Here’s my top-five list with a touch of psychoanalysis:

1. Self esteem from Mom and Dad: Hate to start on a syrupy note, but my parents stayed on message until I moved out for college: “Anything is possible with hard work.” Understanding that I can’t depend on the peanut butter in my sandwich finding its way to a colleague’s melted chocolate bar for the eureka moment has served me well.
2. Bravery from my high school yearbook advisor: His name was John Hoge. He taught English, but his guidance for our high school yearbook is where he left a lasting impact. Talk about ahead of his time. He had us reflecting the year through current events like the Patty Hearst kidnapping. More importantly, he coached us on bravery; i.e., it’s not enough to come up with a creative idea. You need to express it and do it … which means being brave enough to stand up to ridicule.
3. Interdisciplinary skills from J-school at the University of Arizona: They stressed that creativity comes from learning stuff outside the reporter’s box. Today, I find many ideas can be triggered from simply hanging out at the Barnes & Noble magazine rack and checking out stories and ads that have absolutely nothing to do with technology, consumer electronics and energy. When I’m absorbing a large amount of varied information, I strive for a Zen state that I call zero gravity, allowing the information to push my mind wherever it pleases. Geez, I’m starting to sound like Phil Jackson.
4. Power of the group from teaching: When conducting a workshop or guest lecturing at a university, the best part is always harnessing the collective brainpower of the group. Recognizing creativity is just as powerful as coming up with your own ideas.
5. Decompression from overseas flights: Most people flying to Asia or Europe in United coach experience anxiety or worse. Assuming I’ve been able to avoid the dreaded middle seat, I find nothing says creativity like 10+ hours in the air. There’s something to be said for periodically getting out of the day-to-day fray and liberating creativity. I’ve also learned to throttle my desire “to share,” so my laptop download after arriving at the hotel doesn’t pepper colleagues with a zillion emails.

The Newsweek story makes the point that creativity scores for kids were steadily rising until 1990 at which point the numbers started a consistent downward march.

The story never talks about the element of bravery, but I can’t help wondering if this element alone could make a difference.

If you’re looking for dialogue on this topic, Charlie Rose tackled the Newsweek article and creativity last week.

P.S. Sorry about not breaking up the text with a visual or two, but I found WordPress to be fussy on this fine Sunday evening and opted to publish rather than wait for Monday help. 

By eschewing a SEO-friendly headline, I run the risk of attracting readers researching salmonella in poultry.

When this post actually reflects a rumble through the KFC website where I came across a section called “Picnic Planning.”

At this point I’m thinking this could make a terrific mini case study on thought leadership. After all, one doesn’t intuitively associate a fried chicken company helping the customer in ways that go beyond a bucket of wings.

Then, I read the copy.

How can I put this?

It’s not exactly tadpole science.

Let’s review the section point-by-point starting with the “Do”:

Make a timeline of everything that needs to be done. A party planning checklist can become your best friend when you’re in a time crunch.

Thank you, Martha, and way to push the language envelope with the phrase, “time crunch.”

Make sure to take pictures of ALL your guests, not just your favorite few.

I’m sorry, but this is just flat bad advice. If I took my Aunt Zelda’s picture, she would crush me.

Send out thank you notes to those guests who came bearing gifts. A nice touch is to include a photo of that person at the party.

Ok, now I’m connecting the dots. Take a photo of all guests who bring gifts (”bear gifts” makes it sound like we’re colonists meeting with locals).

Ask for help! Since a picnic is such an informal occasion, it’s okay to ask guests and family members to help pitch in. Be sure to have tasks/suggestions ready.  

As my wife has proved time and time again with our kids, asking is the easy part. It’s the reciprocal action that gets tricky.

Now comes the “Don’t:

Forget to give your guests fair warning.

Fair warning? Do the guests need to walk across a bed of hot coals before they can roast their marshmallows?

Forget to ask the neighbors to an outdoor party to avoid hurt feelings or annoyance with the noise level. It’s a thoughtful-and smart-gesture.

Not so fast. Your precious picnic invitation can serve as a nice piece of leverage; i.e., trim that avocado tree hanging over our yard or bear (now that’s how you use this verb) the consequences. 

Forget to bring extra chairs and portable tables for last-minute guests.

Did the picnic move? I thought it was at the casa where chairs and tables should be in storage (remember we don’t want to annoy the neighbors).

