And those were some of the more “gentle” recent headlines. Let’s set the stage. Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri saw an opportunity to rethink mobile computing, so they founded a company called Humane. They invented a lapel pin that would essentially become your AI-infused digital assistant. This vision and the founder’s Apple pedigree landed $100M …more
Ted Sarandos is co-CEO of Netflix. He’s the one greenlighting Stranger Things, The Queen’s Gambit and Bridgerton. He had better get the concepts of story construction. Does he? For the answer, we turn to his recent interview with the New York Times. Asked about how his interest in TV and movies came about, the 81-second …more
I respect people who can keep the scent of the trail. Fellow storytelling evangelist Brad Marley approached me back in April 2019 to answer a handful of questions on my second-favorite topic. The plot took some twists and turns (naturally), but I answered Brad’s questions a couple of months ago. For those who don’t subscribe …more
By Grace Hoffman, Editorial Assistant It’s rare to read a restaurant review that is brutal, compelling and downright strange! Pete Wells dug in and made it happen … but how? The variety of tactics and his unwillingness to “go easy” on Guy Fieri’s restaurant is what makes this review rich material illustrating how storytelling …more
By Frank Zhang, DGM Hoffman China Sitting on the train from Shanghai to Wenzhou, I had time to contemplate a simple question: What were students from Wenzhou-Kean University, a Chinese-American jointly established higher education institution, expecting to hear from an international communications consultancy? I arrived at the venue 30 minutes early. It turns out …more
What does a shovel have to do with storytelling? Everything. Many of our clients come from the B2B tech world where hearts race from inventing a way to increase the spin-torque efficiency of a memory device. While these types of stories hold great importance to the people who use a given technology, they typically aren’t …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
