Can storytelling build equity in a company’s brand?

Better yet, can storytelling differentiate a company?

AHALife makes a case for both.

I remember Twitter CEO Dick Costolo blogging about the purchase of a product from Moosejaw.com that came with a fresh note:

“If you are actually reading this note you should be super happy. First, you have received your order, reading is fun and getting something in the mail (even if you bought it yourself) has got to make the day better. Second, I put your order together all by myself.”

Costolo goes on to say the note makes him like Moosejaw more because people like it when companies have personalities.  

AHALife has a personality which by itself serves to differentiate the company.

Here’s a good example describing a planter. Take a look at the first ‘graph: 

Ever want to do everything upside down and backwards, just for the hell of it? Eat ice cream for breakfast, call in sick to go surfing, etc? We don’t advocate the former—and are going to stay mum on the latter—but we do have a stylish way to mix things up with these gravity-defying Boskke Sky Planters.

It’s conversational.

It makes you feel like there’s a real human being on the other end.

The narrative then moves to how these bad boys actually work:

Cool, you say, but how do you not end up with plant guts splattered all over the floor? We wondered the same thing. The solution is simple but ingenious: Remove ready-grown plant from its container and place into Sky Planter. Once locked in place with the circular ceramic disk, flip the pot and suspend from a securely fastened ceiling hook. Voilé! An upside down plant.

Nice turn of a phrase, “plant guts splattered.”

And the company does an admirable job sustaining the vibe throughout the site.

If I had one quibble, it would be the welcome note from the company that arrived after I signed on the dotted line:

Welcome to AHAlife! We look forward to bringing you unique, innovative and hard-to-find products sourced by our global network of influential tastemakers. Here’s to living beautifully!

Welcome to AHAlife exclamation point?

Now there’s a greeting that grabs you by the scruff of the neck.

C’mon Shauna (the founder).

You can do better.

Whether we’re talking an IT director at a Fortune 500 company or an aluminum salesman in Des Moines, people consume visuals with greater ease than words. 

That’s why communicators of all shapes and sizes should embrace visual storytelling. 

And there’s more to visual communication than the grandiose infographic. 

Photos, illustrations and simple graphics can enhance a story. 

Proving this cobbler’s kids do periodically wear shoes, we worked with a terrific graphic designer, Samantha Lim, based in Hong Kong, to create the following graphic depicting the process of responding to media questions in Chinese when the client contact only speaks English. 

To view larger or to share image, click here.

Sometimes, Western companies new to Asia can’t understand why the local media favors the home team.

This simple graphic sheds some light on the matter.

Sheri Baer, the Agency’s broadcast practice leader, regularly contributes to this forum, last taking readers behind the curtain of Bloomberg TV. 

In her latest take, she makes the point that leaders lead regardless of the market conditions. 

This is the wrong time of year to own tech … And if you didn’t believe me before, just take a look at Novellus Systems, Inc. … the semiconductor equipment manufacturer that got run over by a truck today.

Wow.

That’s hardly the introduction you’d want to hear if you’re a CEO about to appear on “Mad Money” with Jim Cramer. But despite announcing a pullback and disappointing guidance, Novellus (NASDAQ: NVLS) CEO Rick Hill still accepted Cramer’s invite to appear on the July 12 show following the company’s Q2-FY11 earnings call. 

As a CEO, Hill is as transparent as they come. He’s a “call it like I see it” kind of guy. And back on July 12, he told Cramer in a “Mad Money” interview he didn’t like what he was seeing:

What I’ve seen is an increasing feeling of economic doom on the part of corporate leaders almost anywhere I’ve been visiting. I think that’s giving many corporate leaders pause that they don’t want to be the last one to be holding all the inventory.

Hard to believe, but Hill’s forthright take on the market even surprised Cramer a bit, provoking a lengthy exchange which you can see below.

The segment ran over eight minutes with Cramer playing back excerpts on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” the following morning, triggering another four minutes of discussion with his fellow hosts. After acknowledging that Hill’s “track record with us is great,” Cramer also commented: “Rick was too downbeat.” 

Fast forward a few weeks -

Hill’s prescient comments certainly show his track record to be intact, reinforcing his business smarts and keen market insight with both Cramer and CNBC viewers. It should be noted that there was some internal questioning as to whether Hill should go on the air, given the volatile market conditions. The comment back was, “Trading rooms and institutional buysiders have their screens tuned to CNBC and Bloomberg all day. They’re bombarded with investment ideas 24/7, so airtime and exposure are good for us.” The takeaway: As a proven thought leader, Hill garners even more respect for putting it out there - in good times and bad.

Back on August 12, Hill also commented:

There’s always going to be some demand. This is a temporary pause. It’s not a permanent pause.

No doubt everyone from Wall Street to Main Street are hoping those words from a proven thought leader will also be on track. 

Anyone can create a video and gain access to millions of viewers. 

The barriers to entry consist of nothing more than a video recorder and an Internet connection. 

But the rise of anyone-can-make-a-video has generated a fair amount of dreadful stuff. 

It’s especially challenging for a B2B company to create a video that stands apart from the standard fare. 

By stand apart, I mean a video that goes beyond the inform/educate objective and actually amuses the viewer. I think it’s fair to say that floating-point operations per second (FLOPS), content management systems and field programmable arrays aren’t intrinsically entertaining. 

That’s why a SolarWinds (client) video deserves a shout out. 

Playing off the Dos Equis campaign, “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” SolarWinds came up with “The Most Incredible IT Man in the World.” 

The video shows even an IT management company can bring a little levity to the scene.

I’ve periodically addressed how to give your storytelling in a blog a fighting chance to find an audience through search engines.

A colleague recently asked me to take a look at her blog and offer immediate thoughts on how she might improve traffic.

Here’s the note with some minor ”clean-up” which might have relevance for others.

Dear Lost in Traffic,

Competition for online attention is downright brutal.

At the risk of stepping onto a soapbox —

Many people associate the quality of a blog to fame; i.e., the more famous you are, the better the blog.

That’s partly why the self-publishing of books has skyrocketed. These folks often don’t have much of substance to say. Instead, the book delivers “street cred” which in turn brings more people to the site.

Short of writing a book, here are a few suggestions.

When I go into your source code on your blog home page, I can see the title tag is the name of your blog.

This wastes valuable real estate.

If people already know the name of your blog, they’re going to find you.

The meta data doesn’t actually show up to the visitor and should capture keywords/phrases that would bring relevant traffic to your blog.

And these same keywords/phrases should also be applied to the meta keywords on your home page. Right now, I can see this function isn’t even used.

When you plug the name of your blog into Google, look at the description that does publicly show up to potential visitors. Are these the right words to encourage the person to click?

At the 10K-foot level, you need think of yourself as both the editor and publisher. As an editor, you’re doing terrific. I would say the publishing side needs more of a promotional mentality … which doesn’t have to come at the expense of your narrative.

I wrote on this topic “There’s Enough Room In This Town For Both Storytelling And Keywords” and put together a post that includes a SlideShare deck called “If You Build It, They Generally Won’t Come,” which might be useful.

Of course, you want to make sure you’re getting the right (relevant) people. In our case, I’m looking to expand the Agency’s reputation for storytelling in the corporate world, so I focus on “storytelling techniques” and derivatives of “business storytelling.”

Traffic aside, I still view the blog as a creative outlet that’s enjoyable. Being an introverted smart ass, the blog also serves as an outlet.

I suppose what I’m saying is it’s OK to be a little selfish and factor this into what you want out of your blog.

Good luck.