Boy meets girl.

David topples Goliath.

Money.

Overcoming hardships.

Goliath meets girl.

All the basic themes of classic storytelling work in any culture and in any language.

But this doesn’t mean you can develop stories in your home market, fling them over the fence to far-reaching countries and expect them to resonate with the local media.

Regardless of the theme, you still need local characters for a story to play in a “Peoria” like China.

Look at the story last week in the Journal “Scouring China’s Streets for Car Design Ideas” that examines Mercedes-Benz’s decision to focus on China for inspiration in building tomorrow’s cars for the global market, not just China.

First and foremost, you have a local protagonist in Olivier Boulay, who heads up the Mercedes design studio in Beijing.

A killer anecdote sets the tone for the story:

A decade ago, in search of inspiration for an ultra-luxurious Mercedes-Benz, designer Olivier Boulay studied Japan’s chauffeur-car culture.

Now, as he dreams about the future of the automobile, he zips around Beijing on a $367 electric bike, along with throngs of the city’s residents.

Nice touch that Boulay shared the receipt of his motorbike with the reporter.

The story goes on to weave in China-centric stats like how China now represents Mercedes’ fourth largest market compared with 10th place back in 2006.

But the most revealing data lies in a bar chart that shows Mercedes now sells more cars in China than in Japan (although it’s strange that the same bar chart didn’t appear in the online version of the story; perhaps a shortage of bytes on this day).

Accentuating the point, we learn that Boulay spent 17 years in the Mercedes design studio in Japan before making the jump to China.

Step back for a moment and consider the head of Mercedes Japan. Do you think he or she was thrilled about this story? What about the Mercedes employees based in Japan?

But without this context, you don’t generate the drama that shapes the story.

The communicators looking after the Mercedes global brand recognize this point and obviously had the clout to advance this one-voice story (would be interesting to know if the Mercedes communicators had to navigate internal politics to free up the story).

Playing a bit to the nationalist tendencies in any country, Boulay shares:

“You can see how a new generation of consumers in this country is way out in front.”

Also worth highlighting, you don’t need hard news to generate these types of stories. The closest the Mercedes story comes to a news hook is noting that “Boulay moved to Beijing this year.” Not exactly a stop-the-presses moment.

All in all, it’s a great example of localizing storytelling.

Siemens recently took its new high-speed train for a spin with reporters on board.

The story provides the perfect fodder to resurrect “Iron Reporter,” the forum in which we contrast how two reporters tell the same story.

Today’s challenge pits Andrew E. Kramer from The New York Times (“Siemens Fills Need for High-Speed Trains in Russia”) against Paul Glader from The Wall Street Journal (“High-Speed Rail Keeps Train Makers on Track”).

I’ll try to channel Alton Brown as we examine the all-important lead.

Kramer ties the story to intrigue and Russia’s quest for global relevance in the waning days of the Cold War:

In the last years of the cold war, the ultrasecret research institute that had designed the Soviet Union’s nuclear submarines received an unusual request: could it build a high-speed train?

The Soviet Union, despite its dependence on railroads, had fallen far behind Japan and Western Europe on high-speed transport. That the order came to the Rubin design bureau suggests that Moscow viewed catching up as a matter of national security.

The result of the little-known program was a slate-gray, round-nosed locomotive called the Sokol, Russian for falcon, that petered out soon after the Soviet Union did. The prototype achieved a top speed of only 143 miles an hour — hardly breaking a sweat by high-speed standards.

But the fall of the Falcon created an opening for Siemens.

Talk about doing your homework and connecting the dots.

On the other hand, Glader takes the approach of capturing an “all-aboard” moment:

As an engineer pulls the throttle, villagers track side gawk at the bullet-shaped train as it gathers speed. Soon, forests and wooden shacks are a blur as a dashboard display reads 250 kilometers an hour (155 miles per hour).

Good narrative for sure, but it pales against the depth of Karmer’s opener.

Further scrutinizing the Glader/Journal piece, we discover that the new Russian train from Siemens serves as a hook into the broader topic of the high-speed train business, with Hitachi and Bombardier as well as Siemens vying for the $182B pie.

This allows Glader to parachute into Spain, China, the UK and the U.S. (noting President Obama’s $13B in stimulus money earmarked for high-speed rail) to share market snapshots. As the GE watcher at the Journal, no surprise that Glader also devotes a graph to GE’s rail operation.

In short, Glader develops a follow-the-money story tying back to the $1B that Russian Railways will pony up for the Sapsan project.

