Storytelling - Servant of Chaos

Genealogy, Streetview and Public-Private Histories

Over the last month or so I have begun researching my family tree. It’s a fascinating research project that involves matching names with stories and stories with memories. It combines official government records with personal letters, and certificates with box brownie photos. I have been amazed at what I have been able to find – and how many traces my ancestors left as they lived their lives.

Of course, the ease with which I can find historical data relies on the digitisation efforts of various government departments around the world as well as what must be massive projects undertaken by various private businesses such as Ancestry.com and Genes Reunited who provide scans of various records from electoral rolls to immigration/passenger lists. All this is bolstered by the work of volunteers who manage local historical groups or genealogical societies – producing books, databases and websites.

One of the most interesting pieces of information that I found relates to my grandmother, June. She died when I was about 12 but looms large in my memory. I wanted to delve deeper than the more generic official records would allow. And when I happened across an electoral roll record for her – I was intrigued. What would her daily life look like? What did the streets look like in her day – and how different are they now?

Then I remembered that the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney has an extensive collection of historical photos available on Flickr. I trawled through the Tyrell Collection, seeking images of Pyrmont from the 1900s, finding a great image of the local public school. Surely she would have walked past this building as a young woman.

But what of her home? I had heard that a large number of buildings were demolished during the early 20th Century. Bubonic plague, poor sanitation and redevelopment had seen many neighbourhoods razed to the ground. Perhaps her house had been one of them. On the off chance, I put the address into Google – perhaps there was a story captured somewhere that was relevant. Useful. But it was Google Streetview that made my eyes pop. Clearly this was the house that she had shared with her brothers, mother and sisters – crammed together in Pyrmont.

It made me wonder. We are already sharing so much of our lives online – in a readily accessible, searchable format. In a way, we are self-documenting our lives for future generations. They won’t need archaeologists to dig through layers of sediment to determine what we ate – they’ll be able to read our Twitterstream. My descendents will be able to trace my movements via Foursquare, cross match it to my blog posts and learn about my friends and acquaintances via Facebook.

Our private histories are – with a small effort – open book stories ready to be pieced together by anyone willing to make the effort. From a family history point of view, this is fantastic. It is also a continuum that began hundreds of years ago. After all, I have now seen NSW Governor Darling’s handwritten script permitting the marriage of my fourth great grandmother to a man transported to a convict colony for life. I have seen the signed ticket of leave granting their freedom, and I have seen the X which is the mark signifying their consent to marriage.

In the torrent of life and the every flowing tides of history, sometimes these stories are the only things that anchor us – to our past and our present. And for many of us, the trivialities that we share – a coffee spot, a “tweetup”, a funny website or link – contain not just banality, but the full emotional force that carries across time and space. And this, perhaps, is what “social” media is really all about.

Your Best Posts of 2009

Smart Bloggers, Social Media, Storytelling

Last month, as 2009 stumbled towards its own end, I asked you to share those posts that you felt were your best. I was interested in what you wrote, what you thought – and what you were prepared to share.

In response, I received emails, tweets and comments, showcasing the touching, funny and emotional aspects of our lives. This, in turn, revealed what I consider to be substantial social transformations that are currently being manifested via social media – the most important of which, I believe, continues to be “the rise of storytelling”. Each and every one of these posts resonated with its audience (and its author) for a simple reason – the power of its story to touch, engage and connect us. Let’s take a look in more detail …

We are hard wired to connect. Steve Woodruff shared the story of his son’s graduation from the US Marines. There were pictures, videos, ongoing updates – and a whole bunch of comments. The most interesting thing is that the comments were not specifically for Steve, or for the post, but for his son, David. Now, most of the commenters have never met David, but this did not stop them leaving very personal comments. Given the chance and the right context, we will share deeply personal beliefs and concerns in a very public sphere because we are hardwired to connect.

Why work harder when you can work smarter? Martin Shanahan’s schoolboy reminiscences made me smile. While this post looks literally at the way a bit of spit and polish can give your boots a long lasting sheen, sometimes you need to use a bit of nous, and the knowledge handed down from someone who has “been there and done that”. If you are an entrepreneur (or want to be), you could learn plenty from Kim Wingerei’s generous explanation of what CAN go wrong in the world of a startup. Clay Hebert shared some anecdotes from the life changing experience of being mentored by Seth Godin. Many of us think that we have to experience our own failures – but learning from the failures and experiences of others can allow you to catapult yourself forwards. As Clay suggests, sometimes you have to lean in.

