in this book-writing-project. How does this work. Simple. I write stuff and you can have your say in it. This way the book gets crowdsourced and gets connected with lots of good stuff from our community (believers first).

To get started: I want to share with you my research for this book-writing-project. Follow this link to Delicious and have look at all the material I have been reading lately on storytelling, social media, communities, innovation, crowdsourcing and many more: http://www.delicious.com/rafstevens

I have organized it with ‘tags’. If you look for the tag ‘thenewtrade’ you will find all the material there. There are also subtags that will help you to choose which stuff you find more interesting. This is my first gift back to you (you’re welcome!).

If you go Twitter you can find me @rafstevens. Please connect with me if you want to follow along. I have been sending multiple tweets to the community often using #thenewtrade. Look for it, you’ll probably find lots of material and people that could be interesting to you or your business.
I have also set-up on online discussion group for this project. I called it ‘LinkedStories’ and you can access it via Google Groups.

Finally, I have put out a “rafstevens” website on Postereous. This site combines my work from www.corporatestoryteller.be and my book-writing-project. The content of this site contains curated thoughts from the storytelling community and from my blog. It also has links to all the sites mentioned in this blog post (consider it as a central please where you can always come back to if you lost the links).

So what’s next? Well, that is entirely up to you. If you want to be closely involved then I welcome you to join The New Trade movement right now. Start reading some of my research stuff. Start a discussion in Google groups/LinkedStories. Throw me mail: raf@corporatestoryteller.be I’ll try to answer to every mail within 24 hours (take notice that there is a time difference between New York, London and small town Nieuwenrode here

Start spreading the word via Twitter. Every tweet counts to create a New Trade of a re-humanized business full with stories.

As for me? I will do all of that in the following weeks. Than I’ll see if my message connects to you, and if I can get you engaged in all of this.

Isn’t this cool. This is the way stories connect in the year 2011.
Raf

Tags: Raf Stevens, storytelling, The New Trade
Posted in Blogging and storytelling, Change stories, Great storytellers | 1 Comment »

What the f**k is storytelling?

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Sorry for the F word. I guess I just needed an extra word with storytelling to make my message stick. Or did I not?

“Storytelling” seems to be all over the place lately. Although it is getting a fair amount of positive attention (thank got!) storytelling is also becoming some sort of umbrella word for everything and nothing.

Can I call on you today?

But first follow this short stream of thoughts…

Just a few minutes ago I shared some interesting reflections with some interesting people on the meaning of storytelling on Twitter. It started off with my RT of this blog post: Can a Brand Journalist Still Be a Journalist? Does it Matter?

In the blog post there is a reaction of David Meerman Scott:

A storyteller is a storyteller no matter who he is telling the story to.

I tweeted this sentence and the story began…

Michael Margolis (@getstoried on twitter) and author of The Storytelling Manifesto Believe Me was the first to reply :

Yup!

(you still had 137 characters left Michael

Sean Buvala (@storyteller):

Journalist isn’t #storytelling unless they’re speaking story to a live audience. Pen, video, spoken are unique story expressions.

Gunther Sonnenfeld (@goonth) who just has written a great article about ‘transmedia storytelling’ The Business of storytelling reacted next by saying:

transmedia storytelling helps us understand that storytelling is not confined, rather liberated by platform & channel.

It was his reaction on my question: Is transmedia storytelling not just storytelling?

And suddenly I got followed by the queen of storytelling Annette Simmons (@TheStoryFactor) -love your website your majesty- author of the fantastic book Whoever Tells the best story wins.

Okay, I thought. I have been working in the story fields for about 3 years now. And the most asked question to me is: what is storytelling? Second best question: what do you mean with “a story”? And quite frankly people asking my these questions often do not care about the difference between “story” and “storytelling”.

“Telling” is Tell to Win Peter Gruber would say. This week I have read and reviewed Peter’s book on storytelling Tell to Win. On the first day of sales it was #1 bestseller on Amazon. Amazing.

“Story” is looking at what kind of “story” you want to tell first Annette would say.

