The Week in Storytelling Mar. 5, 2010

by Gregg on March 5, 2010

Things That Are NOT Stories
Kathy Hansen has some things to say about this issue. As story seems to take hold more and more, this is beginning to loom large.

A Model For Business Storytelling
Pam Hoelzle does a great job with business storytelling in this post.

Are Brands Static? Are Static Brands Storied? Are Storied Brands Static?
Kathy Hansen, at her curmudgeonly best, talks about story and brands.

Business-Storytelling Model May Inspire Additional Applications
Kathy Hansen [have you figured out she's my hero yet? :-) ] relates Pam Hoelzle’s model to storytelling and job search.

A Recipe for Good Crowdsourced Storytelling
This is from Jay Golden’s blog on story, strategy and action.

Are We Becoming Our Own Puppetmasters?
This is from Venessa Miemis, one of my favorite futurists.

Thinking Like a Storyteller
A nice video from Cindy Chastain on how interactive designers can use story.

Digital Storytelling Teacher Guide
This is a great storytelling tool for teachers. From Microsoft no less! Kudos to them.

Digital Storytelling at Duckrabbit Multimedia

Olympic Athlete Stories
Some nice stories of Olympians at the recently concluded event.

Falk T. Puschmann’s MySpace Blog |
A look at story from a script writer for audio dramas.

Largest Storytelling Machine, the Media, can Create Engaged Citizenry
Can the world’s largest storytelling machine, the mass media, cultivate an informed and involved citizenry?

Duane Elgin Calling on Humanity to Create a New Story
We might just need one of those…

Having Ideas Versus Having a Vision
Interesting reading not directly related to storytelling.

Creative Writing 101 from Kurt Vonnegut
Lou Hoffman shares some storytelling wisdom from one of the masters. Cord at Capstrat is a Vonn fan too.

iStoryWriter
This is a pretty cool iPhone storytelling app.

What’s Your Brand Story? Moleskine Endures Through Storytelling
How Moleskine tells their story.

Made to Stick: Jared, The Power of Story
Dan Heath, co-author of Switch and Made to Stick, (and he teaches right here in my backyard) talks about story.

Storytelling as connective tissue
Beautiful post.

Never neglect the power of telling a story
A journalistic lesson in narration, description and exposition.

Quantum Narrative
Mike Bonifer’s thoughts on Quantum and Newtonian Narratives. He was kind enough to correct my earlier descriptor in an email post. (He should have called me an idiot but he was too polite for that! Thank you Mike.) He went on in the email to further explain, “Quantum and Newtonian Narratives relate to one another, but they are not competitive with one another in a traditional Darwinian sense. The competition is all in our heads, and in the way that we express ourselves in the world. We think we CHOOSE one narrative, or one form of narrative, over the other, when in fact that choice is simply artifice. It is the recognition that both exist, and how we observe, interpret and participate in their interaction with one another, that makes us truly productive in the world.”

Story Yourself
He talks about Michael Margolis and Believe Me.

Six Words on The Green Life at SMITH Magazine
Stories in 6 words.

Stories of Unique Qualifications for the Targeted Job
A bit more on cover letter stories from Kathy Hansen.

The Art of Business Storytelling
Kelsey Ruger is just awesome!

The Journey System: Belief
Some interesting thoughts on belief and the Storytelling System.

Utah Storytelling Guild
Every state should have one!

Welcome, Transformative Narratives Blog
Kathy Hansen introduces us to Yvette Hyater-Adams.

The Emerging Intentions of Transformative Narratives
Yvette Hyater-Adams talks with us about those Transformative Narratives.

What’s It All About, Al G?
A PR guy talks about story.

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Curated Stories Mar. 4, 2010

by Gregg on March 4, 2010

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Curated Stories Mar. 3, 2010

by Gregg on March 3, 2010

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Curated Stories Mar. 2, 2010

by Gregg on March 2, 2010

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4 Ways To Tell Brand Stories

by Gregg on March 2, 2010


As I have studied brands and storytelling there appear to be four ways you can go about external storytelling as it relates to your company or brand. There are a number of other ways to do so internally but we’ll leave those for another post.

The first way to associate your brand with a story is to buy an existing one. You see this all day, every day, in the form of celebrities and athletes endorsing or speaking for a brand or product. The thinking here, as near as I can tell, is that the athlete or celebrity already has a story and the brand can get some mileage and exposure by associating itself with that story. Branding by osmosis I suppose. And as long as the celebrity or athlete’s story continues to resonate with those the brand is trying to influence all is well. If that story happens to go a little south though, brands have to scramble to buy another story or find another way to tell theirs. Tiger Woods fiasco is certainly a case in point.

The second way is to sponsor an event. It could be an athletic or sporting event, a charity event, a television show or event, the list here goes on and on. Normally this kind of story is about a brand or company and it enables the company to sell a variety of different products that are related to the event. Think shirts, tees and polos, mugs and water bottles, bags, watches, again, the list here is nearly endless.

