Kick-Ass Marketing Storytelling in Five Steps Great marketing is about great storytelling. Stories stick, inspire, and move people to action. So how do you tell a better story? Here is my latest infographic: Five Steps to Kick-ass Storytelling to Bring Out Your (and Your Audience's) Inner Superhero. Marketing [...]
Storytelling is the original social medium and humans are wired for it. As a marketer, storyteller, and improviser, I also believe it's one of the most important, though underutilized, skills for leading today. And it's not just about storytelling externally; it's about rallying your best storytellers inside the [...]
This is part II/II. Read Part I here. Show How Customers’ Situations “Change” Users don’t buy ‘value propositions’; they buy something bigger that helps them in their lives. The most important part of a story, therefore, is showing how the hero/protagonist of the story changes. What can your [...]
Product Storytelling Matters Humans are wired for stories; we’re storytelling animals. Yet, we’re living in an era of ‘Big Data’ information overload. There is too much data chasing too little mindshare these days. That’s because data itself doesn’t create what people want most: meaning. The resurgence in storytelling, [...]
I gave a workshop recently about humanizing products and marketing, and we talked about why narrative and great stories matter during design and in our customer communications. Stories of empathy and customer needs inform the design process, and, when we know what challenge we’re addressing with our products, [...]
I’ve always joked that marketing is a not missionary position! There is truth in comedy. Marketing is about preaching to the already converted. Your job is to attract people who believe what you believe. Too many businesses focus resources on marketing individual products and services. While that is [...]
This post is part II of II. To read part I, click here. Truth and authenticity. Truth makes compelling comedy. Great comics talk about what they know - the good, bad, and ugly. Hacks try to sell what's popular rather than focus on generating authentic material that [...]
Comedy and marketing have much in common. Well, comedy is marketing, really. And some marketing is pretty comical, intentionally or not. Comedy is a priceless education. In addition to 20 years in marketing, my many years in sketch, stand-up and improvisation have provided a number of critical business [...]
Keeping marketing human means your core story is never about you, your technology, or your products and services. As Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, states, you must think bigger than what you do. In the case of Zappos, Hsieh knows the shoes his company sells are incidental. Hsieh [...]
