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. 

I noted earlier in the month that we got the SlideShare religion, using the social media site to tell our story through an unconventional credentials deck.

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.

It pains me to say what I’m about to say.

Advertising recognizes the power of narrative more than the PR profession.

This isn’t to say that PR efforts aren’t using storytelling techniques (sorry for the double negative, Mr. Harper). There are consultancies like us as well as corporations who have got the storytelling religion.

But you don’t see narrative deployed as consistently on the PR side as in advertising.

I recognize a news release on a revised CRM platform doesn’t exactly lend itself to developing the character of a protagonist. Still, I believe PR programs are too often creating content that aligns with who-what-where-when-why journalism when the media has moved on to putting greater emphasis on storytelling.

The latest JPMorgan Chase ad (pasted into this post below) running in The Journal and other business publications got me thinking about this topic.

Let’s start with the ad headline:

“We’re Going On The Road To Help Homeowners Face to Face”

A tone of humanity is established from the get go.

If this was the typical news release on the same topic, it would read:

“JPMorgan To Conduct Seminars on Home Mortgages in Eight North American Cities”

Forget the theoretical. I snagged the actual news release put out by Chase PR which carries the following headline (BTW, I did write the theoretical news release before seeing this):

Chase plans multi-day, foreclosure-prevention events in eight markets to help struggling home owners

Now there’s a warm term, ”foreclosure-prevention events.”

Back to the ad -

It talks about hosting sessions across the country to assist homeowners with their mortgages, a successful event in Florida - helped 3,000 people - and plans to do more of these sessions.

Conversational language takes the reader through the story.

In fact, it’s interesting to note that the ad stays away from the term “foreclosure-prevention events,” instead using the empathetic words ”homeowner assistance events.”

The irony is PR enjoys an advantageous position for storytelling. Those ad guys must cram their stories into expensive real estate.

We should capitalize on this position.

Quick example -

I interviewed a client this week on the topic of cultivating a mindset for innovation.

Now you might think, “Good luck coming up with something fresh on a topic that has been intensely scrutinized by the likes of Harvard Business Review, Fortune and The Economist.  What can your client possibly add to the dialog?”

You would be mistaken.

He told terrific stories complete with anecdotes like the CEO taking a hands-on approach to building a brainstorming room. The CEO’s office at one point was filled with different types of dishes and glassware as he scrutinized the right selections for facilitating innovation. He shared a second story about mixing young minds with seasoned veterans as a catalyst for brainstorming.

My point is, the stories are there.

They’re always there.

We just need to dig them out.

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal included an article that caught my attention.

Titled “New Google Hire Takes Aim at Apple,” the piece - can’t bring myself to call it a story - recounts how a Google employee ( Tim Bray) recently poached from Sun used his personal blog to say nasty things about Apple’s mobile phone strategy.

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

Can you imagine?

A company criticizing a competitor.

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

Let’s put it this way, John Letzing’s digging wasn’t exactly Woodward and Bernstein.

Because a proper investigation would have showed that on December 3, 2007 the said Tim Bray wrote a post on his blog called “Hate Apple Day.”

That’s right.

His hate for Apple has nothing to do with joining the Google gang. The emotional torment has been going on for some time.

But it gets better.

It turns out Mr. Bray hates other things as shared on February 9, 2007:

I so hate Aeroplan, Air Canada’s frequent-flyer program. I have many hundreds of thousands of points, but in recent years it became increasingly impossible to use them.

I could go on, but I don’t want to show up Mr. Letzing.

Maybe there’s now a beat at The Journal called raking blogs.

After all, Mr. Letizing wrote an article last week that started:

The former chief executive of Sun Microsystems Inc. wrote on his personal blog Tuesday that Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) Steve Jobs once threatened to sue the company in 2003.