Category: Storytelling

When I sit down to write, most times the ideas just flow — I get into a groove, and the ideas begin to transform themselves quickly into words. This is partly because I write about the things that I am interested in, but also, partly because I have taken the time to develop my writing in a disciplined manner. In fact, I started writing this blog as a way of reasserting this discipline.

However, the process of writing is quite slow … even if you know what you are going to say, it takes time. And because you can see what you are writing, you also are able to edit it. You censor yourself, you edit out some sections, remove any embarrassing gaffs (most of the time) … and you generally work and rework your text so that you make sure you look good to your readers. You are, afterall, only as sexy as your writing portrays.

One of the benefits of blogging is that you can work through ideas in an episodic and non-linear way … and by categorising your posts you end up with a series of articles that (generally) build and expand on a central theme. Often, when I visit blogs I take a look at the categories to see how ideas have evolved over time.

But then, sometimes an innovation jumps in to disrupt this flow. Such is the case with David Armano’s new adventure in blogcasting. In his virgin blogcast, David gives us a great insight into the background thinking and actual approaches to using his Experience Map. The cool thing? It was done in 15 minutes with no fuss … and there was no worry in clearly articulating his "voice", sounding "authentic" or demonstrating his mastery of the topic. It was all these things. Done with speed and beauty.

S.

I love this video from YouTube. John Moore over at Brand Autopsy posts this video and says:

… just as professional marketers can create “off-brand” messaging, amateur marketers will do the same. Should we expect anything different? Seriously, should we?

I must say I am a little surprised by the question. Not only should we NOT expect anything different (ie off-brand messaging), we should ENCOURAGE it. What we get in this video is a sense of the human face of what has become a massive, global brand. It is fun, playful, has an undercurrent of seriousness … and makes us think. Hey, it may even make some of us ACT.

And if the Starbucks marketing and legal teams have any sense, they will find an on-strategy way of picking up, harnessing and promoting this type of creative work.

There has been a lot of action over at David Armano’s Logic + Emotion blog over the last couple of days. It started, for me at least, with this post on the need to put your brand’s audience at the centre of the creative experience … to focus on what will work for people, not what works for the creative and strategic teams that do the work.

Then, in a post on the Sphere of Influence, this discussion shifted to the influence that bloggers have over the audiences (especially those who are also bloggers). But rather than this being a strict hierarchy, with Level 1 Bloggers at the top of the pyramid, I could see that other connections could be made, turning the diagram into something more "like rain drops hitting the surface of a lake". David came back with yet more insight with this post — and a bunch of comments and plenty of additional discussion.

But I think there is still some way to go … perhaps from a different angle. It strikes me that topics simultaneously appear across the blogosphere … in a zeitgeist kind of way — resulting in the emergence of conversational topics that begin, leap and skip from one blog to another. The topic is built upon, added to, criticised and so on …

I see the story or the topic as being like a stone that skims across the water, leaving in its wake, a thousand ripples of varying sizes. Sometimes the stone strikes hard and deep with a well-known blogger, and in other cases it can be a simple trackback direct from, say, the Servant of Chaos blog (ie a small ripple). BUT, the interesting part comes when the ripples meet and multiply, building energy and strength around the story.

That is where it gets interesting … I am looking forward to where this conversation goes next!

PS — To all the FeedBlitz subscribers, sorry for the false start on this post.

S.

I love the way that cars and bikes capture our attention. There is something about the melding of mind, body and machine that has a deeply attractive significance for many of us … and yet, it is something that car makers are very rarely able to articulate.

I was reading Russell Davies’ post on cars and how he was becoming interested in them again … and it reminded me of David Armano’s photo of a motorbike (hey David, is it yours?) and a story about heading off on holidays. And there seemed to be a connection emerging … something that linked passion, curiosity and a sense of escape.

Now, I have always been interested in cars and bikes, and have had many over the years. My most recent bike was this fantastic Ducati 900 Monster — and I loved it. It was big, noisy and made your heart race. And everyday it would remind me of a discussion of Plato’s theory of forms. Really? Oh yeah!

I distinctly remember a discussion about beauty and the way that it was considered one of Plato’s forms but without corporeality. Beauty radiates through other corporeal items. In trying to come to grips with this, our discussion ranged far and wide, and I spoke about riding a motorbike, changing gears, braking, accelerating, moving with the machine and so on … and how there was a sense of beauty in the fluidity.

Hmm … lovely. If only advertisers could articulate that sense of deep engagement! If only I could make it sound more poetic. But I am sure, at least some of you know what I mean.

S.

