• home.
  • blog.
  • storytrain manifesto.
  • stories.
    • songs.
    • poems.
    • /answers.
  • publications.
    • articles & books.
    • videos.
    • interviews & reports.

storycodeX

~ The art of story in life, business and business life.

storycodeX

Category Archives: Storytrain

Content Marketers, pull up your trousers! The future is here.

16 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by herr dennehy in Business Story, Co-creation, Ideas, StorycodeX, Storytelling, Storytrain

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

advertising, business storytelling, cluetrain, Co-creation, content, Content Marketing, corporate storytelling, Holy Grail, Marketing, Monty Python, Storytelling

They’re everywhere, omnipresent. Exhaustive articles about why Content Marketing is revolutionizing professional communications. Dreadful lists with “Ten Rules to Successful Content Marketing”. Repetitive, full-of-themselves conferences with self-acclaimed gurus, self-advertising agencies and boastful corporations sharing Content Marketing commandments and so-called best practices (although most of the time they’re at best merely good). Holy Grail, here I come!

holygrail051

“He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the Holy Grail in the Castel of Arrrr…” (“Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, 1975; Image: Screenshot from youtube.com)

 

Here’s old news to all you helplessly disoriented: Content Marketing ain’t no holy grail, ain’t even the end of no road. It’s simply a step in the right direction, to where we need to venture as corporate communicators and marketers. Nothing more, nothing less. So stop jerkin off, pull up your trousers, and move on!

Why and where to, you might ask (or might not, but I’ll answer anyway…)?

Firstly: Content Marketing is acting upon the idea of content as an adjective (which is good and overdue), but

the Marketing aspect clings to an outdated, wrong concept.

It implies that there is stuff to market which in the first place no one wants or needs, a clear old-school messaging and sales approach. In this respect, the term Content Marketing is a contradiction in itself: You publish content that is supposed to make users, consumers, personas (or whatever terminology you use to categorize and de-humanize audiences) happy, but you create and distribute it with a one-directional sender-recipient marketing attitude. Ain’t gonna work in the long run, sorry. Conversation markets have already become smarter than enterprises, immune to advertising, just forget it, remember? And, if we’re honest: In the end, Content Marketing is advertising, very subtle, indirect, outside-in, but still: advertising.

Secondly: In the words of Jay-Z: I got four revolutions, but Content Marketing ain’t one.

Content Marketing is not a revolution,

even though it might be shaking up and (in a colloquial sense of the word) ‘revolutionizing’ the way many corporations approach their communication strategies and operations. Revolution is a strong word, one we should only use cautiously, a noun stronger than its verb. The history of modern, professional, mass-oriented communications mandates a more humble perspective. There have only been four true revolutions, i.e. developments that have irreversibly changed how people produce, receive, consume and conceive information: The invention of book printing (1450), the invention of TV (1884), the invention of radio (1893), and the invention of the Internet (1989).* That’s it, end of story. So far at least. Every trend that was born in the wake of these revolutionary technological developments is nothing more than an evolution step, making more and more sophisticated use of the opportunities offered thereby: Advertising, Public Relations, Marketing, Branded Content, Brand Journalism, you name it. They were all set out talk about a company’s product portfolio or brand in a broadcast fashion, addressing huge target groups with an unbelievable divergence loss.

The first such trend consequently taking advantage of digital media, the internet and its social version 2.0 is indeed Content Marketing. By collecting big amounts of data and clustering target groups into smaller entities – so-called personas – the observed behavioural patterns of customer journeys enable companies to deduct apparent consumer desires and preferences, and give them what they apparently want, at the right time in the right place. Content Marketing finally starts to put the other side of the communication spectrum, the listener, viewer, reader, into the centre of strategies, and not the corporate sender.

Thirdly, nevertheless: Content Marketing disregards one important aspect of modern communications: The social web has long turned us all from target groups and personas into what we truly are: Humans. Individuals. Emotional, irrational, unpredictable beings. No more B2B or B2C, it’s H2H we want!