Perhaps KFC should replace this section with ”How To Liven Up a Picnic,” an approach with endless storytelling possibilities.

I can see it now.

If you offer a tatoo station, the works of art should be tasteful and non Goth.

One of the better ones came from Gini Dietrich and her interview with Mickie Kennedy from eReleases.

With this in mind, I’ve dusted off a previous post that addresses this very topic:

Robert Scoble, the poster child for escaping corporate cubedom for the virtual pulpit, penned a post titled “What do the freaking tech bloggers want?”

It’s a convincing view.

A bit longwinded perhaps, but if “Scobleizer” is etched in your masthead, you get a pass to periodically pontificate.

The following line captures the gist of Scoble’s take:

“Bloggers are being commoditized.”

He goes on to say:

“If we just go to press conferences, or only deal with embargoed news, and report on the same news everyone else is reporting on, well, then, just what reason is there for our business to exist? How will we build an audience that’s any different, than, say, TechCrunch or Fortune’s or ZDNet’s efforts? How will we justify to our sponsors that they should sponsor us as we are doing the same thing as everyone else? Especially if we have a smaller audience? Yeah, advertisers really love getting THOSE kinds of sales pitches. Imagine walking into a big company and putting up a Powerpoint that says ‘we’re the same as Techcrunch, but smaller.’ What’s the chances you’ll walk out with a sponsorship?”

Hard to disagree.

In short, great blogging depends on information not in the public domain.

This is a tough one for smokestack PR which revolves around public-domain content, a one-to-many model also known by that scientific term “mass blast.” The news release is the best example of information earmarked for the public domain.

I’m not saying the news release doesn’t have a place in outbound communications. For a range of reasons, not the least being public disclosure and SEO, the news release can be the right tool for the job.

But public-domain information doesn’t work for bloggers.

Back to Scoble’s point about being commoditized, bloggers need fresh stories, unique access and turf to navigate on their own; otherwise, how do they differentiate their offerings?

Which poses a problem for smokestack PR.

Storytelling takes time. 

And it’s not a one-to-many approach in the blogosphere. Instead, it’s about pulling together the right content and sources for a single blogger.

The ROI comes from forming a genuine relationship with the blogger and one-off stories with the potential of being flung to the far reaches of the Net via the viral effect.

Scoble wrapped up his dissertation on what bloggers want from PR with an anecdote about powwows put on by Microsoft and EA:

“… That was really great because there wasn’t any pressure to report on anything, just a chance to get to know you, your team, and see some of the things you are working on. Same thing at EA last week. By providing experiences where we can get our hands on your products, meet your team, etc, we’ll discover new story ideas together. I found a few at EA that I would never have known about if they didn’t have an event where we could hang out for a day.”

We’ll discover new story ideas together.

What a concept.

Are we really at the midway point of 2010?

In honor of the milestone, I’ve captured my personal eight - lucky in Chinese numerology - favorites from the first half of the year.

1) Communicating with Fresh and Compelling Language

This was my first edition of “Moes Takes,” a vehicle to call out clever quotes in stories and show how they would have looked in dulled-down form. For example, Meir Statman, finance professor at Santa Clara University, offered this ditty in The Wall Street Journal:

“The market may be crazy, but that doesn’t make you a psychiatrist.”

The juxtaposition of crazy and psychiatrist makes for great wit.

Dulled-down version:

“The markets are erratic so it’s extremely difficult for the average person to understand.”

2) Open Letter to Toyota Customers Hits Pothole

It’s amazing how the BP tragedy has put the Toyota recall into the distant memory category.

But Toyota dominated the business headlines for several weeks and could never seem to hit the right communications note to diffuse the crisis.

Its open letter to customers set a tone that I dissected in this post.

The second line can only be described as Clintonesque:

I am truly sorry for the concern our recalls have caused, and want you to know we’re doing everything we can – as fast as we can – to make things right.

Notice that Toyota stays away from apologizing for an accelerator that seems to have a mind of its own. Instead, they’re sorry — no, make that “truly sorry” — that they caused heartburn from implementing the recall.

This type of language gamesmanship causes the customer to check out before getting to the part that matters– that Toyota is going “to make things right.”

3) Storytelling 140 Characters at a Time … Not

Intrigued by the concept of microstorytelling, I conducted an experiment reworking the first graph of Ernest Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea” into a tweet stream. Here’s an excerpt:

If it’s pathetic, it’s not functional. If it’s functional, it’s not pathetic. That’s my deep sea thinking for the day

I saw the sail … pathetic #tiger.

