Old School Media vs Social Media

November 10, 2010 By 6 Comments

Driving into the city today (through the snow!) I was listening to the radio. The Statoil commercial caught my attention because it was attempting to drive traffic (no pun intended!) to the Swedish Statoil website. Here was old school media trying to affect new media.

The radio campaign is based around a variety of actors talking about making a commercial for Statoil’s “kaffe med bulle” [coffee and a bun]. They go on about the quality of the coffee and the fresh, delicious bun (blah blah blah) and then the whole thing ends with them suggesting you check out the video on the Statoil site.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: marketing, storytelling, youtube

Don’t Forget to Tell Stories

July 8, 2010 By 10 Comments

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.

Ikea – along with Volvo Sweden’s most recognisable brand – are brilliant storytellers. Their catalogue tells the story of how they see Swedes living in cool, urban settings from season to season, surrounded by furnishings that make life easier, slightly more stylish.

Each year the catalogue falls into my postbox I flick through it with interest, looking at the story of how they see functional living improving the quality of our lives.

The Ikea catalogue is a brilliant piece of content marketing because it doesn’t look like a catalogue. It’s a narrative in pictures and words that tells me a story that’s easy to grasp and very easy to buy into.

What’s Your Story?

If you’re clear about your corporate story, it will permeate everything you do so your staff and customers know it. That’s why it’s essential you get to the heart of your company’s value proposition, and developing narratives – text, pictures, video and audio content– that will connect with your customers, prospects, investors, employers and so on, and in turn grow your business. [Read more...]

Filed Under: content marketing, storytelling Tagged With: , ,

What if your CEO just doesn’t get social media?

April 28, 2010 By 24 Comments

A senior manager at a major Swedish company goes for his annual meeting with the CEO and C suite to discuss how things are going with the company.

The senior manager –let’s call him Pete– talks excitedly about how the social media marketing initiative his division has running for the last 8 months has been a massive success; how it’s improved customer relations and staff relationships. Pete is positive about what the Net and online communication can do and wants the go-ahead to invest in similar initiatives.

The CEO listens interestedly then says, “I’m not on Facebook. In fact, we had to discipline a staff member in another office for using Facebook inappropriately. That was a big problem. I don’t really like Facebook and all that social stuff. It’s not really what our company is about. In fact, we’re going to limit access to sites like Facebook on the company intranet from next month.”

The conversation continues and Pete is given an annual raise because, well, “We’re really pleased with the work you’re doing”. The CEO has heard that Pete is doing a great job from his line manager.

Afterwards Peter feels a bit despondent. The CEO of the company that he’s working for doesn’t get social media. In fact, he’s actively against it. Pete’s worried both he and his office will fall behind the digital and social online revolution if they don’t continue to participate.

Although Pete’s team have improved sales, customer service and group cohesion in his division having introduced social media, the CEO was not convinced.

Sure, he’s pleased that profits are up and savings on traditional advertising have gone down. But the CEO isn’t prepared to bring in a social media specialist. He’s not prepared to fund training in social media. And he’s definitely not interested in exploring what social media can do for the rest of the organisation.

“You won’t catch me on YouTube,” he jokes, and the rest of the C suite chuckle in unison. “We’re too busy concentrating on our plans for expansion,” he tells Pete. “We’re opening up new offices around the country and all our spare budget is going into that. We haven’t got time to play with the internet.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: storytelling Tagged With: , , , ,

Web Day in Oslo

February 4, 2010 By 1 Comment

I‘ve been speaking at a web day today in Oslo –I’m writing this at the airport!- held by one of Norway’s finest web companies, InCreo.

InCreo were celebrating the launch of a new CMS and they asked me along to talk about Online Communication – building trust with social media.

It was a lot of fun talking to so many people in Oslo. In the coffee break I got a lot of interesting questions about how to get people to read Intranets, how to use social media to build a tribe, as well as lots of questions about how to create cool content that engages an audience.

Tusen takk to Hallgrim and the team for inviting me! You’ve got a great product there.

Storytelling & Content Creation

Sitting here at Oslo airport I’ve been thinking afterwards about how powerful stories can be in the creation of content.

As human, beings stories are such a big part of who we are and what we do. After all, how many people tell the story of their day when they get home after a day’s work? Stories permeate so much of who we are and what we do.

As businesses trying to connect online with customers and other businesses, we can use the narrative strategy of storytelling to engage readers as we tell them about the development of products, the challenges we face, the story of the people behind the product or company. Stories carry our interest.

As a consumer, I don’t want to buy from a corporation. I like to buy from people. As we build cool websites and a business presence on a variety of social media platforms, delivering great content, helping our customers and genuinely winning new friends along the way, lets not forget the story of what we doing. And our customers unique stories.

So many of the people I spoke to in Oslo today were telling me the story of growing their business, of tackling new challenges. Sharing that with your audience whether its through your blog, vlog or Facebook Fan Page or whatever can get people listening.

And that can’t be a bad thing.

Filed Under: news, storytelling

Storytelling E-Book

September 10, 2009 By 2 Comments

Kathy Hansen has just released a really excellent E-book on Applied Storytelling that features interviews with over forty storytelling practitioners from around the globe – including me.

Just click the image

Just click the image

If you’re looking for a discussion of how storytelling is used in organizations, communications, marketing and so much more, please check it out. It’s completely free and easy to download with no sign-ups.

Kathy is a leading proponent of deploying storytelling for career advancement and has a lot of useful things to say about storytelling.

If you work with communications, marketing and PR, Kathy’s blog – A Storied Career – is a very valuable resource.

Filed Under: storytelling

Marketing Yourself with an Exclusive Story

June 23, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Form, Function & Story wrapped by Apple

Form, Function & Story wrapped by Apple


The news that Steve Jobs had a liver transplant a couple of months ago caught my eye this week, particularly as it came hot on the heels of the launch of the new iPhone 3GS. Once again, here was Apple deploying its masterful communications strategy of only communicating something when it wants to.

Once the new iPhone had grabbed all the headlines (and stocks had gone up), the company felt it was okay to leak news of Steve’s operation. At least, that’s how I read it.

Who needs social media?

You get the distinct impression Apple doesn’t give a damn about social media. Or rather not participating themselves in it. They’re not jabbering away on Twitter or giving us an insight into every move they make via some corporate Steve Jobs blog. No, they leave that up to their fan-base of brand ambassadors who generate masses of daily content that ultimately help to market Apple computers, iPods and iPhones.

To read a lot of the social media commentary that’s emerging at present you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’ve got to be out there, talking and communicating all the time. But Apple knows you don’t have to do that.
They rely on their loyal community to do that for them.

A lot of this comes from the fact Apple have carved out a distinctive brand identity as the favourite electronics manufacturer of design-conscious, hip consumers in all demographics. Kids, moms and business types all glow with pride at their MacBooks or iPhones.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: marketing, storytelling Tagged With: ,