Archives for category: Business narrative

Tugging the heart with an ad story

July 12, 2010 //

I generally consider myself fairly immune to advertising, but the ads for Apple’s FaceTime app for iPhone4 makes me want to run right out and buy this smart phone. And I don’t even carry a cell phone.

What so successfully bypasses my normal resistance is the stories. In this series of ads we people separated by distance who are connecting via FaceTime. A young woman tells her delighted husband he is going to be a dad. A new grandfather sees his son’s baby for the first time. The father of a teen with new braces gets her to crack a smile. A boyfriend reassures his girlfriend her new haircut is cute. And a series of people missing each other get to see and talk to the people they love.

Each small vignette is a piece of a larger story, and every one of them tugged at my heart.

Using stories to sell products is nothing new, but occasionally an ad campaign comes along that uses them particularly effectively. These Apple ads are in that category.

I’m not going to run out and buy an iPhone4. After all, FaceTime only works if the person you want to talk with also has Apple’s latest smart phone and the FaceTime app.

But I’m tempted.

Tags business storytelling, power of stories

Categories Business narrative, Organizational storytelling

Story Coach fixing mistakes with stories

April 21, 2010 //

Lisa's e-booklet is available on her Story Coach site

Story practitioners of every stripe work with individuals and organizations to craft the narratives that will sell their services, attract clients, build trust, and impact a company’s culture or bottom line. For Story Coach Inc.‘s Lisa Bloom finding the compelling story is key to success. Subscribers to Lisa’s business-building e-zine, “Kachanga!”, receive a free copy of her booklet, “5 Common Mistakes People Make that a Good Story Can Fix”.

The five mistakes Lisa singles out are:

Confusing your audience
Alienating your audience by using marketing and sales language
Not giving your audience clear direction
Not connecting emotionally with your audience
Not sharing your passion—leaving your audience cold

The solution to all these mistakes is to craft a compelling story. The how-to of that crafting is what Story Coach offers, including teleseminars that meet the requirements for continuing education credits through Continuing Coaching Education, International Coach Federation.

In the November 12, 2009 issue of IAC Voice (blog of the International Association of Coaching), Lisa writes:

Businesses in every industry, including coaching, are discovering that as we develop our storytelling skills, we learn how to better market our services by creating our own compelling story–the authentic story of what we can offer. It is the story that people remember, it is the story that has the potential to attract clients, it is the story that is becoming increasingly recognized as an effective business tool.

Likewise, as we develop advanced “storylistening” skills, we can better understand the stories that our prospective clients tell us. From that, our sales and marketing process becomes more exact and this helps us grow our business and break through to a new level of success.

Check out Lisa’s Web site and blog for more.

Tags business storytelling, importance of stories, Organizational storytelling

Categories Business narrative, Organizational storytelling

Believe Me: Why Your Vision, Brand, and Leadership Need a Bigger Story

December 23, 2009 //

Religious leaders, teachers, grandparents, politicians, and advertisers have long understood the power of storytelling. In recent years business and organizational leaders have caught on, thanks, in part, to the work of people like Michael Margolis, Annette Simmons, Lori Silverman, Steven Denning, Seth Kahan, Shawn Callahan, and Rick Davies.

Now Michael Margolis offers the gift of a free download of his insightful small gem, Believe Me: a storytelling manifesto for change-makers and innovators. In the introduction he sets the stage for his premise that our “vision, brand, and leadership need a bigger story.” He writes, “If you learn how to change the story, you can change anything.”

Margolis structures Believe Me as a story in three acts: How ideas become reality; Engaging the status quo; and Finding relevance. Each “act” begins with a story that provides an over-arching metaphor for the chapter’s content. As he builds the case for story as an essential business tool, the author makes an equally strong case that narrative is the primary building block of all change.

I wish I had had this poetic little guide to organizational storytelling when I began my career in community development. What I came to understand through direct experience, Margolis articulates so clearly I would have re-read Believe Me every time I began a new project.

Every section of the book is filled with gems. While Believe Me is short enough to read in an hour, it is meaty enough I found myself slowing down to reflect. Much of my professional life has been about working with groups to move beyond a broken or limiting story. Both my successes and my failures have taught me the truth of Margolis’s statement, “We cannot force our beliefs onto anyone. We must create a story worth believing. The future rests in our ability to tell these kinds of stories.”

Margolis has plans for guides that will add the practical side to this philosophical treatise. Those planned are: “1) what stories every entrepreneur must master, 2) how to use stories to effect large-scale change, and 3) the powerful elements that can transform any brand into a cultural flashpoint.”

The initial taste offered in Believe Me will have readers returning for the full story.