The past of how people communicated before above-mentioned technological revolutions may indeed show us the future. Way back then, people used to share stories (not content, not data, no: story!) to exchange information and convey messages. They knew that by sharing their stories, these would be re-told to others, would be interpreted, and turned into new versions, or even new stories. It wasn’t about the singer, it was about the song. Before we were able to manifest and archive content on paper and other ‘devices’, it was the most normal thing to carry them from place to place, from generation to generation, in altering versions. In 21st-century pro speak we would probably call this phenomenon “Co-Creation”. So yes:

We need to go back to the roots of human Story Co-Creation.

Back to the openness of the fireside where we allowed our listeners not only to comment on our stories, but also add dramatic ideas, maybe even take the narrative baton from the storyteller and continue the story in their own words, with their own dramatic twists, maybe even their own ending.

People in the social web are like those people sitting around the fireplaces of the past: They want to become part of the stories they hear, read and see. They don’t merely want to listen, read, watch, and comment; they want to add their version of the story to a brand’s narrative, carry it on to the next chapter, with or without the company’s active involvement, add dramatic spice (positive or negative) on their way. And they will reward the brands for this deliberate loss of control by bringing unknown stories, insights, and maybe even new listeners aka fans back with them from their journey. Like a boomerang you throw away to get it back.

For those who think less in words, here is a simplified (too simplified, academics will rightfully say, but sometimes you have to get rid of the clutter to see the light) graphic, visualizing the morale of my story:

corporate-content-evolution

 

Communication in a “professional”, i.e. purposeful, message-oriented sense, has developed and changed in waves: In a pre-technology period (the so-far longest in human history), which was dominated by oral and hand-written content, audience interaction, sharing and co-creation was on a relatively high level in terms of quality, but limited to small audiences. Content in today’s marketing slang didn’t exist yet; it was stories people shared to make their point and make it stick in others’ hearts and minds. We refer to this period as the Pre-Technology Age.

Later, print, radio and TV destroyed this interaction quality by losing direct contact to audiences, but on the other hand brought professional communication to unprecedented heights in terms of quantity, both in terms of content and target groups (including the already mentioned divergence loss). Audience interaction dropped to an historical low, and was also not really desired by senders. That’s why we refer to this period as the Broadcast Age.

Then, only 27 years ago, the emergence of the hybrid medium Internet / WWWeb not only enabled a combination of all kinds of communication formats, but more importantly became the first mass medium for individuals – many-to-many, many-to-one, one-to-many, one-to-one, all in one. Suddenly, content and story creation, consumption and sharing became democratic, simultaneous acts. The result for enterprises: loss of control combined with the sudden need to interact with audiences, acknowledge their individualism and desires. Operationalizing this insight is currently merging into the Content Marketing Age. This will, however, be a short evolution period compared to the others before, as it is already being overtaken by the resurrection of the Story Co-Creation Age, on an unprecedented level auf audience interaction, both regarding quality and quantity. Product co-creation has already been around for quite a while, content crowd sourcing or crowd funding all the same, but the full-blown dawn of the Story Co-Creation Age will lead to nothing less than the democratization of brands, their reputations, and their stories. These will equally belong to the company and its audiences, giving birth to an unknown amalgamation of sender and recipient. Exciting. Promising. Essential for survival.**

P.S.: Oh and, the future after that? Who knows? Nobody knows. So I presume “???” is the appropriate way to make a reliable prognosis of future technologies and audience interaction schemes. Only time will tell, and the answer, my friend, is blowing in the web.

 

*I have elaborated on this before, so for the sake of brevity, please refer to “Storytelling: Digital. Multimedial. Social”.
**For more about the end of (corporate) storytelling and the art of letting go, you’re welcome to refer to “Vergesst Storytelling!” (if you can’t order or download it there, send me an email at herrdennehy@storycodex.com, and I will happily send a copy to you).
Advertisement

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • Print
  • Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

Geschichten als Gestaltungsräume für moderne Marken.

