You would think every company would prefer to communicate in a way that connects with people. After all, before segmenting the target audience, we know the objective is to reach people. Yet, business writing often comes off as mechanical and even stiff. Do you want the narrative to sound like it comes from an actual …more
A zillion college graduates are about to descend on civilization with shiny apples in hand. The demand versus supply equation doesn’t work in the graduate’s favor. And it’s even tougher this year. COVID-19 has swung a wrecking ball through the economy. Every day brings headlines about more layoffs in Corporate America. I haven’t seen the …more
I came across this video “Never Estimate the Power of a Great Story” back in 2009. Even knowing the ending, the humor still slaps you across the face. After a recent watch, I realized the video delivers a few pain-free lessons in business storytelling. . Sure, the protagonist manages to escape death several times — machine …more
Orson Welles wasn’t exactly known for his brevity in storytelling. “War of the Worlds” ran for only one hour, but the radio broadcast seemed so real that it caused panic throughout the nation. We’ve discovered that you can tell a story in seven seconds. Here goes —
I believe levity is the killer app in business storytelling. Levity lifts the narrative, especially in the B2B tech world where inserting an action verb is considered a win. For the B2B tech companies who say this is too hard, too risky, check out the use of levity by law enforcement agencies, starting with last …more
By Chris Owen, UK Director After working on the book for over 34 years (we have people in this office who haven’t been alive this long), Christopher Booker published Seven Basic Plots in 2004. It’s a seminal piece of work; taking a psychological and analytical approach to literature, it identified seven core themes to which …more
The headline is our attempt at inserting incongruence into the story. As you would suspect, PR agencies typically don’t use advertising as part of the marketing mix. When they do, the creative often lacks inspiration (to put it kindly). I’d like to think we’re an exception to the rule. Which brings me to our initiative …more
Monday’s post captured five of the 10 top posts this year (so far). Here are the remaining posts. 6. Game of Thrones Depicts the Best of Persuasive Language The final season of Game of Thrones played out this year. Rather than focus on the Iron Throne, we turned our attention to persuasive language, specifically …more
Six months and change into 2019, and I’ve written a grand total of one post on President Trump. I’d like to call that progress. I suppose it also reflects fatigue. This is the time of year when I take a breath, scan the body of work this year and select what I consider the best …more
