CEOs Need to Be Chief Story Officers

The CMO is in charge of the brand's story at most companies. This can be a mistake, says Ty Montague writing for Harvard Business Review.

Marketing, you see, should only be one part of a company's story efforts. Take Amazon. Story is its lifeblood. In fact, it drives everything that the company does — from product development, to advertising, to HR policies.

Montague is the author of True Story: How to Combine Story and Action to Transform Your Business and a founder of co:collective, a consultancy that helps clients develop their strategy and brand story using the principles of storydoing.

Amazon, of course, isn't the only company that does this. Red Bull, Jet Blue, and TOMS shoes follow the same strategy as well, and their CEOs, just like Jeff Bezos at Amazon, are the ones who oversee their company's story — not their marketing departments. 

Why? 

They're the only ones who have the reach to do so.

If you are a CEO or an aspiring CEO, the evidence is clear: 

1. Become a student of the underlying narrative of your business;
2. Learn how to manage and tell that story through coordinated action;
3. Make understanding and telling your company's story both a shared responsibility across the whole organization and a core value of the company. 

If you do this, you (and more importantly, your shareholders) will reap the rewards.

8 words to inspire more SHOW in your brand story

Here is one of the most important concepts I promote in N-of-8 story development:  the difference between SHOW and TELL.

A complete brand story SHOWS a customer how, not just TELLS them what.

Look for ways you can add more persuasion in your story.

Seeing the same brand hallmarks in new ways: Lessons for N-of-8 from James Bond

When using the N-of-8 process, it’s important to remember that you’re not just writing a story – you’re developing a BRAND story.

So the core brand hallmarks must be presented and maintained consistently. But that doesn’t mean the story can’t be told in many different ways.
 

Consider the series of James Bond movies. Even across all the installments, there are elements that make a 007 Story:

• British
• Spies
• Music
• Bond girl
• Shaken-martini
• Villain
• World domination
• Opening
• Gadgets-M
• Cars
• Gambling
• Gun-eye
• Branding (despite star changing)
• Exotic locations
• Big names
• Q
• Cool
• Sophistication
• Clothes
• Near death

With these central and fundamental ingredients, many stories can be crafted with their own unique locations, characters, plots, dangers, and fantasies.

Far from limiting your creative potential, defining the brand hallmarks gives a structure to which you can then build endless story possibilities.

The same principles can be seen when analyzing other popular movies series, like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Pink Panther, and Rocky. That’s why I often use these as a warm-up exercise with our creative teams before we start writing stories for N-of-8 groups. It helps us find parallels, archetypes, villains, conflicts, and climaxes. We recall the look of the titles and credits. We even sing the theme song or hum the main chorus.

As you begin crafting your brand’s story, put together a list of the escapades you’ll experience.

Brand Stories: tapping into song lyrics for another kinds of storyteller

I’ve been working on a number of brand story engagements lately. And I really enjoy observing where insights emerge – and how projective techniques can help stimulate creative expression.



For me, great song lyrics often inspire ways to help tell a story.


One of my favorites is:

"I once had a girl,

or should I say, she once had me."



"Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" first appeared on The Beatles’ 1965 album Rubber Soul. It is one of several songs on the album referring to an antagonistic relationship with a woman. When asked about the meaning of the lyrics, producer George Martin answered, “My wife is going to give me a hard time for saying this. It was one of John's indiscretions. I remember we were sitting at the veranda outside our hotel rooms in St. Moritz and John was playing at his guitar and working out the text. He felt that Cynthia had tricked him to marry her.” Martin referred to the words as "a very bitter little story".



The song is a lilting acoustic ballad featuring Lennon's lead vocal, signature McCartney harmonies in the middle, as well as the first use of the sitar by a rock band, of course played by George Harrison. The exotic instrumentation and oblique lyric represented one of the first indications to fans of the expanded musical storytelling and experimental approach the group was adopting.



Another of my favorite song lyrics is from Jackson Browne’s “Fountain of Sorrow.” He writes in the opening line,


“Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer,
I was taken by a photograph of you.”



In both these examples, it’s the twist of the meaning and perspective that makes the lyric so memorable.



Do you have a favorite song lyric that tells a story?

8 eBooks I want to Write ASAP

Content.

Creative energy.

Cultivation of relationships.

I don’t simple write books and blogs to educate. Rather it helps me gain (and share) a deeper understanding of subjects.

Here are some ideas I’m working on with deeper value.