20 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by herr dennehy in Business Story, experiences, StorycodeX, Storytelling, Storytrain, What is STORY?

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

advertising, authentic, brand journalism, brand storytelling, business storytelling, change, Content Marketing, conversations, corporate storytelling, DACS, digital storytelling, expectation, hero, Human, Marketing, social media, story, Storytelling, surprise, Truth, Werbung

Vor gut eineinhalb Jahren hatte ich Freude und Ehre, im Rahmen der Vortragsreihe “DACS Show and Share” der Münchner Architekten Dina Andersen und Christian Schmid zu sprechen.

Es war ein heißer Juliabend, der erste heiße Abend nach vielen Wochen ungewöhnlicher Kälte und Regen im Juli. Das war cool. Einerseits, denn die die Atmosphäre im Hinterhof der Türkenstraße 21 in Münchens Studentenviertel war an diesem Abend mediterran, einladend ausladend, ausgelassen gelassen, geschichtenträchtig. Andererseits hingegen, was macht man an so einem heißen Sommerabend in Minga, gerade nach einer gefühlten Eiszeit? Genau: Biergarten. Dem geschuldet (so nahmen wir selbstsicher an) kamen statt der angemeldeten 80 Gäste gerade mal 35…

Enttäuschung? Nur im ersten Moment. Denn die, die kamen, wollten’s wirklich. Setzten erfreuliche Prioritäten, nahmen kurze wie längere Wege auf sich, um beim Vortrag “Geschichten als Gestaltungsräume für moderne Marken” über das immerheiße, immergrüne Geschichtenerzählen (neudeutsch: Storytelling), Bedeutung und Chancen für Imagebildung, Imageschärfung, Dialogfähigkeit und Geschäftsunterstützung moderner Marken (erfolglos) der Hitze zu entfliehen. Verschmähten Hoibe und Brezn, tauschten sie gegen Flaschenbier und Hirnschmalz, eingerahmt von Bob Dylan, Tracy Chapman, Mr. Jones und Guy Clark. Ein Traum von Sommer in der Stadt.

Screen Shot 2016-02-20 at 23.23.58.png

Warum denke ich gerade jetzt an diesen Abend zurück? Sicher, weil’s draußen grad mal wieder eklig regnerisch windet und in schwachen Minuten gar schneit. Aber auch, weil mir folgendes Video, das im Vorfeld dieses Vortrags entstanden ist, zwar nicht in die Hände, aber doch virtuell zufällig vor die Augen fiel, als es schüchtern aus seiner Verbannung hinter den Gittern von Vimeo heraus lugte.

Alles noch so wahr wie damals, so wahr wie gestern und vorgestern, so wahr wie heute und morgen, so wahr ich dort stand):


<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/99722916″>DACS_Storytelling_Tobias_Dennehy</a&gt; from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/user6666630″>Christian Schmid</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

 

Und wen’s interessiert, so fand’s die tapfere Teilnehmerin Susanne Kleiner:

“Starke Marken erzählen starke Geschichten”

 

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • Print
  • Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

Wonder Why Your King Content Performs Like a Wicked Jester? The answer is simple …

06 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by herr dennehy in Business Story, experiences, Ideas, StorycodeX, Storytrain

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

authentic, Boccaccio, brand journalism, brand storytelling, business storytelling, change, cluetrain manifesto, Co-creation, content, conversations, corporate storytelling, Dante, digital storytelling, Friedrich Schiller, Günter Grass, Gehalt, Heinirch Böll, Homer, Inhalt, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Literature, narration, social media, Storytelling, surprise, Thomas Mann, Truth, Zufrieden

Ever since I made my first professional walking attempts in the digital world (20 years ago that must be #feelslikeyesterday), I heard this mantra everywhere in the pre-dotcom bubble euphoria of Cluetrain afficionados, would-be Internet prophets, and notorious panjandrums:

CONTENT IS KING! They all said.

