Best Story Wins

Charities tend to be about helping those less well off - those often forgotten or overlooked in the funding scramble.

Charities have access to, and are starting to get smarter about leveraging their potential for deep engagement with volunteers, fund-raisers & stakeholders.

And stores, particularly video, are the key.

Even for a charity, facts do not motivate as well as a good story.

If you are a business, with a technical aspect - your 'facts' are not enough.  So what is your story, or more importantly, what are the best stories about your customers?

Good example of the transition from ‘touchy-feely’ use of new technology to becoming more imbedded in overall business processes. 

While this is focussed on B2C - with a banking example cited, it has applicability for B2B, for example many professional services or other services organisations i.e. engineering, architects, builders - could use simple version of this thinking, logic and process over time. 

This is because the easiest way to get new leads, new sales, new customers, is via the references of existing clients.

And ‘Social’ is where most prospects search for ideas, recommendations and reference checks on potential suppliers. 

Even CEOs wander around the digital marketplace asking other buyers which 'fish merchant' is any good.

This is something people have been doing for millennia - digital/social is just where they do it now. 

Make ‘Social’  e.g. we’ll listen and interact and help you where & when you want to be heard - not just a part of marketing, but a key aspect of your ongoing relationship with prospects, then customers. 

The rare company might actually have a process-centric CMO who already works with the COO on customer centric process from cradle to grave.

But this is extremely rare, most focus on abstractions like image & brand in my experience - studiously avoiding customer focus, measurement & discipline. 

Until B2B marketing gets out of 'happy-land', B2B customers will ignore it, including attempts to get with the flavour of the month, 'content' marketing.

Waiting until your prospects are already shortlisting suppliers and popping up hoping for 'consideration' - is a waste of time - unless you have an effective and realistic  'lowest cost supplier' strategy and can then win all your deals on price lower than your competition! No?

Then for the last couple of thousand years of B2B trading the deals go to the people with an existing relationship - where all other things are equal (features, functions, support, experience - and a ball park price).

Don't have an exisitng relationship ?

Then you need lead nurturing to build a relationship.

Sorry, but 'here's our solution' content marketing is not lead nurturing.

What does it mean for your business when Google feels video will become bigger than display & banner ads for online promotion & influence?

Does it mean every company should own a video camera? Videoing everything and putting your day to day activities on YouTube? Risky.

Or that every business now needs an edit suite to turn rough video footage into polished video material? Hard work.

Maybe it means you now need a script writer to properly consider, write and direct your video content? Difficult to brief & manage.

Perhaps it means you should hire ayour own videographer or film-maker, instead of relying on your ad, media or digital agency to guide you in this new area.?  Not really core business.

Even worse?

This dramtic shift is not just in and around Google.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Linkedin - all social media are seeing, and encouraging video as the most attractive, searched for, interacted with and influencing content - if you need to attract, win & retain customers.

"Great. I'm in..." you say

But how do you avoid making mistakes that could hurt your online and social reputation?

Or being ripped off by yet another wave of' "we'll show the way with this new stuff 'agencies'"?

The big, global consumer brands are scrambling to invest. To hire, to learn. Google 'Coca Cola' and 'storytelling' to get a sense of where the pioneers are heading. 

In the B2B market, the global players are NOT displaying leadership. Big accounting, technology, engineering, construction and consulting companies are conservative, and slow to move.

Which means there is a window of opportunity for smart 'we can make a decsion without referring to head-office' organisations.

Companies who want to leverage leading practice from the consumer (B2C) users of video content, and steal a head start on their bigger B2B competitiors.

If you are a privately held company - or an independant (you can make your own marketing & sales proces decisions) division of a global company - this could be your opportunity to make up some ground on your competition.

The Future of Storytelling

A wonderful sounding MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) - just closed, but stay tuned for re-opening in 2014

"Apostolistic Exhortation" = "abuse of power & privilege is risky" - funny, but true to lump the Chinese Communist Party & bankers in the same league.

Sense of entitlement, rules apply to others not us, gain at any cost (to others) - yet doubly ironic coming from the Catholic church, given the millenia of these same symptoms there.

Controversial ideas for some, but inequality and the consequences have to be in the risk plans for all societies and organisations from now (bit like climate change really)

Profound thanks to Emma Coats @lawnrocket - as a lover of lists, this one crashed into my Top Ten with smarts, insight & the assurance of curation by someone who has done it!

