Yesterday marked the three-year anniversary since VentureBeat and Jolie O’Dell’s focus group of one correlated expensive toast to the decline of San Francisco. The O’Dell discourse came with jagged edges, damning the tech industry for a cycle that goes something like this: Someone creates a business for consumers with too much money and pretensions of …more
Playing a quick game of word association with European soccer fans conjures words like hooligans, violence and racism. When my family lived in the UK, my youngest son and I took in a match between West Ham and Liverpool at storied Anfield.The section for the West Ham supporters was literally wired off with police on …more
Failure. Point to a movie or a book that captivates, and I’ll show you failure. Shrek. Absolutely. Something more high-brow, like the best-selling novel “A Little Life.” Again, failure underpins the story. For it’s the failure — something going horribly awry, the more pain the better — that creates the tension in a story. As …more
As a storyteller, I often combine sad stories with one another. Mostly with a positive outcome, but often I use stories without a happy ending. Stories where listeners really have to think about what they just learned. Stories where there is no gold at the end of the rainbow. It’s amazing when such stories evoke …more
Companies underestimate the power of micro moments in brand building. As the world and specifically business communications increasingly tilt toward the digital sphere, . This holds true for all companies, whether B2B or consumer. Starting with “the bad and unattractive,” an interaction with LinkedIn last week reminded me of this point. I think I’m on …more
Today’s holiday celebrating the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. always prompts me to dust off the “I Have Dream” speech. It’s a revealing exercise to read the text of the speech rather than watch and listen to the speech. King was such a gifted orator, you get the feeling he could recite the owner’s …more
Storytelling is the new “black” when it comes to business communications. To understand the plight of storytelling, consider the chart put together by our crack research group using Factiva to search on the number of articles containing the word “storytelling” in general and business publications. .. The data doesn’t exactly quantify the communications profession embracing …more
I can’t pinpoint exactly when I met Raf Stevens. He’s part of what I refer to as the “storytelling posse” on Twitter, those evangelizing business storytelling 140 characters at a time. Not one to limit his narratives, Raf recently published his second book “Leadership, Storytelling and the Power of Connection” which explores the role of …more
Given the headline, you might be thinking that my binge watching of Dexter has gone too far. Relax. I’m not suggesting you literally interview the deceased. Instead, the idea is to go back in time to interview a famous person by “borrowing” from existing video footage. MLB.com shows the way in creating a video in …more