Wicked Jester

I had been studying Storytelling for five years, long before I even knew it was Storytelling. Back then they called it literature. So it seemed a little odd to hear these Internet geeks regurgitating their royal mantra when I had just meticulously learnt about the history, structure and perennial powers of stories told by early-day classics like Homer, Cervantes, Dante or Boccaccio, classic classics like Goethe, Schiller or Lessing or modern classics like Grass, Mann or Böll. Admittedly, I was also getting carried away by this millennial the-end-of-business-as-usual atmosphere of imminent change. Felt somehow audacious to dust off the venerable Germanstik patina in favour of some fresh … ehem, content?

It was only many years later, after necessary detours through the fires of corporate Mordor, that I realized one ring, I mean thing: The business world was (sorry: IS!) overly attracted by the glare of technological possibilities and features, fanatically prone to wanna-be-first- and because-we-can-itis. And thereby narrowly and one-sidedly interpreting the word “content”, neglecting other, much more elementary facets – facets that become clearest in the three different German translations the word “content” offers.

Back in the late 90’s, corporate content creation had nothing to do with journalistic research or writing talent. Its creators literally were content “managers”, i.e. project managers for pieces of content that they 1:1 transferred from paper to HTML and pinned to the newly discovered digital blackboard called website. Period. Their job was simply about the most general interpretation of content: words and pictures on a screen, publishing material. The (most probable and wide-spread) German translation for this aspect of content would be:

INHALT.

Or: “Something that is to be expressed through some medium, as speech, writing, or any of various arts … something that is contained.” (dictionary.com)

But it this Inhalt automatically something meaningful? Something that goes deeper than letters strung together by punctuation marks? Something that links beyond the surface not to just another succession of trivialities and soulless pixels, but to true substance? Mostly not. This is where in recent years (in continental Europe) or maybe decades (in Anglo-American dominated countries) the bandwagon of storytelling has already been able to do a lot for the greater good of meaningful content. If understood well and deployed according to the storycodeX of Expectation, Surprise and Change. The (a lot less wide-spread and more rarely spotted) German translation for this aspect of content with substance would be:

GEHALT.

Or: “Significance or profundity; meaning” (dictionary.com)

But interesting: Gehalt also means “salary” in German. So maybe in the end all just about the dough, be the content meaningful or not. Surely, what did you think? Now let’s once and for all get past the naïve, childish, even insulting notion that any one corporation on this planet has a different purpose than making money. And the more they want you to believe that they’re sustainably trying to save the world, “do something good” on the side with CSR and foundations, a little like a Hollywood actress doing charity, the more they’re deceiving you.

The labyrinth of linguistics … Whatever. What I actually wanted to say was: Meaningful content with substance is a good thing. But is it enough? No. Not today anymore, that’s for sure. Inhalt and Gehalt were a great, successful and sufficient, but nevertheless rare combination in the pre social media age. When the third facet of “content” didn’t really matter. It was the age of broadcast after all, old-school Shannon-Weaver style.

Bad news: those days are over. Interactivity, ubiquitous commentaries, likes and forum discussions have changed the recipient side practically over night (in a historical sense of time).

People and the conglomerates they form called audiences (NOT users!) will no longer be satisfied with consuming content-turned-into-great-stories and commenting on it in a more or less intelligent and fruitful discussion with fellow audience members or members from other audience groups. They will first of all want to be able to dig deeper behind your story, deeper into the spider web, find proof for your story, get in contact with the heroes of your story, and maybe some day also with you. If they’re not disappointed on their journey.

But, even more substantial, they will want to become an active part of a company’s business story and stories, not as actors or heroes, but as co-authors. After all, they are the other half of the corporate truth, the devil on the corporate shoulder, internal versus external perception. Devils who might become angels when they turn into a renowned and emancipated member if a brand’s story creation team. Only then will they be what the third, most vital and rarest facet of German translation attempts hints at:

ZUFRIEDEN.

satisfactionOr: “Satisfied with what one is or has; not wanting more or anything else … Archaic: willing.” (dictionary.com)

Yep, content is also an adjective, not only a noun.

