I’ve been thinking about The Wall Street Journal article, “Why Good Storytellers Are Happier in Life and Love.” The story cites new research from the Journal of Personal Relationships — when my wife says I subscribe to everything, I now have a credible retort — that shows women find men who are good storytellers more …more
Last year Buffer published the post, “Want to Improve Your Social Media Sharing? Harness the Power of Positivity in Social Media,” that evangelized a keep-it-positive message. Among the research supporting its position, the post included data from a Facebook study that showed when people read positive updates, they too tend to publish positive content. When …more
I’m not referring to fiction or fabrication. The question relates to the role of storytelling techniques in the HR function. The question also happened to be the thrust of my talk at the Alexander Mann Solutions (AMS) conference last week in Hong Kong. It turns out that one can make an argument for HR more …more
I love talking about failure in the context of business storytelling. It’s a tough one for executives because it’s counterintuitive. You never hear about a company hiring a PR agency “to get the bad word out.” Yet, the ability to bring failure or even a problem to the narrative is what separates industrial-grade storytelling from …more
Bloomberg Businessweek published an article by Ty Montague back in September, “Is Your Company a Storyteller? Or a Storydoer?” After a quick scan, I determined the piece focused on storytelling in business and tweeted out the link. In a weird juxtaposition of social sharing, a retweet of my original missive (thank you Runar from Oslo) …more
A good percent of the U.S. population has watched the Budweiser “puppy love” ad that ran during the Super Bowl. At last count, YouTube views were about to crack the 50,000,000 mark. I believe that qualifies as a viral video. What exactly in the video caused so many people to watch and share? Of course, …more
No blogger, including me, wants to toil in obscurity. Those of us who work under the marketing umbrella adhere to this twist on the “Field of Dreams” adage, “If you build it, people won’t necessarily come.” It’s now time for an update with a fresh wrinkle: Specifically, many RELEVANT people still won’t come. When it …more
Judging from the comment in my post, “Can Storytelling Differentiate a PR Agency,” and an email that arrived shortly after (more on this in a minute), I appear to have gotten the attention of the National Storytelling Network. They’re not pleased with me. In my defense, I have come clean on numerous occasions making the …more
Dear “Who Moved My Story,” I’ve been there. You’re there now. Every human being who writes for a company as part of communicating to the outside world has experienced the frustration of seeing his or her copy pruned again and again … and again. Forget trying to humanize the narrative. You’d be happy if the …more