• 8 Best Practices for Brand Story Development
• 8-Point Check List for Evaluating Brand Innovation Concepts
• 8 Ways to Introduce New Hires to Your Industry
• 8 Common Questions about Focus Groups Answered
• 8 Mistakes to Avoid When Writing a Research Report
• 88 Health & Medical Statistics For Better Decision-Making
• 8 Experts Share Industry Insights: Learn From The Best
• 8 eBooks to Write Right Now

Could you contribute to any of these? Let’s collaborate.

What other types of eBooks do you like? Share your suggestions.

The difference of storytelling

on Storytelling

"If you tell me, it’s an essay. If you show me, it’s a story." 

—Barbara Greene

Reason for brand narrative

on Storytelling

"Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today." -Robert McKee

Storytelling: Is it the secret weapon of the 2012 presidential race?

Here's a topical view on storytelling from Arianna Huffington.

If we can all take a break from the breathless back-and-forth about Bain-gate for a moment -- and if you can't, maybe later you can retroactively take a break -- there was a more meaningful exchange that came out of President Obama's interview with Charlie Rose that aired on CBS last Sunday and Monday morning.

The president used many of his oft-repeated lines, saying that "this campaign is still about hope... it's still about change," and that he "underestimated the degree to which in this town politics trumps problem-solving." But it got really interesting when the conversation turned to what the president considers the biggest mistake of his first term. It was, he said, "thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right."

So what else is needed? 

"The nature of this office," he said, "is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times."

That's a spot-on description of one of the key elements missing from the last three-and-a-half years: storytelling. 

But while Obama has accurately diagnosed the ailment, he hasn't delivered on his own prescription. Where is the narrative that will give us that sense of unity and purpose and optimism? His campaign has given us all a crash course on the ills of Bain Capital and the sorts of business practices that shouldn't be happening, but he hasn't given us an alternative narrative of the kind of capitalism that should define the nation as we emerge from the financial crisis -- if, in fact, we ever do.

But of course, neither has the Romney campaign. Indeed, its ineptitude on the subject was underlined when it responded to the Rose interview by saying, "Being president is not about telling stories. Being president is about leading."

So Obama hasn't delivered, but Romney remains clueless about the fact that the office he's running for isn't CEO of the country. It's much bigger than that. And telling stories, casting a narrative, is an essential element in communicating ideas and values, and an integral part of leading -- especially leading from the Oval Office.

"Stories are the creative conversion of life itself to a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience," says screenwriting guru Robert McKee. They are "the currency of human contact." Or, as film producer Peter Guber, author of Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story, puts it: "Telling purposeful stories is certainly the most efficient means of persuasion in everyday life, the most effective way of translating ideas into action."

And translating ideas into action is, of course, the essence of the president's job. So that's exactly what campaign season should be about -- each candidate telling us the story of where he thinks we are as a country and, more importantly, where he wants to take us. The best way -- the only way -- to do that is with narrative. "The stories our leaders tell us matter," wrote Drew Westen, "probably almost as much as the stories our parents tell us as children, because they orient us to what is, what could be, and what should be; to the worldviews they hold and to the values they hold sacred."

Stories and narrative, as the currency of human contact, are how we all communicate with each other. 

We don't sit down with our friends and loved ones and throw out statistics and PowerPoint slides. We swap stories. In fact, we can't help it. "Stories, it turns out, are not optional," writes Peter Guber. "They are essential. Our need for them reflects the very nature of perceptual experience, and storytelling is embedded in the brain itself." Recent neuroscience research bears him out and shows we are hardwired to use narrative to make sense of the world. Neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga, who studies the functions of the two hemispheres of the brain, has uncovered how the left side, which he calls "the interpreter," takes the jumble of data and sensory information we encounter and spins it into a narrative. "Gazzaniga suspects that narrative coherence helps us to navigate the world -- to know where we're coming from and where we're headed," writes Big Think's Jason Gots. "It tells us where to place our trust and why."

So if the part of our brain that is telling us where to place our trust is all about narrative, doesn't it make sense that any candidate asking us for that trust should appeal to our need for what Romney dismissively calls "telling stories"? This is especially true in times of crisis and transition. Over the last decade our country has been through extraordinary crises, not least the failure of practically every institution in which Americans had placed their trust. How did that happen? How did we get to this point? It couldn't have just been a few bad apples. If we don't know why it happened, how can we fix it? And if a candidate doesn't have a compelling narrative for what happened, how can we trust him to get us out of it?

"Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, [President Obama] put them in charge of it," writes Westen. "He never explained that decision to the public -- a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it."

Unlike Romney, at least Obama sees the need for that narrative. The fundamental tension between Wall Street and Main Street is still unresolved and still not framed in a narrative that gives people the confidence that it will be resolved any time soon. And making the entire campaign about Bain Capital isn't going to do it.