He closes with ping-pong anecdotes, one for and one against fast trains:

“I’m sure they’ll push away aircraft,” says Alexander Dumnich, a captain of the famous Red Arrow train, which was introduced by Joseph Stalin in 1931 and pressed into military service during World War II.

Alexei Daibov, an auditor with PricewaterhouseCoopers in St. Petersburg, is more skeptical. “I travel by plane,” he says, expressing but he hopes a price war will lower the cost of plane tickets.

I would classify his narrative as perfunctory with the exception of calling out the train’s upscale interior design as “a change in Russia’s egalitarian rail tradition,” a clever tip to Dostoyevsky.

Back to Kramer and the NY Times -

Rather than address the world market for fast trains, he hypothesizes that Siemens’ end game is really the U.S., “the last laggard of the high-speed age.”

This opens the door to tidbits not in the public domain, such as Siemens repotting employees from its high-speed train division to Sacramento, and that the very same Sapsan connecting St. Peterburg and Moscow is in the running for the San Francisco to LA train trek.

And Kramer extracts a terrific quote colored against the backdrop of the ride:

The United States “is a developing country in terms of rail,” Ansgar Brockmeyer, head of public transit business for Siemens, said in an interview aboard the Russian test train, as wooden country homes and birch forests flickered by outside the window.

It also turns out that the Sapsan incorporates a technological breakthrough. The train has no locomotive; “instead, electric motors are attached to wheels all along the train cars, as on some subway trains.”

Why didn’t the Glader/Journal piece mention this little ditty? I don’t know. I suppose it wasn’t deemed important.

As the Kramer/NYT story finds its way back to Russia, we learn that geopolitical friction stretched the Siemens sales pitch over a decade, and it wasn’t until “a general thaw in relations between Germany and Russia” took place that the deal was inked.

The imagery of the actual train trip is woven throughout the Kramer/NYT article with one of my favorites explaining that the Russian tracks still need to be upgraded for high-speed trains:

It was like driving a new Porsche over a rutted road.

I think it’s revealing that while both reporters close with an anecdote, Kramer draws from the actual trip:

No doubt by the time the U.S. wakes up on Wednesday morning the Twitterati will be out in force reacting to PaidContent’s story that the Wall Street Journal is giving up embargoes (apparently the new year’s diets went out the window in February).

In short, the Journal won’t accept embargoes for stories, but will take exclusives if handed to them.

According to Rafat Ali at PaidContent the policy change ties to Robert Thomson’s memo back in March when the judgment came down:

“…henceforth all Journal reporters will be judged, in significant part, by whether they break news for the Newswires.”

But what’s really changed?

The big-brand companies still have the heft to bully publications ranging from the Journal to TechCrunch (which repented on embargoes last year) to accept embargoes. And the media properties with juice can still force the lesser names to accept their terms.

Or a given publication works with a company under embargo when it believes exploring the announcement and the associated context without the pressure of an immediate deadline will benefit the story.

That’s how the game has always been played.

I take issue with Ali’s assertion that “WSJ reporters will no longer be part of a herd of journalist briefings…”

While there are abuses from both sides of the fence on this one, the fact remains that an embargo enables a reporter to write a more thoughtful piece.

If anything, the embargo actually results in greater diversity in how an announcement plays out in various outlets. If you don’t believe this, compare the content of different wire stories from a single announcement.

I’m not criticizing the wires. With the pressures to be first (back to our friend Mr. Thomson) it’s virtually impossible to bang out an original story right after an announcement has officially gone live … which is why the only glory comes from being first.

But if you’re not going to be first, the benefit of time offers the opportunity for story telling.

No, I’m not talking about Matt Kenseth winning the Daytona 500.

Instead, consider what brings the vast majority of folks to the racetrack.

It’s the possibility to witness a high-speed wreck.

I’ve come to call the type of story that offers up the possibility of a wreck - defining “wreck” as an element of the story tied to the protagonist going horribly astray - as a “NASCAR story.”

I recently saw a front-page note in the San Jose Mercury News asking readers if they’re out of work, searching for a new job and interested in Warholic fame to drop the editors a note. The Merc will pick a few folks to follow on their job hunt and report on each saga.

This is a NASCAR story because the potential exists for a wreck. Given that almost 600,000 folks lost their jobs in January alone according to the U.S. Labor Department, there’s no guarantee that these stories will close with the birds chirping and everyone living happily ever after. 