And the central question is: Who is it that you want to satisfy with your content? Yourself? Your bosses? Your bosses bosses? Or maybe, only very maybe … your customers? Your customers’ customers? Your audiences? Maybe even a targeted small portion of your audience? Certainly, your answer will be: Of course my customers! Of course my audiences! Plus the fact, now I have all these big and massive and powerful data, I now even know what my audience wants before it knows that it wants it! Ha! There you go, eat this!

I’m eating …

Only: Lies are hard to digest. And all the easier to unmask. As written in the world’s most successful example of purposeful storytelling: “Thou shalt not lie!”

Which brings me to the answer of above-asked headline question: As long as you betray yourself and thereby the people you are apparently creating your content for, there will be no sustainably successful content! Take all your pig data, winnow the refuse from the valuable gold nuggets, take an honest and disarraying look at them, shuffle your cards anew, do away with your organization’s and your management’s old shibboleths, dare, launch a pilot, let go, and see what happens.

There is an even older mantra from our economy’s service sector, way back from the days when storytelling was still literature, when relevant content didn’t need to be called king, when it in fact was a rarity due to its scarcity, not due to its abundance. Back then, the saying went:

Der Kunde ist König. The customer is the King.

Aha. So, so. Let’s try that for once, what do you say?

I can’t get no satisfaction, he says? All the better; let that be your stimulant.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • Print
  • Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

Will Transmedia eat itself for lunch? Or is it the end of Storytelling as we know it?

08 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by herr dennehy in experiences, Ideas, StorycodeX, Storytrain

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

App Film, ARG, authentic, Authenticity, Blair Witch Project, brand journalism, brand storytelling, business storytelling, change, cluetrain manifesto, conversations, corporate storytelling, digital storytelling, Disney, drama, expectation, Human, listening, Marketing and Advertising, narration, Ong's Hat, plot, social media, Storytelling, surprise, Transmedia Storytelling, yalda uhl

S T O R Y T E L L I N G …
probably mankind’s oldest communication megatrend.

T R A N S M E D I A …
probably one of the most used communication megatrend buzzwords in mankind’s recent history.

T R A N S M E D I A  S T O R Y T E L L I N G …
probably the most promising combination of communication megatrends for the future.

Some may ask: “WTF’s that supposed to be again???”

Here’s an attempt from The Source of Internet Wisdom:

“Transmedia storytelling (also known as transmedia narrative or multiplatform storytelling) is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies.

From a production standpoint, it involves creating content that engages an audience using various techniques to permeate their daily lives. In order to achieve this engagement, a transmedia production will develop stories across multiple forms of media in order to deliver unique pieces of content in each channel. Importantly, these pieces of content are not only linked together (overtly or subtly), but are in narrative synchronization with each other.“

 

A lot of story stuff involved, so I tend to like it, naturally. But also a lot of (digital) technology, channels, platforms. So, really something new? Or just an evolution version of our oldest megatrend, a Storytelling x.0?

Let’s take a look at where the concept stems from:

Transmedia as an idea of collaborative, multi-platform creation and narration origins in the 70’s and 80’s of the last century, in the area of telematic art, where artists experimented with collaborative narration and defined the idea of transmedia.

It soon moved on to the gaming industry, creating so-called Alternate Reality Games (ARG). These are  games that, based on the Internet as a main hub, use(d) multiple other technological platforms like telephones, email and real offline mail to tell and simultaneously create different parts of the game’s story in those medial habitats relevant to the players. So not just transmedia telling,  but transmedia engagement that requires interaction from every gamer in order to bring the game’s plot to the next level. In other words: “Players interact directly with characters in the game, solve plot-based challenges and puzzles, and collaborate as a community to analyze the story and coordinate real-life and online activities.” (Wikipedia) An early example being Ong’s Hat.