I agree with @ernest- saw the boy help carry the gaff and harpoon and even the sail furled around the mast.

Pathetic but functional #rachelray.

“Long seperated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.”

On one hand, you shouldn’t feel like you’re taking the SAT to figure out a love story. On the other hand, the ambiguity pulls you in because you can’t be 100 percent sure when the lovers will actually collide.

5) The Wall Street Journal Prints Lame Name-calling Article

Every once in a while I’m inspired to go down the original reporting path.

The Journal deemed Google poaching a Sun employee who had criticized Apple in his personal blog as worthy of an article.

This prompted my own digging. 

“It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers,” Mr. Bray wrote on his personal Web site. “I hate it.”

Perhaps with Madoff fading into the background, The Journal has a surplus of investigative bandwidth.

Can you imagine?

A company criticizing a competitor.

6) Storytelling in Warren Buffet Shareholder Letter

Among Warren Buffett’s many gifts, he’s a master storytelling.

His latest shareholder letter provided the fodder for this post:  

Long ago, Charlie laid out his strongest ambition: “All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.” That bit of wisdom was inspired by Jacobi, the great Prussian mathematician, who counseled “Invert, always invert” as an aid to solving difficult problems. (I can report as well that this inversion approach works on a less lofty level: Sing a country song in reverse, and you will quickly recover your car, house and wife.)

I just tried this with a Merle Haggard tune and it works, a sad reminder that no matter how many times I played the Beatles song “I Am The Walrus” backwards, I could never make out “Paul is dead.”

He’s right.

7) Storytelling in Social Media and Traditional Media

If we were playing American Idol, this post won the popular vote.

After speaking at the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing on storytelling, a Chinese magazine interviewed me on the topic. This post encapsulates my answers.

The vast majority of people have been programmed to think business is serious so their communication must be dry and boring and, yes, serious.

On the positive side, if you can create a personality, it literally becomes a differentiator in this sea of sameness … which is where storytelling comes in.

Storytelling can become a powerful tool in creating a company’s personality.

8) Pogue Wraps Product Review in Allegory

It’s not easy to entertain in product reviews.

David Pogue goes one step further, bringing dry humor to product features and functionality.

I had some fun reverse-engineering this particular review on digital cameras.

The review goes old school with the lead ‘graph:

Centuries ago, a young boy in Japan was preparing for a long journey. “You will need much drinking water,” said his master. “Construct a barrel that will catch the rain.”

You can almost sense David Carradine flashing back to his Grasshopper days, an allusion that keeps as the story unwind.    

Which isn’t the same as being an actual storyteller.

But I’m going to deviate from the script and share a story that falls under the you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up category.

One of my son’s friends will be attending college out of the area.

Figuring he wasn’t cut out for a long-distance relationship with the girlfriend, he concluded the relationship needed to end.

But the idea of ending things all at once seemed too painful.

Instead, he proposed (probably could have found a better verb) a schedule – which kicked off in late May – to his girlfriend to systematically wean (another poor verb choice) each party from the other.

Specifically, the plan dials down the social media connections over a period of time. You can see the game plan below.

Looks like he didn’t want to go too fast with the Skype calls.

Maybe he had a role model that succeeded with the six-week Slim-Fast system.

I’m no Dr. Phil, but I don’t think this story is going to have a happy ending. 

But there are a number of ways to bring visuals to the fore, such as the infographic.

I was particularly impressed with the savvy displayed from a company called Infegy in creating an infographic on the vuvuzela, those pesky horns providing the “lovely background music” for World Cup matches.

Adam Coomes, Infegy’s president, came up with the idea after watching the World Cup and seeing how the humble horn had garnered such attention in the news, blogs and tweets.

“That’s when I realized that it would be a good idea to get some official numbers about what people actually think about the vuvuzela,” explained Coomes. “Someone with no prior knowledge could spend five minutes reading the infographic and have a general idea of what a vivuzela is and its impact within the social media realm.”

No question, Infegy gets it right on multiple fronts:

• Storytelling brings together history, numbers and anecdotes
• Pursued a topic with a public profile that has spiked.
• Professional-grade design thanks to Ben Stock Design.
• Delivers levity; i.e., averages 127 decibels, that’s seven times more intense than a chainsaw (not to mention the difficulty of getting a chainsaw through security).