I suppose it’s a similar dynamic to reality TV and what keeps people coming back to “American Idol” (as an aside, my daughter has Lil Rounds as the early favorite). The unscripted nature of this type of story means the reader/viewer doesn’t know the ending, with the potential wreck always lurking around the corner.

I’m surprised more communications professionals don’t develop and pitch NASCAR stories. No question, there’s a dimension of risk, but the reward can be opening doors at heavyweight publications without the typical news announcement.

I flagged a story last month in The Wall Street Journal titled “Cooking Up Ways to Improve Steaks on a Plane” (provided the link to the story on MSN for those without a subscription to the online Journal). It’s an entertaining read as columnist Scott McCartney essentially places himself at the hip of the Singapore Airlines’ head of food service, Mr. Freidanck, as he evaluates one of the airline’s food vendors, the Chelsea Food Service based in Houston.

It’s also a NASCAR story.

McCartney’s unscripted “access” makes for drama and a narrative rich in anecdotes:

Because the dry air of a jet cabin dries mouths, taste is diminished in flight. So Singapore and other carriers exaggerate flavors in meals.

The piece also contains a few mini-wrecks in which the caterer’s executive chef gets raked over the coals (couldn’t resist):

Mr. Freidanck tastes while Shashi Nath, Chelsea’s executive chef, awaits judgment. A corn chowder isn’t thick enough. Oops, celeriac and pear cream soup is too thick. “Do they really understand celeriac here in Texas?” Mr. Freidanck asks the throng taking notes on every order.

A sauce is too starchy; beef soup is too salty. “Something was lost in translation on the beef soup,” he says. Crabmeat on top of avocados in one salad looks messy and he redesigns the layout himself, then photographs it when he gets it exactly as he wants it. Mushrooms in one dish are chopped too small, their variety unrecognizable. Muscovy duck is undercooked and doesn’t taste right. “It’s not Muscovy!” Mr. Freidanck says.

“It is positively,” Mr. Nath insists.

I can almost picture a shouting match: “It’s not a Muscovy duck … Yes it is … No it isn’t … Yes it is.”

Yet, even with the negatives, the reader takes away an overall positive impression of Singapore Airlines and its quest to serve the customer.

Kudos to the Singapore Airlines PR team (assuming the seed of the story came from them) for not only manufacturing the storyline but for selling the concept to management.

The media loves NASCAR stories.

It would behoove communications professionals to push beyond their comfort zone and that of their company to develop these types of angles with unhandled access. Such an approach certainly better aligns with the needs of the media than a news release. 

If you ask people what’s the one digital device they absolutely can’t live without, the mobile phone comes out as the clear leader.

That’s why you have industry heavyweights like Google’s Eric Schmidt calling mobile advertising the  single most exciting opportunity for the do-no-evil guys as far back as 2006 (The Wall Street Journal).

It also explains the strategic importance of the Android platform for Google. Mobile search and the ads that come along for the ride will be a massive market.

While predicting the size of such an embryonic market is a little like Mrs. Magellan asking how many lunches to pack, this hasn’t stopped the prognosticators from taking a shot. Industry analyst firm Informa, for example, forecasts annual expenditure on mobile advertising reaching the $11.4 billion mark by 2011.

Whether you buy this number or not, the point is that people are increasingly turning to the phone for content … which brings us storytelling on the “small screen.”

Rudy De Waele’s blog called Mobile Media Lifestyle looks at this very topic. In fact, De Waele delivered a presentation called Mobile Digital Storytelling in Seoul last week (appreciate Kathrin Eiben in Spain flagging it) that even touches on the tools emerging for packaging a story for display on mobile phones.

Obviously, a tiny screen puts a premium on the visual element.

You can check out the early days of visual storytelling on Flickr via its “tell a story in five frames” initiative, which offers the following guidance:

Guidelines are not rules, but a formula that can be used to suit your creative imagination. Several avenues exist for story telling, such as journalistic reporting, sequential photos that reveal a moment, photographic poetry, and narrative. The following guidelines are for narrative.

A good story has characters in action with a beginning, middle, and an ending. Fortunately a lot of information can be given in a single photograph, enhancing the limitations of five photographs for your story. Location, time, and atmosphere aid viewer imagination. Keep standards of pictorial beauty, but pack as many storytelling elements in one photograph as possible to develop an action.

1st photo: establish characters and location.

2nd photo: create a situation with possibilities of what might happen.

3rd photo: involve the characters in the situation.

4th photo: build to probable outcomes

5th photo: have a logical, but surprising, end.

Like any form of storytelling, drama keeps an audience engaged.