Maybe a last one from screenwriting coach Robert McKee. It is not actually Twitter-ready but I would like to share it with you. It comes from a blog post called “Happy tales: the CEO as Storyteller”:

Essentially, a story expresses how and why life changes. It begins with a situation in which life is relatively in balance: You come to work day after day, week after week, and everything’s fine. You expect it will go on that way. But then there’s an event—in screenwriting, we call it the “inciting incident”—that throws life out of balance. You get a new job, or the boss dies of a heart attack, or a big customer threatens to leave. The story goes on to describe how, in an effort to restore balance, the protagonist’s subjective expectations crash into an uncooperative objective reality. A good storyteller describes what it’s like to deal with these opposing forces, calling on the protagonist to dig deeper, work with scarce resources, make difficult decisions, take action despite risks, and ultimately discover the truth. All great storytellers since the dawn of time—from the ancient Greeks through Shakespeare and up to the present day—have dealt with this fundamental conflict between subjective expectation and cruel reality.

But what do you say?

Would you help me define what “storytelling” is for you?

And can you tweet it to me please (if you can’t explain it in 140 characters it is not really a strong elevator pitch is it?).

On twitter I live @rafstevens

So I can I count on the smartest people I know: that is my story network. That’s you, bro!

Thank you.

That’s also you master storytellers: @AstoriedCareer @Digitaltonto @dspark @storybagNL @storyteling @greggvm @davidhutchens @pauljoosten @sharleneSones @evasnijders @makingstories @unoder @kirkcheyfitz @davidhenderson @peterguber @stevedenning @frankadman @clayforsberg @vanessamiemis

I would like to dip my too in your stream every day (just stole that from @greggvm)

Tags: Raf Stevens, storytelling
Posted in Blogging and storytelling, Great storytellers | 1 Comment »

It’s the (corporate) story, stupid!

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

I have just finished reading “Tell to win” by Peter Guber. The book will officially be released for public consumption today, but I had the opportunity to review an advance copy.

Peter Guber, Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group, has been a force in the entertainment industry for over thirty years. He has told memorable stories in the films he personally produced or executive produced, including Rain Man, Batman, The Color Purple, Gorillas In The Mist and many more.

Historically, stories have always been igniters of action, moving people to do things. But only recently has it become clear that purposeful stories – those created with a specific mission in mind – are absolutely essential in persuading others to support a vision, dream or cause. I have been blogging about storytelling for about 3 years and the power of storytelling has been getting more and more attention in the corporate world.

This should not be a surprise really. Who of you does not know this managerial story -starring a confused manager who gets a great piece of advice.

“Don’t be confused. You’re only renting your office. You don’t own it. It’s a zoo. You’re the zookeeper and every single person that comes in the office comes with a monkey. That monkey is their problem. They’re trying to leave it with you. Your job is to discover where the monkey is. They’ll hide it, or dress it up, but remember you’re the zookeeper. You’ve got to keep the place clean. So make sure when you walk them to the door, they’ve got their monkey by the hand. Don’t let them come back until it is trained and they have solutions to their problems. Otherwise at the end of the day, you’ll have an office full of screaming, jumping animals and monkey shit all over the floor.”

Peter reminds us of this story that is originally told by Jack Warner, the legendary founder and recently retired chairman of Warner Bros.
The monkey story has been told by many managers. If you haven’t heard it, think about it and you’ll see you will be passing the story along in the years to come thereby giving good managerial advice to your public. That is what good stories do; they travel. Also in a business setting.

In Tell to Win, Peter Guber shows how to move beyond soulless Power Point slides, facts, and figures to create purposeful stories that can serve as powerful calls to action. The book is full of personal anecdotes out of Peter’s career. These anecdotes read as great little stories that can help you in using storytelling as a tool in your personal or business life.

Let me give away the ending of his book, which he actually reveals on the first page:

“There’s treasure to be discovered, and it’s inside you. Built into your DNA is humanity’s ten-thousand-plus years of telling and listening to oral stories. This veneration of story is a force so powerful and enduring that is has shaped cultures, religions, whole civilizations. Now, through telling to win, you can harness this force to achieve your most cherished goals.”

