Man, when you impress an applied storyteller like Kathy with your story, you’re telling one heckuva’ story! (And for what it’s worth, we love ours too. Great product. Great service. Great company.)
“After at least two recent vacuum-cleaner failures, we decided to get a Dyson machine. We were impressed with its features, innovative design, and advertising.
When the Dyson arrived, it immediately endeared itself to me by including the little booklet pictured here. I already knew a bit about Dyson’s story from its ads, but the story booklet reinforced and enhanced my knowledge.”
There are so many things wrong with the sentiment of this tweet…
“I mentioned this in my Superman rant, but I think it’s worth expanding, because I think it’s a major problem with mainstream comics right now. The bottom line is that there is a big difference between a serialized story and a story released in installments.
Starting with some books in the Silver Age, serialized storytelling became the norm for comics for decades. The ultimate goal of a serial story is to keep the reader coming back, month after month.”
Elan Lee wants you to be a superhero!
“In the early stages of preparation for his TEDxSeattle talk on “The Future of Storytelling,” Elan is obsessed with the image of the horseless carriage, and it’s as an apt metaphor. In the early stages of exploration, the identity of something new is not yet understood or established, so we use the language of the past to intellectually encompass the future. Even further, we use the symbols of the past to iterate what we think will be the future.”
Digital Immersion: Augmenting Places With Stories And Information
Imagine that you are able to see invisible information draped across the physical world. As you walk around, you see labels telling the history of a place and offering geographic attributes of the space as you walk through. There’s the name of a tree, the temperature, the age of a building, and the conduits under the pavement. Popping into view are operating instructions for devices. All of this is digitally overlaid and visible across the physical world.
This yet-to-be-realized experience is a thought experiment for helping us interact with a future that is moving inexorably toward us.”
” Stories are our primary tools of learning and teaching, the repositories of our lore and legends. They bring order into our confusing world. Think about how many times a day you use stories to pass along data, insights, memories or common-sense advice.
Stories are more than a sequence of words; they are moving images we can see and feel, transforming us from passive listeners to active characters in the narrative.”
Very nice company site. Could be a nice company too.
“Whenever a life is changed, a story is born. When those stories are told in creative, compelling ways, people get involved.”
Avatar and the Three Pillars of Storytelling
“The main problems I have with Avatar are primarily in the realm of storytelling. I think that many, if not most, of the big budget Hollywood movies these days rely on special effects to carry the story. This, in my opinion, is an impossible task. Stories are not setting. And, as heretical as this might be, stories are not characters. Nor are they plots, but plots are probably the closest thing to stories of these three.”
Science and the Art of Storytelling
“We love the challenge of helping our innovation-based clients tell their stories in interesting and creative ways. It isn’t always easy, especially when the subject matter is detailed and complex. However, we believe there’s always a way to make the message interesting and relevant without compromising the science behind the story.”
“When it comes to getting the point across, nothing beats a relevant story. Learn to be a good storyteller. Stories are what people relate to and remember. All good stories, from the beginning of time, contain the following three phases. (Think of your favorite book or movie and see how the phases apply!)”
The Four Truths of Corporate Storytelling
“Hard-nosed executives think ’storytelling’ dilutes their message. They see it as ‘acting’, as being somehow less than authentic with an audience.
Nothing is further from the truth.”
Exclusive: Newly Published Mark Twain Essay, ‘Concerning the Interview’
Great stuff!
“Thanks to the Mark Twain Foundation and its trustees, the PBS NewsHour brings you for the first known time in print an essay by the American literary giant on a topic dear to our hearts — the journalistic interview. In the course of Twain’s career, he was frequently interviewed by reporters. The 10-page handwritten essay has been sitting for more than 40 years in the archives of the Mark Twain Project at the University of California, Berkeley. It was written in either 1889 or 1890, a time that coincided with the rise of “yellow journalism.”
I don’t know if Larry and Bill talked about this ahead of writing about it. I don’t even know whether they know each other. Regardless, when two talents like them both pen a piece about a commercial, you’re probably going to want to sit up and watch it.
30 Seconds of Pure Creative Genius
“I first saw this thing sitting in a movie theater waiting for the trailers to run. I usually get irriated when they show me advertising on my dime, and time, but this one blew me out of my seat.
This spot tells an entire story, both visually and narratively.
It’s the sum of the Six Core Competencies of successful storytelling in full glory, at least if you go easy on the theme criteria in this case.”
Visual storytelling: know your medium
“Images have their own vocabulary. It is storytelling that is neither oral nor written. It’s pictures. And as this commercial shows, sound and image don’t necessarily have to connect. Sometimes they work better when they don’t connect. For example, in this ad the man is addressing women (“Hello ladies …”) But the target of the ad isn’t women; it’s men. The images are speaking to men. The text at the end reaffirms what it has been saying and who it is for: men.”
Katharine Hansen – A Storied Career Blog (Part A)
Absolutely two of my favorite storytelling folks and two of the best in the business. This is a wonderful interview.
“I view the current storytelling movement as an outgrowth of postmodernism. Postmodernism is characterized by critique, irony/ionic humor, mockery, parody, playfulness, disorientation, things that are symbolically rich and meaningful, multiple perspectives, conflict, the discontinuity of traditions, contradiction, ambiguity, paradox, metaphors, a strong aesthetic dimension, diversity and multiplicity, fragmentation, as well as questioning pre-established rules, values, expectations, right vs. wrong, good vs. bad, and underlying faith in reason and science.
In part, story becomes a way to make sense out of and find meaning in fragmented postmodern life.”
“Does your content tell a story? The story of who you are? What you do? Why customers should stop to listen to you? Or does it tell a story that inspires people to change their lives.”
“Jeffrey Hirschberg found out there are 11 Laws of Great Storytelling – trends that exist in many of the most memorable stories of all time.
“While it is impossible to have a foolproof formula, I have learned certain principles dramatically increase the probability of your story achieving a modicum of greatness.”
The (second) Community Storytelling Experiment
Join in if the spirit moves you!
“A couple months ago, we did what I called a “Community Storytelling Experiment.” I wrote the first three sentences of a story, and each subsequent writer wrote the next three sentences to the story.”
“Stories have political capital. It’s the act of sharing stories and identifying with those stories that builds a movement that is capable of pushing progressive policy. The We Are America stories project aims to lift the stories of immigrants into the national debate on immigration to build the political will to move just and humane immigration reform.”
A Perfect Storm The Social Web, Storytelling And Brands 08 07
A nice slide deck.
Credit: Damon Winter NYT
Author Whose Bookstore Is the No. 2 (or 4, or 5)
Good story!
““I am not begging, borrowing or asking for your food. I don’t represent the homeless, I’m not selling candy or selling bootleg DVDs,” he said, then paused. “I write books.”