Bravely embrace the future. It’s easy to say “no” to new things – to new challenges and opportunities. But Paulo Henrique Lemos suggests (along with Steve Jobs) that we can only connect the dots when we look backwards – and that the uncertain future is where we make our reputation, our mistakes and achieve our greatest triumphs. Interestingly, Trent Collins’ post about becoming a father captures this tension rather eloquently.

Where we rush towards the future, we also hunger for the past. Roger Lawrence reminds us that when “social” takes over, social media is nowhere to be found. During a 25th school reunion in South Africa, the running string of festivities meant that, for those attending, the rest of the world ceased to exist. Roger shares anecdotes, photographs and his experience of “return” – and photographs of the underside of the desk where he and his mates carved their names seems to take on a special significance – for while social media and technology propels us forward, faster, we are also anchored by our personal histories – and there is a richness to be found in the tension between the two.

The important story is the story you tell. Sometimes people wonder what story they should tell about their business. They wonder whether, if they start a blog, whether they could sustain it. The worry about running out of content. Or ideas. But Sornie shows that the truth sometimes gets in the way of a good story – it happens in fiction (which is why it is called fiction), and it happens in marketing too.

Stories need connections. Marketers often have trouble pulling together different strands of a story. They get caught starting – or in the middle – and forget to link each piece together. Rich Nadworny highlights the importance of pulling all your narrative threads together – making sure that the connections are made, that the hero wins and that there is sufficient drama to carry us all along for the ride. And Leo Hillary shows just what happens when we get a story just right – beautiful!

It’s time for business, PR and social media to grow up and get along. Craig Pearce sheds some light on the culture of public relations and Sean R. Nicholson weaves personal and professional experience together to show how some of the fears around social media make us look like ostriches (with our heads in the sand). And on the same topic, Stuart Foster demonstrates exactly how some brands and businesses are using storytelling as part of their experiential marketing strategy. But then Stefano Maggi provides the insight into HOW you do this – building and curating content within a social ecosystem.

Learn and iterate. We can learn from everything that we do – but sometimes, in our rush for the next, new thing, we forget to reflect on our successes and what made them work. Scott Mendelson has a great, in-depth article looking back at the Batman movie – what made it unique and how it set the scene for all that followed. And yes, it was over 20 years ago.

Complexity breeds resilience. Not only are we experiencing vast amounts of change in our lives – from society and culture to the workplace and politics – the rate of change is accelerating. But rather than hiding from this, Mike Chitty urges us to embrace the complexity. While we may get a buzz out of collaborating with “like minds”, in working with those who are vastly different, we will be exposed to opportunities that would never otherwise arise.

The devil is in the details. If you are like me, you pride yourself on your big picture ideas. But I also have a secret – something that my bosses seem to have all known – that I am actually all about the details. Dennis Price points out that in any business there are only a handful of people who really NEED to be big picture people – and that you (and I) are unlikely to be one of those people. It’s a great post that reminds us all to keep our eyes on the prize – but attend to the details because, as Heather Rast reminds us, that’s where the gold lies.

Everything is personal. No matter how hard we try to hide behind our professions, our roles as parents or children or our place in a community, at the end of the day everything is personal. And what makes something stick – what makes a story remarkable and an experience memorable – comes from this understanding. Heather shows that sometimes you need to bump some heads to get your point across, while Tim Berry brings a much needed personal perspective to the world of business, with some excellent practical advice. And Jasmin Tragas shows just what can be achieved when you put your creativity, passion and energy into a worthwhile cause.

Sometimes a story can stop you in your tracks. Mandi Bateson’s post Remember Ruby, is the pure telling of a story – a tragic and powerful story; while the searing honesty of this story from Zana literally knocked the breath from my body. It’s the story you read for which there are no words. It’s called Stop – and I did.

On Generosity and Grace

Future of Your Brand, Good Works, Storytelling

I normally don't re-post articles that I write for the MarketingProfs Daily Fix, but I wanted to make sure that I shared this with you all. Generosity and grace is a topic that has been on my mind for some time – and something that goes, I think, to the heart of the transformation that we are seeing in consumer behaviour. It's also something that I touched on my post last night appealing to the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, to address the crisis faced by Sydney's Wayside Chapel.

You see, social media – or what I am increasingly calling "participatory media" is not just about connecting. It's more active. It's more emotionally engaging than it appears from "the outside". It's COMPASSIONATE (more on this next week). It's about moving from emotion to thought to action within the blink of an eye, the click of a mouse and the shaking of a hand. It's why I think it is the future of your brand. I'd love to hear your thoughts on generosity and grace:

We are marked each day by the casual collisions that are the artefacts of our existence. There are phone calls, messages and the relative anonymity of online interactions. And in the search for connection, communion or community, we thoughtlessly mistake message for meaning, words for action and interaction for friendship. It’s a confusion of intention – and we are the poorer for it.