Tags: book, brand story, corporate story, corporate storytelling, Peter Gruber, storytelling, Tell to win
Posted in Blogging and storytelling, Change stories, Great storytellers | No Comments »

Where good ideas come from…

Friday, February 11th, 2011

This post of Seth Godin has been retweeted for about 4000 times. It connected to the crowd (that’s us). And you probably got some good ideas after reading it.

You know what I believe is core in Seth’s thoughts on ideas and their nature? That out of the 20 possibilities he lists only 1 is about YOU (and you only – full stop):

“Ideas come from our ego, and they do their best when they’re generous and selfless”

Consequently this means that the 19 other possibilities of where ideas come from are about YOU+1 or YOU+many. That’s connectivity. That is the network society. That is collaboration. That is co-creation. That is open innovation. That is how the world works today. That is The New Trade.

Where do ideas come from?

Ideas don’t come from watching television

Ideas sometimes come from listening to a lecture

Ideas often come while reading a book

Good ideas come from bad ideas, but only if there are enough of them

Ideas hate conference rooms, particularly conference rooms where there is a history of criticism, personal attacks or boredom

Ideas occur when dissimilar universes collide

Ideas often strive to meet expectations. If people expect them to appear, they do

Ideas fear experts, but they adore beginner’s mind. A little awareness is a good thing

Ideas come in spurts, until you get frightened. Willie Nelson wrote three of his biggest hits in one week

Ideas come from trouble

Ideas come from our ego, and they do their best when they’re generous and selfless

Ideas come from nature

Sometimes ideas come from fear (usually in movies) but often they come from confidence

Useful ideas come from being awake, alert enough to actually notice

Though sometimes ideas sneak in when we’re asleep and too numb to be afraid

Ideas come out of the corner of the eye, or in the shower, when we’re not trying

Mediocre ideas enjoy copying what happens to be working right this minute

Bigger ideas leapfrog the mediocre ones

Ideas don’t need a passport, and often cross borders (of all kinds) with impunity

An idea must come from somewhere, because if it merely stays where it is and doesn’t join us here, it’s hidden. And hidden ideas don’t ship, have no influence, no intersection with the market. They die, alone.

Tags: Raf Stevens, storytelling, The New Trade
Posted in Blogging and storytelling, Great storytellers | No Comments »

Crowdfunding is here to stay!

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

I have been in an online discussion with Steve Denning about Revolutionizing-the-world-of-work and the relation with my book-writing project ‘The New Trade’. To get you started in this please read my previous blog ‘Revolutionizing-the-world-of-work FOR DUMMIES’.

In one of these discussions Steve has given me 6 suggestions to think about how to make my project truly successful. I really want to thank Steve for his suggestions and remarks regarding my book-writing project. I find them very useful and I will come back to each of his sugestions and comments in the weeks to follow. Stay tuned.

As you know I am crowdsourcing and crowdfunding my first book.

For those of you who are not familiar with crowdfunding here is what Wikipedia says about is:

“Crowd funding (sometimes called crowd financing or crowd sourced capital) describes the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money and other resources together, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations.”

This brings me to Steve’s comment (#5) in which he shows not to be a big fan of crowdfunding.

Steve’s says:

“In the world of commerce, you look to get what you pay for: it’s a cold world of sharp edges and hard bargaining. The world of social norms is the opposite: it’s warm and fuzzy and sometimes pleasant and it depends on mutual trust. If you try to mix the two worlds, you usually end up in the world of cold, hard world of commerce and hard bargains. So by asking for money upfront, you risk killing the spirit of collaboration with which people might otherwise collaborate in your project.”

But I am wondering:

Is the world of commerce “cold” and “hard bargaining”? Maybe.

Is the world of “social norms” the opposite? Hmmm, quite often it is.

Is mixing the two worlds the same as living the cold, hard world of commerce. No, I don’t believe this is necessarily true.

Let us first have a look of what is going in the hard world of commerce when it comes down to financing and micro-financing. Number of traditional investors interested in start-ups who are looking for money has decreased rapidly. And traditional investors are moving (and have already moved) away from the category of publishing and creative works.