Sometimes you can just find the coolest information online!

I am currently reading a book by Australian writer Anthony O’Neill, called The Empire of Eternity. It has a great undercurrent of historical conspiracy that draws Queen Victoria and Napoleon into the story. One of the main characters in the story is Vivant Denon, the author of a book on Egypt, credited with bringing Egypt and its wonders to the West.

Not content to let this live as fiction, I was doing a little bit of digging and found this cool site that provides access to some of the greatest texts of antiquity. The Digital Assets Repository of Bibliotheca Aleaxandrina has Denon’s book available as PDF … and many other priceless texts that would otherwise be restricted to the gloved hands of scholars. What more could you want … an online library of ancient stories … it will be like looking into the blogosphere of the ancient world.

Now, if only I can get my user ID and password to work!

S.

I am pretty good at sleeping on planes. No matter what noise is happening around me, I tend to be able to fall asleep without too much fuss — as long as the seat is not too bad. Unfortunately, the seat is not always my friend.

One thing that is important, however, is an eye mask.

When I started travelling for business I resisted the eye mask. It always reminded me of the Top Cat cartoon series. But after using one and experiencing the bliss of in-flight darkness I have never looked back. Until now.

This promotion (thanks to coolz0r) is for Rox … and the pictures look exactly how I feel after a long flight. Sure I get sleep, but I somehow always end up looking a bit freaked out. I would love one of these eye masks for my next trip!

A further extension, and more literal version of Michael Wagner’s recent post on Marketing Porn … comes a great story about an unfortunate incident at the end of a workshop presentation given by Rob Campbell. Just goes to show that creative chaos can hit at any stage … with unexpected results. Looking for an authentic storytelling moment? Here is one from Rob’s life.

I swear to God that the following is absolutely true … and it will stay with me for the rest of my life.

So I was in Shanghai on Friday running a workshop. All went really well and by the end of the meeting, lots of people came up and said thank you for what I had taught them.

Anyway, this one lady walked up to me at the end, with a USB ‘Thumbdrive’ in her hand and asked if it would be at all possible to have a copy of the preso. Naturally I agreed and I plugged in her device into my laptop and waited for my computer to recognise it so I could move the file over.

Now my laptop has a program that automatically opens any photos or videos held on a thumbdrive or CD so while I was doing some other work on my computer, I noticed in the background, a bunch of photos had been uploaded. For some reason, my eyes couldn’t stop staring at them, mainly because [1] everyone likes the idea of ’snooping’ on someone’s photos and [2] my brain just couldn’t work out what the hell they were.

Then … like being hit by a truck … my brain finally worked out exactly what I was seeing.

HOME-TAKEN PORNO PHOTOGRAPHS!!!

I kid you not … they were very, very, very, very full on!!! I mean sooooooooooooooo full on!!!! I mean …. BLOOOOOOOOODY HELL full on!!!!!

For a few seconds, time stood still … maybe I froze, maybe I held my breath, maybe I just gasped … but whatever it was, she noticed something was wrong because within a nano-second, she had lunged for my computer mouse and closed the ‘offending’ program shouting, “THAT’S NOT IMPORTANT”.

I was soooooo shocked I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or just sit down and ask for a cup of tea then a cold shower – but one thing I did know was that there was no way I could look her in the face … there was no way I would have maintained control if I’d done that.

Weird thing is, this woman was one of the sweetest people in the conference – she was more likely to be Mother Teresa than Jenna Jameson … but she proved it’s the ‘quiet ones you have to be careful of’! Seriously, I saw parts of her that only a gynaecologist, waxer or boyfriend, should see but I have to admit, I did wish I could have had a longer gawp at the pictures but it was so out of context, my brain just took too long to register what it was seeing.

What made it even funnier was that my laptop was still connected to the projector … so her ‘front bottom’ was on display to the whole room – but luckily [for her] everyone was chatting after a long day so they missed the most amazing 7 seconds of any presentation, EVER!

So how did it end?

Well I copied the file and without either person looking at eachother, we sort of mumbled that it was ‘good to meet eachother’ and she ran out of the room while I had to sit down and try and work out if I’d just seen what I thought I had seen!

So to this poor lady who is the subject of my dedication, I thank you … you made a long flight back to Singapore, literally fly by and I have been laughing out loud at random moments throughout the weekend as I remember the weirdest few seconds of any meeting I’ve ever attended.

Oh and to people who think we rule technology rather than the other way round … don’t get too cocky … if it can screw over the nice lady I met on Friday, it won’t think twice to bugger up your lives when it so chooses!

With thanks to The Famous Rob Mortimer.