When I began writing my blog I did so with no expectation of return. Like a long-dead star, I felt that I was emitting the weakest of signals with no hope of a destination. The gravity of my expectations was as light as utterance, each word or post marked only by the steam of my breath.

But over time an unexpected, slow kind of success appeared in my orbit. Each comment felt like a gift, each email a revelation, and each face emerged from the ether to reveal some other – living, breathing, longing being.

Through words, through ideas and by sharing stories we began to find each other – you and I. And each time we brushed past one another we each revealed, perhaps inadvertently, some secret or grain of truth. And yet in losing some small essence, rather than being diminished ,we grew. We prospered. Not in the way of casual connection, but in more mysterious ways – for we were encountering ourselves by way of grace.

The paradox, of course, is that with every gift of self, with the free transmission of what-is-mine to what-now-is-yours, our gravity expands. Such reality requires new thinking on all our parts. After all, who among us has not looked with envy on the success of our peers? It’s as if the well-spring of success has only finite resources and each cup taken is a cup lost to us all.

But we are living now in a time and a space where both opportunity and results are being reconsidered. We are turning towards the hard face of generosity – where an act of grace is not just expected, but is a mandatory condition for a relationship to take root. We are mercenarily applying the judgement of our peers and their peers to the decisions that we make in business, as families and as individuals.

This does not mean that we are un-generous – quite the opposite. It means that your reputation precedes you. It means we act, not alone, but in cognitive unison. We’d like you to understand this. We’d like to help you make all our worlds better places. It starts by being generous. It starts with good grace.

Why Rockstars are Rockstars

Branding, Social Media, Storytelling

Mack Collier has a great post about rockstars and rockstar ideas. He talks about the way that we identify rockstars in social media – and suggests that we need to look not at the biggest names, largest followings or loudest voices. He recommends:

Spending less time identifying the 'rockstars' and more time focusing on the great ideas
Stop focusing on numbers to determine influence
Listening closely to new ideas from new voices, and magnify both when you hear them

I thought this was interesting – especially in light of the U2 Webcast that occurred live the other day (and of course you can login at any time to watch the replay – excellent!). Here we have a band that have been at the cutting edge, moved into the mainstream and redefined what we call stadium rock. They have used their music to awaken and activate our social conscience through their connection with good causes such as red. And they have carefully aligned the U2 brand with consumer product innovation – firstly with the launch of the iPod and now again with YouTube.

It made me think that the reason rockstars ARE rockstars is that they are constantly reinventing their story. They continuously test, refine and extend their creative output that works from the edge of their audience back to the centre. And they align strategically not only with emerging trends – they blend their ideas into them – adding their weight to the story in-action. (I am sure you realise I am not talking about U2 now.)

But how do they do this?

The P-L-A-Y Framework

Using the P-L-A-Y framework it is possible to see how this reinvention takes place, how it works not just for the band but also for the brand, and why consumers are attracted to it. Jye Smith has an excellent presentation on how P-L-A-Y can be applied to a Gen Y market which is well worth checking out.

When you are structuring your communications, by factoring this framework into your storytelling you can dramatically scale the engagement of your audience, and perhaps, more importantly, you can allow them to OWN that story (which is also your story) – or what I call The Auchterlonie Effect.

P — for Power

Demanding of attention
Testing limits (boundaries around behaviour, responsibility etc)
Controlling the controllable
Belonging

L — for learning and curiosity

Beyond the message, tapping into behaviour
Skills development
Negotiation

A — for adventure

Exploring an ever changing world
Actively making the world a better place

Y — the yelp of surprise and delight

Recognition and reward
Self expression

How U2 P-L-A-Y

P … Clearly rockstars understand our tribal desire to belong. It gives us power, strength in numbers and affiliation. By loudly playing their music, sharing it with others via Twitter, blogs or even shared iPod lists, we announce our allegiance – which also allows other “like minds” to come to us. We are moths drawn to one-another’s flames.

L …There is plenty of back story available with a rock band like U2. From their early punk days to their social conscience (Live Aid, red etc), the band has consistently moved beyond the message – influencing and leading behaviour not just amongst their fan base, but on the global, political stage.

A …Their passion for reinvention is clearly at work. They are adventurous, creative and not afraid to put their music, their image and their reputation on the line.

Y … Bono’s personal interest in sunglasses, the shift in visual style and appeal of the whole band (and as individuals) demonstrates self-expression. But no matter how they change on the surface, it is their music which sparks us to remember, to connect and to empathise. The band constantly plays with our sense of expectation – surprising and delighting us with each song, each new stunt – or even the unexpected cover version (eg Frankie Goes to Hollywood).