Plus, the company recognized that building an infographic solely around numbers from monitoring social media would come across as too self-serving and lack the verve of a multi-faceted edition.

The reward came in the form of pick-up by various online media properties, including Mashable.

One final point -

You might have noticed the infographic highlights that the data came from socialradar (product), not Infegy (company). It’s hard enough for a startup venture to build one brand, much less two, but we’ll save this story for another time.

The BP oil rig explosion just hit the two-month milestone.

At last count, I was one of 10,332 writers (my horseshoe-far number) who weighed in with a perspective or two on BP’s crisis communications.

Make that 10,333, with the BBC highlighting BP boss Tony Hayward’s gaffes.

A byproduct of BP’s PR nightmare involves the resurrection of the Exxon Valdez tanker spill that occurred more than 20 years ago.

Using the Factiva database (global version), we pulled up the number of articles that mention the Exxon Valdez crisis up to its two-month milestone. We also captured the number of articles on the BP crisis that included the Exxon Valdez spill, again using the two-month period from point of accident.

You can see how the data plays out below.

For ExxonMobil brand stewards, this must make for a sobering read.

There have been almost twice as many articles mentioning the Exxon Valdez thanks to BP’s “gusher” than during the equivalent period when the Exxon accident actually happened.

Now, it’s true that the Exxon Valdez mainly serves as fringe fodder in the BP stories. Still, there’s a negative halo effect from the words “Exxon Valdez” being recounted 6,134 times in association with the BP tragedy.

Furthermore, as one rakes through this coverage, it becomes apparent that the BP crisis provides a reason for the media to dust off the Exxon Valdez story with a new peg for standalone attention.

That’s what The Guardian did under the headline “Exxon Valdez, and Still Waiting in Alaska“:

I just tripped across this interesting interview with lawyer Brian O’Neill, who has for two decades represented 2,600 Alaskans who made claims for damages against Exxon over the Valdez oil spill.

Those who subscribe to the escrow-fund-as-shakedown thesis might bear O’Neill’s tale in mind. Exxon fought the claims in court for nearly 20 years:

CNN: Did anything surprise you once you started representing the fishermen and taking on Exxon after the Valdez spill?

O’Neill: I thought that — like a lot of people think now with regard to BP — that Exxon would want to settle the case relatively early and move on and I was surprised a number of times with the fact that this was World War III to them, and they dealt with it that way …

For those counting at home, put this one under the negative sentiment category. 

That’s why ExxonMobil is going on the offensive by starting a blog (two categories: safety and miscellaneous) and flying CEO Russ Tillerson eastward to throw BP under the bus during testimony before the Energy and Environment Subcommittee last week:

Sticking to this system has required us to make some difficult decisions. We do not proceed with operations if we cannot do so safely. The American people have shown their support for deepwater drilling – but they expect it to be done safely and in an environmentally sensitive way.

Equally revealing, ExxonMobil is proactively reminding the world it spent $180 million trying to drill the world’s deepest offshore well before walking away from the unfinshed job because it was too dangerous.

We’ve talked about the star power of the anecdote in storytelling.

Here’s yet another example.

Sarah Needleman at The Wall Street Journal sent out the following query on HARO:

I’m seeking small-business owners who struggle or used to struggle with reprimanding employees for poor performance or bad behavior. But I need more than just someone who can speak generally — I need an owner who can offer an anecdote that illustrates this problem. Maybe an owner was uncomfortable giving a stern talking to an employee who chronically came in late and then other employees started coming in late. Maybe an owner didn’t want to take sides between two fighting employees and one ended up quitting, resulting in a sudden staff shortage. The anecdote doesn’t need to be earth-shattering, just a real example of how hard it can be to be the tough guy or gal in a small work environment.

In short, she wants to ensure her story comes across as real through ”an owner who can offer an anecdote that illustrates the problem.”

Fast-forward to the actual article “Tough Love Isn’t Easy to Give” and those anecdotes come in the form of five companies:

• Just Salad: Didn’t confront a poor performer who eventually got the ax
• America By Mail: Too soft on a single dad who wasn’t doing the job
• 2 Hound Design: Ignored a micro-manager who spied on employees
• Tyler Barnett PR: Employee kept calling the big boss “buddy” and “pal”
• Trye & Associates: Receptionist continued to break rule eating at her desk

It’s revealing to look at Needleman’s original query that zeroes in on business owners “who struggle.”

