I Read 10 Years’ Worth of Storytelling Posts. Here are the Ones That Qualify as Dreadful.

As a form of self-torture, I cruised through the 800+ posts I’ve written since the blog went live July 10, 2008. Dipping into my Yiddish vocabulary, “Oy vey.”

I’ve reflected on the blog’s 10-year anniversary and stuck a microphone in front of 10 suspecting individuals for their takes on the state of storytelling. Now, I’m going to curate the all-time worst posts that have found their way into the blog (as if I were an innocent bystander).

BTW, the image above comes from the TechCrunch quote, “The man who bites the dog is more interesting than the dog who bites the man.”

 

• Have You Heard of Pearned Media? (December 27, 2012)

I thought I had coined a clever term for content that blurs the line between paid media and earned media. The term didn’t get traction.

 

• YouTube Jumps on Storytelling Bandwagon (April 19, 2011)

Why would I devote a post to YouTube promoting a webcast on storytelling? I don’t know.

 

• Telling a Story Nobody Cares About (July 25, 2011)

I decided to make fun of an ad from Oklahoma City touting its short commutes. I’m trying to figure out why such minutia prompted me to write on the topic.

 

• Translating Infographic on Storytelling Techniques into Video (Sept. 27, 2011)

 

We designed a wildly successful infographic called “Storytelling vs Corporate Speak.” I figured let’s take the same concept and create a video. The action was sure to reach a younger demographic and expose them to the blog. It’s bad t.v. (to put it gently). If only I had tried this the following year riffing on Psy and Gangnam Style.

 

• Just One Vignette Can Make a Difference in Business Storytelling (Dec. 12, 2011)

Pointing out BusinessWeek’s gift for language for describing a new coffee maker as using a unique “shower head dispenser” does not beget a post. I take that back. It did, just a dreadful one.

 

• A Baseball Story That Wouldn’t Play in the U.S. (April 28, 2010)

My crack research team, that would be me, discovered that Japan established a woman’s professional baseball league with two teams. Okaaaay. But I still like the name of one of the teams, The Hyogo Swing Smileys.

 

• Chicken Gone Bad (July 13, 2010)

Again, my crack research team sent me careening down the wrong path, “catching” KFC offering tips for picnic planning.

 

• The Bursting of the Cupcake Bubble, Take Two (Dec. 24, 2010)

After careful analysis, I’ve concluded that I was so thrilled to receive free cupcakes, I had to give the baker exposure to my “vast” readership.

 

• Communicating with Fresh and Compelling Language (Jan. 25, 2010)

I invented a category of posts called “Moes Takes” after an old client who had a way with words. I thought it would be both fun and revealing to capture sound bites that didn’t stay in between the lines. It wasn’t.

 

• ESPN Suggests Storytelling is a Girl Thing (Oct. 18, 2010)

I decided to attack ESPN for launching a channel, espnW, because “storytelling is important to women.” Making a case that storytelling is gender neutral didn’t exactly ignite debate.

 

• Condiment War Unleashes Unsavory Diatribe (Oct. 22, 2010)

This goes down in history as my all-time worst post. I thought there were lessons to be had from dissecting the City of Middleton’s proclamation on National Mustard Day.

 

• Forget the Brother, Intuit Can Spare a Dime (+ $99.90) Per Blog Post (Dec. 15, 2010)

I exhausted considerable energy and time to prove to the world that Intuit could afford to pay more than 100 bucks for a 300-word blog post. I even showed financial acuity in analyzing slides from Intuit’s latest earnings announcement. There’s that question again. Why?

 

• Iron Reporter: Wall Street Journal Versus NY Times on a Russian Train (Oct. 26, 2009)

Like “Moes Takes” I tried to create a regular feature around the idea of taking a media story and pitting two journalists against each other and grading out their writing on the topic. What works on the Food Channel (Iron Chef show) isn’t necessarily a natural for a blog on business communications. Weirdly enough, I heard from the WSJ reporter, Paul Glader, who took issue with my analysis.

 

Certain patterns emerge from this collection.

First, I might want to get a sanity check the next time I decide there’s a story in minutia.

I also think we can see there’s a difference between being an esoteric smart ass and a smarty pants. The latter isn’t particularly flattering.

On the positive side, most of the bad stuff occurred in the early years of the blog.

I’ve always thought of my blog as a type of laboratory where I can experiment, so I don’t expect the bombs to come to an abrupt halt.

But a reduction would be OK.