And, of course, it is the music that we are able to hum to ourselves, share on our iPods and perform at karaoke (oh yes, I have seen it done) that allows us to really step inside the U2 brand story. The band are larger than life. They need to be to walk on stage in front of a packed Rose Bowl. But in mastering performance of this scale, rockstars live the story and aspirations that many of us harbour deep inside us. Maybe we just need to think about our own stories – on a smaller scale. Think fishbowl rather than Rose Bowl … and maybe one day you’ll step out onto a much larger stage than you could have imagined.

It starts with the first word of your story. What’s yours, rockstar?

The Pillars of Awesomeness

Innovation, Smart Bloggers, Storytelling, Strategy

Umair Haque has thrown open a unique challenge:

Send me your thoughts on awesomeness. A sentence, a paragraph, an essay. Positive, negative, explanatory, or exploratory. Your own real-world examples, or your vision of awesomeness.

Here are some questions to get you started thinking:

What resonated most (or least) with you about the idea of awesomeness?

Who do you think is awesome — versus just merely innovative?

What are your pillars of awesomeness?

I like the concept of awesomeness – at least in the context of the Awesomeness Manifesto. Having worked in the fields of business innovation, process improvement, creativity and advertising for well over a decade now, it certainly feels that the term “innovation” suffers from its industrial age underpinnings. It is not JUST that innovation relies on obsolescence – but more that innovation can occur almost without human agency. This is especially true in business where workflows are automated, connections are streamlined and processes optimised.

“Awesomeness” for me implies that sense of “awe” – as if we are looking into the eye of a newly living beast and not quite knowing whether to cheer or to run. And while I have attempted to systematise creative processes for continuous digital strategy or for digital storytelling (P-L-A-Y), I always aim to leave a little space for the disruption of human creativity. It is, after all, the human dimension that brings awesomeness out of the conceptual realm and introduces it to life.

What’s Your Story? Here’s Part of Mine

Life, Storytelling

I don’t know about you, but I find it REALLY hard to write about my #1 client (ie me). No matter whether you are looking at my LinkedIn profile, my Twitter profile, the presentations that I have released on Slideshare, or my About page, it feels that nothing quite comes close to capturing my real story. There is always something missing. Some hook left un-baited.

A little while back I created a page where I can keep track of my various online activities. It doesn’t tell a story. At least not in words. It speaks of participation and engagement. It speaks of outcomes – things that I have achieved and am proud of. And, of course, each item, each link, has a story, a drama that could fill a novel. But we are short of time, breath, energy and attention. Our lives are reduced to links on a screen.

But today I am profiled in the Digital Ministry’s Digital People section. Denise Shrivell from MediaScope asked some interesting questions that really got me thinking – and gave me the space to play with the answers. It helped me fill in the gaps between the links – that otherwise makeup our digital careers. I hope you enjoy it.

But what about you? What’s your story – and how do you best tell it?

Branding is a Marathon

Branding, Digital Strategy, Social Media, Storytelling

One of the greatest, and perhaps hardest to quantify, benefits of social media is in the area of branding. But then again, this is nothing new. Trying to quantify the value of your brand is exceptionally difficult – just ask yourself how many businesses actually have their brands’ value represented as line items on a balance sheet?

One of the crowning achievements of the marketing industry over the last 50 years or so is the general acceptance of the value of branding. For despite the slipperiness of brand “valuations”, businesses AND consumers clearly “get” brands and branding. On the business side, solid and established brands provide a ready platform for our demand generation and other marketing activities. And as consumers, we are more than ready to mould our lifestyles around those rare brands that we have come to love – indeed, in some instances brands are intrinsically linked to the way that we create our identities (just think, for example, of the tribes of car fans).

Yet despite branding’s elusive nature, a well planned and executed, continuous digital strategy can create a very real, very tangible brand platform. And this is where social media presents a powerful opportunity. As you begin to execute on your strategy, you create multiple points of conversation across your business ecosystem – what can best be called your “digital footprint”. The more points of interaction that occur across your ecosystem create points of connection and exchanges of value. And as these are personal networks (not broadcast), there is a weighting – with one-to-one relationships the exchange involves trust and reputation. This is FAT VALUE.

And the more Fat Value that is created in an ecosystem, the faster GRAVITY begins to take shape. So every piece of content that you create, every link that you share and every idea that you set loose allows someone else to benefit from their interaction with your brand. And in this exchange of benefit, you are fulfilling your brand promise and creating branded experiences. And if you have your strategy right – this gravity will eventually begin to pull participants towards your brand.