Furthermore as the recession continues to beat up today’s economy, finding the money to launch, expand or even just sustain a small business is often a struggle.

“In the second quarter of 2009, venture capital funds raised the smallest amount since the third quarter of 2003, according to the National Venture Capital Association. Banks continue to pull credit lines and credit cards from many small businesses.” http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/08/smallbusiness/barnraising_a_business….)

In Septembre 2010 The Economist wrote an interesting article about crowdfunding: “Putting money where your mouse is”.

They write “As crowdfunding has matured from a series of one-off efforts into something reproducible, the money has followed. Millions of dollars, in increments as small as $5, have poured into efforts that connect artists, musicians, writers and others with people willing to fund their projects.”

Advocates (and I am one of them) believe that crowdfunding can be part of a new way of doing business.

I have been calling this ‘The New Trade’ and you can find the Manifesto that I have written about it here : www.linkedstories.com

A new way of doing business needs a new set of rules. And I think crowdfunding can be very much an important part of this new game. So I do not agree with Steve when he said in an earlier reaction in this group: “Asking people for money upfront, even before one can see samples of the future book is a bold move.” Here Steve seems to forget that I have already written a Manifesto on the current project and book.

And Steve continues

“Personally, I find it a little offputting, for reasons that I discuss in chapter 10 of my book on radical management.”

But I have to wonder how radical Steve’s thought on this point really is in today’s business environment? Thinking about today I wonder; Is it in the current economic situation easy to get micro-financing for creative work? Take a look at Kickerstart (www.kickstarter.com) who says it has raised over $15m for its users since its launch in 2009.

In I wonder also, is it really that easy for non-celebrities to do fund-raising for innovative project? Remember that I do not plan to work with a traditional book publisher to get my book on The New Trade published.

And, how “radical” is it in today’s world to keep working with old school publishing houses who have not understood the power of crowdsourcing, social media and communities?

And not only in the publishing world crowd-funding is booming. Take a look at the makers of a series of documentaries about David Lynch, a filmmaker, who are today using crowdfunding to raise the seed money to start work on the project’s third film.

Or Ted Rall, a syndicated editorial cartoonist and opinion columnist, raised $26,000 from over 200 contributors via Kickstarter for a four-week trip to Afghanistan.

I tend to agree with Cory Doctorow, a bestselling novelist and blogger who says in the article of The Economist:

“There will be some people for whom the fact that they raise money for themselves will be a marketing story. But crowdfunding’s early success at raising sums large enough to be useful, though not large enough to replace other sources of funding for creative works, fits in with a broader trend of using technology to bring artists and their audiences closer together As Mr Chen notes, artists can now ask their audiences directly for support, and will often get it. “People are thrilled to be involved in the creative process and see something come to life,” he says.

Okay, you might say. Maybe this all is good for you but why should I care?

Well, usually people who crowdfund a project get some kind of reward or recognition. This is no different in my book-writing project. Take a look at my crowdfunding site and you will see that although individuals do not have any rights in the resulting work they get “rewarded” when funding my project. For the price of pizza “believers” get not only involved in creative project but also get a free copy of the book once it will be finished. The more they fund the project the more return they will get (which is a simple economic principle). So in funding my project believers have a personal incentive to invest in their favorite businesses.

“There are no secure returns out there right now,” says David Lavinsky, co-founder of Growthink, a venture investment firm headquartered in Los Angeles. “People are very willing to invest in their local community, especially if there is the possibility of return.”

I tend to agree with him. People fund my project not only to get a copy of the book once finished but to become a member of a community around the subject of The New Trade. And I believe mixing this “social warm world” with the world of “hard bargaining” does not a priori have to be negative!

Of course it is a mather of trust and of course transparency is probably the biggest issue here. Is that not also the case with both worlds? How do I create trust in the online crowdsourcing world? Simple, by writing you this mail. By communicating with all my “stakeholders”? I believe Social media today is a blessing to overcome these risks. I don’t forget. I have already written a short Manifesto on The New Trade (which you can download for free on my project site) so people can already start reading what the book will be all about.

