Posts Tagged ‘story’
Before You Pitch
At the end of the event a small group gathered around the presenter. He had flown in from Europe the day before and was bound to be jet lagged. Despite that he had delivered an informative and inspiring keynote about how his company—one of the most powerful brands in the world, used customer insights to…
Read MoreWhy We Have A Hard Time Communicating Value
No self-respecting (or smart) cafe owner would describe his drip-filter coffee as 85% boiling water. Instead he tells the origin story of the coffee beans and the slow pour-over brewing process that augments the flavour. The barista creates retail theatre while you wait in line. We all know that the line is also part of…
Read MoreThe Most Powerful Thing You Didn’t Do Today
Have you ever been footsteps away from a window and yet found yourself opening an app or doing a Google search to check the weather, instead of simply going over to the window and opening the curtains? Me too! Why is that? We are now in the habit of outsourcing our thinking and second guessing…
Read MoreThe 5 Building Blocks Of A Brand
A brand used to be an identifier, over the past seventy years it’s become so much more. Seth’s 2009 definition says it best. “A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” We can agree then that…
Read MoreHow To Make People Care About Your Product
The maître d’ had worked at the same restaurant for thirteen years and was ready for a change. He wanted to do work he was passionate about and decided to start a dog walking business—knowing that in order to succeed he needed to send a signal to prospective customers about how much their pets mattered.…
Read MoreDifferent Kinds Of Doing
You have probably sent a few important emails today. Maybe you blasted through a list of to-dos before morning coffee, or followed up on tasks you have outsourced? There’s no denying that ‘doing’ feels good. But there are different kinds of ‘doing’. There’s the ‘doing’ that makes us feel like we are getting somewhere and…
Read MoreThe Marketing Paradox
The goal of most marketing is to get people through the door, bums on seats and products sold. Because much of our marketing effort is front-loaded it’s easy to believe that once we’ve closed the sale, we’re done. And so we latch on to stories of six-figure product launches and multi-million dollar capital raises—often making…
Read MoreThe Best Brand Stories
The best brand stories…. Are experienced and felt. Create affinity, not simply awareness. Are perceived in micro-moments that are remembered, long after what’s pitched is forgotten. Give people ways to belong, not just reasons to choose. Are less about what the brand says and more about how the customer wants to feel. In a digital…
Read MoreFive Brand Storytelling Lessons From Jamie Oliver
Who could forget how Jamie Oliver burst onto our screens in the UK almost twenty years ago? While most celebrity chefs of the day adopted the posture of the hero, showing us how to follow their rules to the letter, Jamie made aspirational cooks around the world the hero of the story by making cooking…
Read MoreIs Brand Storytelling Dead?
When Shaun sent through a link to an article declaring ‘storytelling dead’ and asked me to comment, I wasn’t at all surprised to read what followed. The piece suggested that because attention spans are shrinking your customers don’t have time to pay attention to your story. Here’s a snippet of the rationale that followed: “…it’s…
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