This sounds great in theory, but making gravity takes a great deal of effort. In fact, branding in the social media space is more like a marathon than a sprint – hence the need to beware of those selling or offering quick viral wins. As Amy Mengel suggests, while the lure and attractiveness of a quick, viral hit is great for the adrenaline, the subsequent fall from attention is usually just as fast:

Despite the excitement it generates for a few days, the video your brand launched that “went viral” on YouTube may be entirely forgotten in a few months or weeks and ultimately do nothing for long-term growth.

A great example is Skittles. Remember Skittles.com? For a day or two – maybe even a week, Skittles.com was hotly reported across the web. Blogs were alight with idea that a brand would reflect not itself, but the consumers who were talking about the brand and their products. They did this by featuring their Wikipedia page, Twitter stream or Facebook group. David Berkowitz explained:

Here’s the message Skittles is sending: What consumers say about the brand is more important than what the brand has to say to consumers.

But where do brands go after the high? Freddie Laker at Ad Age wondered what would happen next, and this chart from Google Trends seems to indicate that this great experiment went nowhere. Then again, the Facebook fan page boasts 3.5 million members. It makes me think that FAT VALUE – those brand exchanges that take place between PEOPLE networks happens in places that even Google can’t adequately penetrate.

Now that is a fascinating thought.

Paid or Earned Media – Making Gravity is Hard Work

Branding, Digital Strategy, earned media, Media, Old Media, Social Judgement, Social Media, Storytelling

Whether you are walking down the street, watching the TV, surfing the net or even driving a car, you are the subject of some form of advertising. From the branded cap on the boy walking down the street to the billboard behind him – marketing is hard at work trying to capture your attention. Constance Hill and Bruce Henry suggest that we see around 3000 marketing messages each day. But no matter whether we see 100 or 10,000 messages – clearly we are exposed to a significant number. But how many do you recall? How many seep into your unconscious, adding a negative or positive neuron to your thoughts around these brands?

Now, add into this mix the dozens or even hundreds of blogs that you read and the tweets that you view on Twitter each day. Combine this with podcasts, music streams via blip.fm, videos on YouTube and email – and suddenly you have an abundant media stream that can appear overwhelming. As Sean Howard says, “In today's world everyone is a publisher, everyone has some level of influence, and everyone has a network of influence that is difficult to define let alone measure”. It makes the life of the media consumer rather complex.

As a marketer, however, you do have a specific objective. What you are aiming for is MAKING GRAVITY. With paid media you are using your marketing budget to have your content inserted into spaces that your audience inhabit. It is an expense which you measure in terms of how many people you have reached with your communication.

Earned media (or what Craig Wilson calls engagement marketing), on the other hand, is both different in nature and in measurement. Rather than being an expense, it is an investment. Its effectiveness is directly related to what you DO rather than what you SAY, and the value that is exchanged is not currency, but trust. As I have explained previously – it is about changing behaviours:

Every time we forward on a link, retweet a message read on Twitter or any other type of social network interaction, we are CHOOSING to act. We are not just using our network of connections to FILTER the noise, we are using it to SHAPE our experience. It is a choice. And understanding this distinction places us in a context where STORYTELLING emerges as vitally important?

Paid media has been an effective marketing approach for hundreds of years (if not longer). But it thrived in a time where attention was abundant and our media consumption choices were limited to a set number of channels. These days, media is abundant but our attention (and maybe more importantly, our respect) is scarce. Graham Brown has an excellent five minute piece on the challenges presented by these changes.

But the fundamental difference with paid vs earned media is the refocusing of effort. No longer do you spend your creative energies (and budgets) on producing executions that gain attention – you spend it on building trust and creating Auchterlonie Effects (stories that can be easily shared). Indeed, in the best traditions of storytelling, earned media propagates itself – becoming promiscuous in the process.

The reason that promiscuous ideas are important to your brand is that you WANT them to be shared. In social media, every shared idea, link or concept creates an exchange of value within a PERSONAL network – so the act of sharing is a recommendation of sorts. Over time the person who “adds value” to their network builds an abundant store of social capital. It is like branding – we can’t necessarily point to a PARTICULAR item – but to the recurring and ongoing sense of positive exchange relating to that person.

When YOUR brand story or content is the subject of that exchange, you are effectively providing a reason for connection between people in a network. And as these connections grow, as they are passed from person to person, you are creating points of gravity around your brand ecosystem. Your challenge then is to work with a continuous digital strategy to “share the message” but “own the destination”. The thing is, gravity can only be earned. And while you can employ paid media to complement your earned media – you need to make sure you have a compelling story to tell and to share.