"Every presidential election is a renewal," says biographer and historian David McCullough. "Like spring, it brings up all the juices. The people are so tired of contrivance and fabrication and hokum. They really want to be stirred in their spirit. That's when we are at our best."

Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

8 Parts of Speech: Words that matter

Persuasive writing makes a single, focused argument, and even the most basic communications must prove or demonstrate a thesis through explanations, examples and concrete details. 

All this week, my blogs will focus on words -- words that matter.

Sometimes we have to go back to the basics to write and analyze the most compelling brand stories.

For example, remember the 8 basic parts of speech:

1. Nouns
2. Pronouns
3. Verbs
4. Adverbs
5. Adjectives
6. Interjections
7. Prepositions
8. Conjunctions

How we use them, and how we connect them, makes a difference.

I feature several lists of words that matter in my upcoming book, N-of-8.

The elements of an N-of-8® story

As I’ve often written in my articles, story development is deliberately interactive, allowing us to establish a dialogue with customers and hear it in their own words.

In my use of this qualitative, iterative N-of-8® process, we present three stories in customer listening groups of eight physicians. Customer response and participation is key in this process.

The stories are presented in raw, “unpackaged” format in order to gain the most valuable customer input. This means they are simply typed on a page – not an ad, brochure, or commercial.

Each story is divided into main components (headline, introduction, claim, call to action, etc.). They must be crafted as a narrative, not simply a recitation of bullets points. So there are the components of good stories: setting, characters, action, conflict, hero, resolution, and sometimes, even a moral.

Conflict is essential to these stories. Author Robert Penn Warren said, “No conflict, no story,” and my experience has led me to agree.

When, considering the angles for the three different stories, you make them deliberately distinct and appropriately provocative.

For example, for a new biologic treatment for a rare disease, you might begin with these three angles:

1. Patient Impact

Content: awareness of the disease, their feelings about it, and their current usage of treatments

Tone: emotional Voice: second person “you”

Reference: research data from patient organizations and disease societies

Close: you can count on us, so make Brand your preferred medication

2. Speed of Effect

Content: process of care, action of agent

Tone: urgency

Voice: third person “it”

Reference: cause of symptoms, mechanism of drug, dosing levels, clinical trial data

Close: what role could Brand play in helping you feel better faster?

3. Functional Living

Content: connect with condition and problems it causes, easy to understand how drug fits into lifestyle about it, and their current usage of treatments

Tone: authoritative Voice: first person “we”

Reference: ethnographic research of impact on activities of daily living

Close: treat at first sign of symptoms

I've doing many N-of-8® groups in the past few months, and have more planned in several countries this summer.

4 tips for creating a consistent transmedia content strategy

At the office, at home, and on the go, consumers are digesting and interacting with content on multiple platforms in increasing numbers. As marketers and content strategists, we need to be able to anticipate and meet their needs to engage, connect, and motivate them — whenever and wherever they need information.

At the heart of our ability to reach this goal is developing a consistent transmedia content strategy, writes Denise Zimmerman, president & chief strategy officer at Netplus, a full service digital agency.

Denise Zimmerman is a 25-year marketing veteran who has spent the past 18 years of her career focusing on the emerging digital landscape and best practice applications in marketing and communications.

She is blogging in conjunction with Content Marketing World2012 which will take place on September 4 – 6, 2012 at the Columbus, Ohio Convention Center.

It’s 2 full days dedicated to keynotes, 30 breakout sessions, and multiple tracks of programming, such as How to Develop a Content Marketing Strategy and Organizing Your Marketing Department for Publishing Success.

Here’s more of what Denise has to say about content strategy:

A consistent transmedia content strategy will not only help facilitate stronger and more meaningful connections with your customers, but it can also significantly extend the value of your content and amplify its overall impact.

While the best practices for content strategy are still evolving, there are steps you can take now to implement an effective transmedia content agenda that can be updated as content marketing practices continue to take shape.

Here are a few tips to consider as you get started:

1. Establish content strategy as a practice and discipline in your organization

2. Connect your content efforts to existing brand and/or marketing goals

3. Identify, analyze, and prioritize your assets

4. Make content findable, distributable, and extendable

Make sure you build in checks and balances, set benchmarks, and be prepared to apply a number of different measurement scenarios and tests to help you gauge how well your content efforts performed. Some common measurement guidelines you can use include:

• conversion rates
• engagement rates
• new customer acquisition rates
• cost per sale calculations
• earned impressions
• changes in the number of “shares” your content generates

Read more from Denise on the different ways to develop a consistent, transmedia strategy at http://www.contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/03/creating-a-consistent-transmedia-content-strategy/

I also write about transmedia strategy in my upcoming book, N-of-8, so if you'd like to read more, click to why-transmedia-storytelling-is-future

Inspired to make collaboration a creative habit: Twyla Tharp

One of my goals this year is to improve my creative collaborations.  And I’m finding inspiration from a lot of sources.