No 4 & 11 I've been using for years - so my real 'aha' moments (and some reminders came from No 6 (go opposites); No 9 (what wouldn't happen);  No 12 (discount the obvious)  

And what I love about these, which I use in other creative/commercial pursuits, is that the answer is often already in the room with us, but sometimes we have look at what isn't to see what could be.

PS love the visuals as well - ah, nostalgia!

Who should be the most frighted by this list?

I suggest: CEOs, CFOs and Sales Managers! Why? Consistent revenue in turbulent times is tough.

But with 'marketing' confessing they are out of control, and don't really know how to help, why give them at budget at all?

Because doing nothing seems scarier than doing something, although badly? Hmmm.

Doesn't sound like leadership...

These points about B2C also apply to B2B - and for innovative medium size business - not just global companies.

Step 2: is a fundamental building block of influence and persuasion - start with emotional triggers, although the right facts (with the right title - Step 1) can also be part of an emotional trigger

Step 2: is also the foundation of great communicators since Aristotle and even before - pace the highs & lows of your story to avoid overload or worse, boredom. Variety is the key to a narrative arc keeping the audience engaged.

A deceptive headline. I believe the lesson, or reminder here is WHY this company is doing WHAT it does, not the HOW of it eg CEO phone number accessibility is a symptom, not a driver.

There's a moral stance that drives the staff here to go beyond the job spec because they believe in and become part of this company's story - the WHY or beliefs of the company.

Putting the CEO's contact details out there for all to see is just what this company's story makes logical, right, and effective.

Great company stories, are based on great understanding of customer beliefs and stories.

Customers want more than products. They need to believe - and when they meet a company, and staff who believe in the same things...

"In 2005, great things started to happen everywhere for MOM’s," Nash recalls. "Sales were up more than ever. Retention and productivity were up. Recruiting was up. Profit margins were up. I can’t think of another company in America so dedicated to purpose as us."

I've enjoyed Bri's insight for some years now - and this one really struck a chord with me. Storytelling in the commercial or Not-For-Profit world of influencing is absolutely about the distillation down to a single message.

Bob Mankoff's "Anatomy of a New Yorker Cartoon"
Editor Bob Mankoff chooses what cartoons get published in the New Yorker. As far as I'm concerned cartoonists serve as the model for how we should approach thinking: engaging our whole mind to distill our perspective on complex issues down to a single message that prompts a reaction from those with whom we communicate. As Einstein said, "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."
http://www.ted.com/talks/bob_mankoff_anatomy_of_a_new_yorker_cartoon.html

Creativity needs a technical basis. Picasso's apprenticeship involved years of accurate life drawing before he unleashed his amazing creativity.

B2B marketing is struggling with a shortage of people who can get lead generation creativity into the market efffectively with the new marketing automation tools. 

While this article is around B2C 'advertising' the nurturing of B2B prospects or even suspects, where decision cycles can take months or years, is vital. Great storytelling, or content marketing - to be leveraged and scaled - needs new technology, and it's these hybrid storytelling/tech skills that are yet to be easily found.

At the moment, the technology is ahead of the ability of customer and their agencies ability to understand and execute with them. As Edwin Lee says in this article “helping companies and clients make sense of something they don’t really understand and they hear a lot about” is part of the big change for qualitative agencies to become more quatitative.

For many - the safest path into good lead nurturing can be outsourcing the strategy, design and execution - and over time building the skills to take it on internally.

Online curation is a new area. Thanks to Pawan Deshpande for this great and timely checklist to work to. Yes, it's easy to find a lot of content online, but over time, it's what you add to it that really counts.

And, just wait, the 'slash & burn, cut & paste' authoring will be found out anyway. Do it right, up front.

Thank Dean for a great summary of both the reasons for keeping up momentum on good communications, but also a great checklist of some logical Comminications 101 actions to make happen.

I suggest these apply to buying, selling, and just plain coping with day to day change 

The only thing missing for me is the role that examples and illustrations - by telling stories - can play.

Evene the structure, the cadence of a good story draws people in to listen, consider, and hopefully, change

Singular Focus. The lack of it ruins product launches, strategy sessions, negotiations, businesses, careers, and planets. (willful blindness on Climate Change anyone?)

In an adjunct premise to Simon Sineks now fashionable "Why" being more important then 'what' we do, Lara Galinsky beautifully nails how to figure out your "Why" you are here.

Once we get past survival we still need to feel we have a purpose, and maybe even are making a difference. And finding your own singular focus is somehow more meaningful than 'disengaged wage slave' or 'corporate ladder climber'.

Even a DishPig with a purpose can be cool.