So may final question to you is this:

In 2010 do all authors -who believe who have something to say- really have to sit for months alone in a small dark room with no income writing their book? And then once they finished their book do they really have to start a traditional sales and marketing campaign hoping somebody will like it?

I welcome your thoughts.

Tags: Leadership, linkedstories, Raf Stevens, storytelling
Posted in Blogging and storytelling, Change stories, Storytelling and Social media, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Revolutionizing-the-world-of-work FOR DUMMIES

Monday, January 10th, 2011

Two weeks ago, I received the following Tweet on Twitter:
Become member of the group “Revolutionizing the world of work”!

If you thought that Twitter was only good enough to announce your forthcoming barbecue party, this group will prove you dead wrong. The short bio of the group shows you in 300 words right away what “the revolution” could look like:

inspiring business, government & social sector organizations to reinvent themselves & create a work-world of life-enhancing practices & values

launching a broad social movement that uses storytelling that inspires organizations to become curators of the human spirit

Mmmmm… I found this intro a little woolly and ambitious, still there was something that made me click to the group’s page right away. The last time I joined a Google group must have been in the nineties. Nowadays, I am active in various groups predominantly via LinkedIn, with mixed results. After all, a Google group hardly looks sexy any more in this age of “digital storytelling” and “transmedia Ipad books”.

My enthousiasm got bigger when I saw that the group was founded by Steven Denning, who recently published the book “The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Reinventing the Workplace for the 21st Century”.
The book was selected by the Financial Times as one of the best books of 2007. It was also selected as the best book on leadership in 2007. It is a comprehensive guide to transformational leadership, particularly how to develop and use narrative intelligence to inspire enduring enthusiasm in any audience for your cause.

Steve has been a source of inspiration for me for years, and this group was obviously an extension of his latest literary effort. I already knew Steve Denning through his book The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling (2005). A few years ago, he was the first to inspire me to become active in storytelling in a corporate context, and he was also the first to point out to me that storytelling is more than just a marketing tool.

Back to the group. After a little more than a week, 115 members had already connected, and 64 messages were posted (revolution should start small, right?).

In one of his first group messages, Steve was gathering responses to a draft of the following blog message: “HBR: How Not To Fix Capitalism”. I clicked through. To say that I read it all at once would be beside the truth (it is kind of heavy set), but I did make it to the end. And it did stick to mind all day long.

The draft is Steve’s response to the lead article in the January 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review, highlighted in vivid red on the cover as “the big idea” and entitled “How to Fix Capitalism” by management big shots Michael Porter and Mark Kramer.
Like I said, not a story to get people going on your barbecue party, but certainly not one to light the barbecue with either. Steve adamantly opposes Porter’s and Kramer’s point that “capitalism has a problem of perceptions”.

Why the message stuck to mind was obvious. Somehow I felt that Steve’s article could well be the foundation of my recently launched book-writing project “The New Trade”. After all, had I not written, in my Manifesto on The New Trade, that

“Today, the traditional way of doing business, from my perspective, has at least one foot in the grave. Today’s organizations often demonstrate an inability to connect. However I believe that the ability to associate and connect is the basis for success in today’s hyper-connected world.” (from the Manifesto)

Do you feel the connection with “Revolutionizing the world of Work”?

That same evening, I responded to Steve’s call for comment. I posted the following message:

Hello Steve,
I have read your draft blogpost. I love it. (…) Your blogpost made me think of a recent blogpost of Chris Brogan. In his posting Chris speaks about the video of Levi’s “Go Forth” Campaign in Braddock.
He loves it. (Quote Chris) “I love this new Levi campaign. Essentially, what I love about it, is that it’s the story of rebirth, or the seeds that might get us to think about rebirth, with regards to cities, to economies, to matters of finding a new identity.” (end of quote) Here is the video

I continued:

After having seen the video my reaction was a bit less positive. I still saw a lot of commercial stuff and some good corporate social responsibility marketing. Yes, there are some good things to be said about the Levi’s campaign. Like there are some good things to be said about GE (HBR points). But still…
Please also have a look at some of the video comments below. (…) Lisa Sandbank who is not so happy with the video’s authenticity and even calls it “totalitarian”.
(I quoted her)
“The reason I called it totalitarianism is because Levis bought a town and spinning stories to try to gain market share. They slapped their brand everywhere, brought in violins and sappy rhetoric to get suckers to cry into their brand new overpriced Malaysian-made denim jackets. Good for Braddock, somewhat, and if I was the mayor of a dying town, I would let Satan himself buy us out if it would help.
Do you know WHY there are no frontiers anymore? Because Levis manufactures exclusively overseas. They have eight overseas financial centers to avoid US taxes. They have also had their share of labor law disputes, fraud and money laundering accusations and corruptions http://www.transnationale.org/….” (end of quote)

I ended my message with this question?

Do you see why your blogpost made me think of the blogpost of Chris Brogan?

And finally also commented on his draft which I felt made a good and clear point when it comes down to arguing why the HBR article is not 100% correct. And my most important remark: I commented that I felt that the end of his blogposting was not strong enough for me. As a reader I was waiting to hear HIS point of view. To hear HIS arguments on what HBR was seeing, what there was missing.

As corporate storyteller, I have always thought it important to communicate not only content, but also to be inspiring and to make sure that the essence of the message emerges in a simple and clear way. Maybe I am somewhat misguided by my marketing background, but I enjoy reading books by Seth Godin, Daniel Pink, and Chip and Dan Heath. All these authors are for me examples in presenting a content-based discourse that -for me, and apparently for many others as well- works strongly motivating to change the world (or at least part of it ☺).

I referred to my book-writing project The New Trade, and wished him the best of luck with his article and the group.

What followed, surprised me in many ways.
After my response (which Steve apparently found very meaningful and for which he thanked me), a series of responses to Steve’s draft article came in rapidly. That was good to see. However, none of the responses came back to the video that I mentioned (not a problem as such), and there was no response either to the point that Steve apparently found so useful, or, in another words: “What’s your point, Steve?”

Was it my English? Or was my point not worth exploring further (strange, because what could be more important than the quest for the crux of an argument)? Was my reference to my initiative (The New Trade) too much for most of them (too much sales will kill you)?

Anyway, many reactions to Steve’s draft article came in. I followed them and fell from one surprise into the next. I really would like to sum them up but there is just no way. Where I blamed Steve of not getting to the point, the others turned out even better at that. However it appeared that I was the only one bothered by it, because at this point, people did connect. What followed was an intellectual discourse that I could only barely follow. Believe me, it was not my lack of understanding English that did me in here. Slowly but surely, I started to believe that revolution (Revolutioning-the-world-of-work) had to start in an academic fashion, with expensive words and difficult and abstract models. I missed Seth Godin here.

And in an effort to add a little Seth Godin, I posted a cry for help.

I wrote:

Help !
It is only a few days ago that I have become member of this group and I have read Steve’s draft blog posting.
I loved the idea of the group and resonated with the draft post. Today I am lost. After having followed and read the comments I cannot see (nor understand) the core of all of this. Is there no group Revolutionizing-theworld-of-work-for-Dummies?
Personally I am a big fan of “small” words. And of people who can communicate complex issues in short and easy to understand messages.
Or should every Revolution start on an academic level?
Love to hear your what you think. Maybe somebody brave enough to sum up the core message so far?

Steve’s reaction? He agreed and immediately started a new discussion in this group, called: “Revolutionizing the world of work” FOR DUMMIES.

Today, a few days later, I ran into a third major surprise:

whereas Steve’s previous post rapidly gathered many reactions, this new “dummies” post has seen only one response so far (to date 10 Jan. 2011), one by myself.

Revolution is not for dummies, and probably not for ex marketeers either. Unless Seth Godin starts one tomorrow (which will probably not be via Google Groups).

Tags: Change communication, Leadership, Raf Stevens, storytelling, The New Trade
Posted in Blogging and storytelling, Change stories, Storytelling and Social media | 3 Comments »