Posts tagged as:

storytelling

Review: “Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation”

01.08.2010

If a company truly wishes to satisfy its customers’ needs and does its due diligence in market research, social and cultural factors will emerge as critical. To say that a company’s success is tethered to its ability to detect and adapt to changes in broader culture may seem redundant. Yet that’s part of the argument [...]

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The Velvet Revolution and the power of symbols

11.17.2009

Twenty years ago today, a peaceful revolution swept over Czechoslovakia, the country of my birth, launching the overthrow of the communist government and continuing the wave of events triggered by the fall of the Berlin Wall. I turned 13 that winter; the event remains the formative macro-historic event of my life. Aside from the emotions [...]

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What do you care about? On communicating community involvement

10.28.2009

“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” —Theodore Roosevelt
Alice Tang used this quote in her question at yesterday’s Entrepreneurs Foundation of the Northwest luncheon workshop “Maximizing the impact of your community involvement through PR”. I co-presented with Renee Spears from Rose City Mortgage Specialists, who provided the case [...]

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Maximizing the impact of your community involvement through public relations

10.27.2009

I’m co-facilitating today a lunch workshop with this title at the Entrepreneurs Foundation of the Northwest. The event description continues:
Come join this round-table discussion about how to make sure your employees, your clients and the public know about the wonderful work you are doing in the community. Learn the best ways you can receive recognition [...]

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Book review: “The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes”

10.16.2009

If you’ve been reading this Blog for a while you know I champion storytelling as a prime (socially) sustainable marketing tactic. As an aspiring storyteller I know that only a handful of possible story lines appear in mythology and literature. Archetypes, therefore, interest me greatly, and so did a book about using them in branding.
The [...]

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What happens next? or Does storytelling really fit into sustainable marketing?

08.26.2009

I’ve written here several times about storytelling as a sustainable marketing tactic. As an offshoot of content marketing, storytelling provides a narrative – about your customers, about you or your company – your stakeholders can understand, share, and act upon. Any story of your customer solving her problem with your product will convey meaning more [...]

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The soft sell in sustainable marketing

07.27.2009

The soft sell is a marketing conversation that omits the ask. The conversation may still be about a product/service, but the call to action – purchase – is only implied.
Soft selling focuses on cultivating relationships with your customers. A relationship becomes a precondition to the sale. This not only extends the sale process, but also [...]

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Storytelling as a sustaining and sustainable communication strategy

05.21.2009

Last night’s Portland Net Tuesday / NetSquared Meetup featured Roger Burks, writer at Mercy Corps, who spoke about “Better online storytelling” (presentation first given at NTEN’s 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference). Though the presentation focused on storytelling for nonprofits, based on the Mercy Corps case, most of the conclusions and recommendations apply for sustainable business [...]

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Learn your customer’s story

03.23.2009

Get to know and understand your customer. Cultivate relationships. Build community. You hear marketers circulate these refrains all the time. What does any of it mean? How do you do it?
Learn your customer’s story.

Stories are how we communicate. First this happened, next that, and then something else. Stories are how we learn and how we [...]

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