The third way is to involve your customers in the selling of your story. Here you recognize that it is really a story that you are selling, not just a brand or product, and you enlist your customers as co-authors of that story. Amazon does this nicely by involving us in the review process for all of its products. Harley Davidson started doing this after they began to face competition in that category of motorcycle and has done this very successfully for years. Their fans are so involved in the storytelling process that they actually help to shape the structure and theme of the Harley story.

The fourth way is to let your customers actually invent and tell the entire brand story. They need a little help from you obviously but once they have access to the elements of a story they are free to assemble the narrative that will describe it. Giving us all just a little bit of help, Apple lets us go about telling the narratives of our iPhones and iPods. Successful storytelling at its best. On the flip side is Kevin Smith, taking the Southwest Air story elements and telling a story that Southwest would likely describe as anything other than successful.

I see signs all around that the first way, once a mainstay of branding, is getting a long hard look in the boardrooms as storytelling gains more and more traction. GM’s Bob Lutz was quoted as saying that even at the height of his celebrity, Tiger Woods “…did little to help sell cars.” In a blog post toward the end of February, uber golf blog The GolfBlogger, commented on Lutz’s statement and took the whole issue a step further by saying “I even think that the whole notion of equipment companies having golfers “on staff” is utter nonsense.” The comments in that post expand further on the whole idea of branding via celebrity storytelling.

The second way still seems to be a good avenue. Whether framing a story of adventure or one of corporate social responsibility, events are still effective tools.

The third and fourth ways seem to be the ones that are drawing the most interest and attention of late. I like to think it’s because stories and storytelling are so deeply rooted in our past and are still the way that we make sense of, order, and connect emotionally to our worlds and their events.

What do you think? Is buying another’s story and hooking your brand up to it on the wane? Is your business or brand using events to help with your storytelling? Have you involved your customers and given them the tools to not just help you tell your stories but to actually take control of the narrative themselves? Which ways have you found to be most effective for your business?

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Curated Stories Mar. 1, 2010

by Gregg on March 1, 2010

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Curated Stories Feb. 27 and 28, 2010

by Gregg on February 28, 2010

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The Week in Storytelling

by Gregg on February 27, 2010


Some of the best storytelling posts and articles from the web this week.

Consider These Rules of Engagement for Career Storytelling
Kathy Hansen has had a great series going this week on using storytelling in the search for jobs and as a tool at review time and at other scenarios in the every day work world. You’ll want to read them all. The two links below are part of the series too.

Types of Stories You Can Tell in a Cover Letter (Part 5)

Types of Stories You Can Tell in a Cover Letter (Part 4)

Pop Culture as Competitive Advantage: Embracing the Chief Culture Officer
Wonderful article from Michael Margolis!

An Unexpected Interview
Character, Roleplaying and Storytelling

Historic Tale Construction Kit
An absolutely awesome tool for building your stories. Very creative too.

Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative
How to tackle storytelling using comics.

Teaching and Developing Leaders via Storytelling
Terrific piece on how to use stories and storytelling

Silence Speaks: Multimedia storytelling in Republic of Congo
Story and multimedia tools blend nicely here.

Storytelling Evolved: 18 Ideas in Digital Storytelling
This is a 3 part series. Read ‘em all, they’re great. It’s one heckuva’ site and resource too.

Trial lawyers are storytellers as well!
I guess we’ve got to give them their due, ‘eh? It’s a good impromptu interview.

“Birthright” – meet documentarian Sean Mullens
A new site for me, and a good one too. This is the first in a series on different approaches to technology and storytelling.

Power to the Pixel 2009
Wonderful talk on the evolution of storytelling.

Storytelling 140 Characters at a Time … Not
Another new site for me. Lou Hoffman, of the Hoffman Agency, shares some great storytelling insights.

Stories as a means to cultural pluralism
A nice article on using story to develop a greater awareness and understanding of other cultures and perspectives.

The most powerful tool anyone has in their relationship collection is the ability to find, tell and understand
Nice tweet from “The Storyteller”, Sean Buvala.

Great Advertising Is Great Storytelling.
Number one thing that makes us human? The need to tell stories. You might just shed a tear or two here.

Reason 1020 to Hire a Copywriter or the Power of the Myth
Copywriting and myth making.

The Monti
These folks are in my backyard for goodness sake and I’m just now finding out about them! What a great storytelling platform they’ve created.

Erica Priggen “Creating Content for Change”
“We don’t see the world, we see stories. This is our filter.”

Storytelling vs. lying
“Part of what makes storytelling so powerful is that the audience can witness and participate in the creation of fictional truth.”

Finding Commitment to Storytelling
Another new site for me and another great one, The International Storytelling School.

Ontario Stroke Network using the power of story to create change
Using storytelling to empower health care. I like it!

Daddyteller
This is another project of “The Storyteller”, Sean Buvala, and it’s a good one. Teaching your kids values one story at a time.

New book in the works on storytelling for speaking and communicating
Sally Strackbein is asking for what we want to know.

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Curated Stories Feb. 26, 2010

by Gregg on February 26, 2010

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Curated Stories Feb. 25, 2010

by Gregg on February 25, 2010

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