In her book, The Collaborative Habit, Twyla Tharp illustrates her many years of collaborative partnerships and the lessons learned in her exciting career as a dance choreographer.

A couple of years ago, my colleague Brandy wrote a review of this book – with lessons for a team from a dancer’s perspective.

Here are Brandy's insights on the book based on her own experiences.

Twyla opens The Collaborative Habit saying, "Many of the stories “I'll be telling involve the world of dance, but you don't have to know anything about dance . . .  Work is work."

As a dancer and choreographer, Twyla Tharp first engaged the literary world with her works Push Comes to Shove and most recent The Creative Habit.  When you see a book written by Twyla Tharp you expect it to be interesting; The Collaborative Habit doesn't let you down.  In fact, you may just feel slightly jealous as she guides you through her stories of not so ordinary collaborations:  Dance greats such as Bob Joffrey, Baryshnikov and Jerome Robbins, and music legends such as Billy Joel and Elvis Costello.

Many of us can relate to the challenges of awkward collaborations and the successes of great collaborations.  Even though Twyla’s collaborations are about dance, they make sense to any industry -- collaboration with an institution (American Ballet Theatre), collaborating remotely (email), collaborating with your polar opposite and even collaborating with a friend, one of the stickiest collaborations.   

Her stories couldn’t be closer to business and teamwork as we know it today and offer great lessons learned for any team.

Inspiring Mission: "Life is about the people you meet and the things you create with them."

So many mission statements I’ve read contain words like “value” and “service” but often fail to explain what the founders truly care about, much less inspire anyone else to care.

So when I saw the Holstee mission statement, it was an exception. The Brooklyn, New York–based company sells eco-friendly clothing and accessories.  It has risen from obscurity in the past year after its Holstee manifesto went viral.

The document has been viewed online more than 50 million times and translated into 12 languages.

Inc. magazine recently spoke with its founder about the impact a strong mission statement can have on a company.  Here’s an excerpt of their conversation:

Lapowsky:  There are a lot of great lines in there. What's your favorite?

Pfortmüller: "Life is about the people you meet and the things you create with them." I strongly believe that. Here at Holstee, I have the luck of working with my two best friends. We live together. We work together. We really live that.

Click to read the full interview at

www.inc.com/magazine

"Better to be...": a personal brand story with attitude

The words are powerful.
The medium is gritty.
The placement is Berlin, a city known for its strength.
Even the font is an individual's handwriting.

This is how a personal brand story gets told with attitude.

4 key elements that make N-of-8 story development different

Right after the first of 2012, I’ll be embarking on a series of N-of-8 groups in several European markets.

So I thought it might be an appropriate time to post the highlights of how this process is different.

 N-of-8 brand story development process helps you develop and communicate compelling and persuasive stories, and can help craft memorable brand messages that customers can easily relate to and recall.

In essence, N-of-8 story development is a tool that helps you listen to your customers and translate how to persuasively and effectively communicate your story.

Unlike other research, story development is:

1. A narrative story, not just claims
2. Development, not just simple testing
3. Iterative, not reactive
4. Seeks customer input, not just feedback

As with any good story, a strong narrative flow is key.  By understanding the structure and components of the story, its narration becomes more effective, leaving the customer with powerful messages that can be easily retrieved.

N-of-8 is deliberately interactive, allowing us to establish a dialogue with customers and hear the story in their own words.  It is a qualitative, iterative process, presenting stories in customer listening groups of eight participants.  Customer response and participation is paramount in this process and we relay the raw, unpackaged stories in order to gain the most valuable customer input.

Initial stories are purposefully crafted to be provocative in order to give the customer something to push against.  This allows them the opportunity to provide their suggestions on language, story flow and content, giving them a sense of “ownership” of the developing messages. 

This is a key point:  you are not testing for their approval on messaging, but rather probing for the customer’s direction in creating a meaningful and relevant final story.

Seeing the same brand hallmarks in new ways: Lessons for N-of-8 from “Indiana Jones”

When using the N-of-8 process, it’s important to remember that you’re not just writing a story – you’re developing a BRAND story.