That’s what creates the mini drama.

Personally, I’d like to hear more about the receptionist who preferred to dine in during ALL office hours.

Was she sneaking in a couple Bonus Jacks in her purse to nibble on throughout the day?

Did she offer snacks to her colleagues (perhaps reducing the company’s take from the vending machines)?

How did she respond when scolded that she shouldn’t pick up the phone with her mouth full?

And how the heck does a receptionist end up spilling coffee on the guts of a phone system, ruining it beyond repair?

I suspect there’s another good story waiting to be told. 

After evangelizing SlideShare as an ideal platform for storytelling, it occurred to me that we should develop a deck on the power of storytelling in business.

So that’s what we’ve done.

Taking a mix of pop culture, levity, science, and our experiences nudging clients out of the corporate-speak box, we’ve created the following as a primer for storytelling in business:

I attended the Innovation Journalism (InJo) conference last week, which was titled “Storytelling in the Time of Creative Destruction.” Between the speakers, workshops and informal dialog in the corridors, I came away with the impression that there’s still a sizable gap between what journalists need and what corporate communicators provide.

Hopefully, this presentation can be a resource.

We’d love to hear your input, including the perspectives of any storytelling disciples if this post reaches beyond the communications community.

The Innovation Journalism (InJo) Conference at Stanford kicked off yesterday.

Gathering 100+ journalists, academics and the like to scrutinize the telling of the innovation story makes for a lively dialog.

The opening session featured David Nordfors, founder of InJo, interviewing Krishna Bharat, the creator of Google News. Dubbed a “fireside chat,” I’m pleased to report both participants passed on the cardigan sweater (and no one lit the Duraflame log).

Quite frankly, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Putting Google on this stage struck me akin to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao keynoting an ACLU dinner.

But everyone was cordial if not downright polite.

Bharat started by sharing how the 9/11 tragedy served as the catalyst for Google News. He realized it took considerable effort and time to gather a cross-section of stories on the attack. That backdrop gave rise to Google News.

Nordfors tried to nudge Bharat out of his comfort zone and Timothy Dickinson from Rolling Stone probed about Google’s responsibility to the business of journalism. While Bharat stayed on script for the most part, I thought there were a few comments that offered hints on where Google is taking the platform.

One quick caveat - I did not record the session and my note-taking is not industrial grade. I’ve done my best to capture Bharat’s words.

Bharat: Journalists should worry about creating content and leave it to others to get the content to the audience.

My Take: By leave it to others, I wasn’t sure if he meant a publication’s businesspeople or companies like Google. Regardless, journalists do worry about this issue since the online distribution of their content has undermined revenue generation and pink-slipped so many of their compadres.

One element that doesn’t get a lot of discussion is the more experienced journalists end up in the line of fire because of their higher salaries. During my morning workshop, Peter Lewis who many may remember from his Fortune days but is now a Knight Fellow in Journalism at Stanford, mentioned that CNN cut their entire science staff. As a result, the media property is forced to cover a crisis like the BP oil spill with generalists.

Bharat: Once you intersperse hard news with everything else, it’s tough for a publication to distinguish itself.

My Take: Google believes the hard news biz will go the way of auto manufacturing; i.e., a few deep-pocketed publishers with scale will own the space. I got the sense that Google anticipates the bulk of consolidation in the publishing industry has yet to occur. Now there’s a sobering thought.

Bharat: The process for purchasing journalism needs to become easier and simpler.

My Take: This one perplexed me. I’ve never been stumped by a publication’s subscription form, this from a person called “mechanically declined” by his brother. On the other hand, I got the vibe that Google aspires to become the PayPal for digital content.

If you’re interested in a deeper look, Mark Glaser interviewed Bharat back in February in the MediaShift story “Google News to Publishers: Let’s Make Love Not War.”

You can track the conference through Wednesday on Twitter at #injo7.  

One last point to share on Day 1 of the conference -

Nordfors explained that his program has been renamed the Stanford Center of Innovation and Communication.

The name change recognizes that the ecosystem surrounding innovation and communicating to the outside world encompasses a range of players, including PR.

After the dust settles from the conference, I hope to get time with Nordfors for an interview on his program and the general topic of storytelling.