S.

So here I am in Taipei. I have not seen much as yet and don’t expect to get out very much over the next few days … meetings being what they are. But what is quite noticeable here is how much English is spoken — especially in public spaces.

On my recent trips to China I have been greeted by the musical sound of Mandarin (and various delicious dialects) — and I expected the same here. I have even been practising some basic Mandarin words and phrases but have had no need of them — not so much as a xie xie (thank you) so far.

But there is a sort of imaginative freedom that you encounter while travelling — especially when you are immersed in a culture and a language which is not your own. You are simultaneously constrained and open … captured by your own language but also freed from it — sort of similar to what Johnnie Moore describes here.

But when you do not actually understand the language around you, you become attentive to other things — to the smell of the airport, the feeling of the air on your face and how it is different from the air in your city. So it is with Taipei. From the air it looked specatular … with wind farms spread across the beaches facing Mainland China, rice paddies terraced into the low-lying fields and waterways snaking between the terraces. But a city is a city … and Taipei stretches as far as you can see.

Up close there is plenty of neon in the downtown streets … and the air is pungent and warm. And at night, even late, there are people out walking with their small children. The streets are alive with fragrance and noise and chatter … and cabs.

So yes, there is a joy of hearing, but there is also a freedom in non-understanding. I am reading all the signals, but I don’t know what any of them mean. But it also awakens a hunger to learn more because I the more I travel in China and across Asia, the clearer it is, that I am only scraping the surface — and without a way (through language) to converse or dive into the culture, it is a ghostly experience.

S.

Some days the hypertext does a great job. Other days, it doesn’t matter how many times you click you end up no where of interest. But today is a good day.

I am sure that most of you know how great MarketingProfs can be, so I won’t bore you. But today I was surprised to see my buddy Mike Wagner at the top of the page. Nice article about brands that people hate (and love too).

And as I looked around, something caught my eye. An article by Alain Thys which looks at the Ten Truths of Branded Storytelling. Cool … I am always up for such an article. I like his first “truth” … the need to uncover your USP — unique story proposition (I love an acronym that surprises me). There is also more than a little truth to guiding people to the USP and then watching the wheels kick into motion … there is also some danger in such an approach.

I remember working with a professional services company who actually did understand their USP. It was “collaboration” or “partnership”. But everyone speaks about these things … these words have been devalued by corporations and emptied of meaning. So a couple of the sales managers half jokingly came up with a slogan that was accurate, but smutty — and, to my horror, it stuck. Then slowly, but surely, the phrase started working its way into the company lexicon (isn’t that a great word?). I started hearing it more often. THEN one day I read it in a proposal that I was reviewing.

This was one USP that had gone too far. Everytime I heard it I could feel myself cringe with embarrassment. I could see clients flinch when they heard it. And the more it was talked about, the bolder everyone became about saying what became (for me at least) — UNSPEAKABLE.

What we needed was an intervention. A storytelling intervention. An editor with a big stick.

A USP is a great idea … but just make sure that the story you want told is the one that everyone is telling. Don’t make me slap you.

S.

It is hard to change the world. When I was younger I thought it could be done through theatre. I thought that some great writing delivered by a fabulous actor (in the perfect spotlight) could make an audience view the world in a different way. To a certain extent, this is possible … but the degree is much less than I dreamed of. (I must have been dreaming of Paris at the time of the Revolution.)

The problem is, is that change is hard. Dreaming is one thing, but the hard reality of life is quite another … and if you DO want to create change, then you need to deal with the dirty part of changing someone’s life. One of the things that I liked about working in the field of organisational change is that IDEAS become REAL. First you imagine something, and then you work to turn that imagined state into something tangible — something that affects people’s lives. Yes, it may be a new company process or a reporting structure … but it has a REAL impact on the way people live and work (hopefully for the better).

Does this make change bad? No. Does it make it worth striving for? Sometimes.

Then occasionally someone comes up with an idea that makes you realise that change can be possible … that an idea (even a BIG, difficult idea) can work. Moreover, the reason that it CAN work is because it is implemented in a small way … that it is focused and nurtured.

This is one idea that I like. Some creatives are getting together and offering up a package of creative services (corporate identity, marketing strategy, web design and implementation etc) for auction on eBay … to the value of about AU$10,000. 100% of the money raised during the auction will be donated to Embrace International, a charity that actually builds foster homes for orphans in China. The person who "wins" the auction gets some good creative and strategic work cheaply, and these poor kids get a home AND a family before winter hits.

Will it change the world? Unfortunately not … but it will change SOMEONE’S world.

S.