So the core brand hallmarks must be presented and maintained consistently. But that doesn’t mean the story can’t be told in many different ways.

Consider the series of Indiana Jones movies. The respected, intellectual professor pulls off his bow tie and glasses to search for treasure. Even across four installments, there are elements that make an “Indiana Jones” story:

• Jaunts to exotic destinations
• Dodging booby traps
• Fighting hand-to-hand with the bad guys
• Unearthing ancient ruins
• Hacking through jungles
• Taking unusual transportation
• Dining on spectacular, even bizarre meals
• Snakes!

And there are the hallmarks of Indiana Jones’ personal brand: hat, whip, watch, journal, unshaven beard, even the influences of his father.

With these central and fundamental ingredients, many stories can be crafted with their own unique locations, characters, plots, dangers, and fantasies.

It can be extended from Raiders of the Lost Ark to Temple of Doom, The Last Crusade, and 20 years later, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. What’s more, it can provide the story platform of media extensions into TV series, pinball and video games, and an amusement park ride.

Far from limiting your creative potential, defining the brand hallmarks gives a structure to which you can then build endless story possibilities.

The same principles can be seen when analyzing other popular movies series, like Star Wars, James Bond, Pink Panther, and Rocky. That’s why I often use these as a warm-up exercise with our creative teams before we start writing stories for N-of-8 groups. It helps us find parallels, archetypes, villains, conflicts, and climaxes. We recall the look of the titles and credits. We even sing the theme song or hum the main chorus.

As you begin crafting your brand’s story, put together a list of the escapades you’ll experience – plunging into a pit of snakes, cruising around on elephants, hitching a ride of a zeppelin, or searching for the Holy Grail.

3 basic elements of a personal brand story (and the basis for your own N-of-8 personal brand development)

Purpose, truth and action are three basic elements of a brand story. Beyond brands, these are three fundamentals of a personal story, too.

So as our teams at Stinson Brand Innovation are working on several new N-of-8^® brand story development projects these days, it’s also a good time to analyze our own stories.

Let’s take a close look at these three elements:

1. Purpose is the thing in your life you will fight for. It is the ground you will defend at any cost. Purpose is not the same as “incentive.” Rather, it’s the engine behind it. It’s why you have energy for some things and not for others.
2. Truth means your story should conform to known facts. Ask if your personal story is a work of fantasy, a lie you tell yourself, or reflects your biases and prejudices. Maybe you’re sidestepping parts of the story that are obviously untrue because they’re just too painful to confront.
3. Action is to engage, to achieve extraordinary depth. It’s more about energy than just time. The difference between full engagement and multitasking is not incremental. With the one-foot-in, one-foot-out level of engagement characteristic of multi-tasking, a startling number of things, all relatively inconsequential, get achieved in a short time. Consider this quote: “A distracted artist will not produce anything of real worth. An entrepreneur with scattered thoughts will not come up with solutions superior to the competition’s.”

So all good stories must have purpose, truth and action.

Here are several questions to answer when creating an energizing story for your personal brand.

Purpose

• What is my ultimate purpose? (Or, what is my company’s ultimate mission?)
• What am I living/working for?
• What is my defining principle and goal?
• What makes me do what I do?
• What is the one thing I would do, even if I had to walk through fire?
• What would I work for, even if there were no pay?
• How do I want to be remembered?

Truth

• Is the story I’m telling true?
• Is this truly my story, or is it what I believe it should be?
• Is it grounded in objective reality?
• What assumptions am I making, and are any of them faulty?
• What am I white-washing to make myself look better?
• Is my private voice in synch with my public voice?

Action

• What actions will I now take to make things better?
• Which habits do I need to eliminate?
• Which habits should I begin to breed?
• Am I an observer or a participator?
• Are my actions filled with hope — the belief I will succeed and that the change I seek is realistically within my grasp?
• Does this story inspire or influence others into action?

In fact, why not convene your own N-of-8^® personal brand development group with trusted friends, family, or colleagues to help shape your story.

Tell me a story

Worried about the increasing number of people who love theories more than stories, filmmaker Ken Burns recently told the San Francisco Chronicle, “We are experiencing the death of the narrative. We are all so opinionated that we don’t actually submit to narrative anymore. That’s the essence of YouTube: Abbreviate everything into a digestible capsule that then become the conventional wisdom, which belies the experience of art.”

Stories are always more persuasive than beliefs. Which makes sense – wouldn’t you rather someone delight you with tales of their experiences than listen to them recite dogma.

Our assignment, dear reader, is to help reverse this damaging trend. Gush fewer opinions and share more stories. And let’s encourage others to do the same.