The next transmedia stop was cinema, bringing the whole idea of alternate realities not only to the screen itself (where we had long been used to getting immersed in alternate worlds), but also connecting these to our real, every day lives. The most prominent example certainly being 1999’s “Blair Witch Project”:

 

This was not only a mocumentary, i.e. a piece of fiction pretending to be documentary, but also accompanied by a variety of additional, supporting pieces of content such as faked diaries, police reports or interviews that in itself engaged the audience in a captivating manner, adding to the cinema story’s apparent verisimilitude.

That was 15 years ago, and just the beginning …

Since a couple of years, also the commercial world of business communications has started to smell the rat? As always, the more consumer-oriented businesses are on the fore-front here with pioneers like Nike or Lego, but it won’t be long before the so-called B2B world will catch up.

So what could all of this mean for business communications and marketing? What can we learn from arts and entertainment?

I recently read this article on transmedialab.org that instinctively made me want to caution a “because we can” attitude that often pairs with technological advancements. The article basically was about the next big thing in cinema and henceforth modern storytelling. Not an R&D future project, but already on the audiences’ threshold.

The article begins with a short analysis of the film “APP”. http://www.indiewire.com/article/watch-now-exclusive-trailer-for-app-second-screen-thrillerAPP is the first-ever movie that was written and produced with a 2nd-screen experience in mind, regularly adding content to your phone app while the of the film’s content unfolds on the traditional 1st cinema screen, and thus interrupting the movie’s actual narration.

Hmm, I thought.

Do I like this? Not too sure.

I’ll have to find out…

 

The article moves on with a glimpse into the labs of Disney’s experiments. These are currently limited to 2nd-screen “content interruptions” to back-catalog films like “The Little Mermaid”, but plans are to integrate the transmedia storytelling idea into the initial screen writing of future film productions.

http://www.transmedialab.org/en/the-blog-en/cinema-and-second-screen-applications-focus-on-the-film-app-and-the-disney-second-screen-experience/

Hmm, I thought, again.

Ambiguity crawling in …

The angel (or is it the devil?) on my shoulder says something like Yalda Uhl who states that “it is very important to engage children in a narration, and that is very difficult to do nowadays with all the distractions and stimulations that surround them. Adding a distraction in cinemas will definitely not help studios to achieve their goal of creating value or attracting an audience that will return to the cinema in the future”. Yes, says the angel (or devil)! REDUCE the distractions! Foster concentration spans! Concentrate on true narration and storytelling to immerse audiences in your story! Don’t just do stuff, because you technically can, audiences will soon get tired and will want to go back to good old traditional storytelling! Transmedia will eat itself for lunch! I knew it!

Then there’s this devil (or angel?) on the other shoulder talking about “story engagement” instead of boring one-way “story telling”. Making it clear to me that the potential of transmedia entertainment and the disruption of handed-down reception models is not only exiting, but in fact the only way to go. For entertainment as much as for business communications, both of them dealing with humans in the end. That today’s young and thus tomorrow’s adult generation will continue to literally gag for regular interruptions in their lives’ routines … and that linear, beginning-to-end storytelling is over, that no one will listen anymore, if there’s not more interactive engagement, audience involvement and multi-channel disruption.

Listening to both of them I begin to see, as with many things, there will be developments that we can’t stop, that will simply happen (because we CAN and because we as humans will simply WANT it), whether I personally like them or not.

Maybe the following

THREE COMMANDMENTS OF TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING

can help steer technological developments into the right direction:

1. CONCENTRATE ON A GOOD STORY (ALONG THE PATH OF THE STORYCODEX).
Not matter which medium, no matter how many of them; not matter how fragmented and scattered:  A well-told, convincing narration offering a high degree of the “Like Me” effect will always work. It doesn’t have to be chronological, but it needs Expectation, Surprise, Conflict and Change. What will change is the people who will create this expectation, add the surprise and conflict spice, foster the narration’s change – this will not be a classical narrator instance anymore, this will be multiple parties engaging in different parts of a story from different angles and perspectives, in different places. But a story it will still be.

2. DON’T LET TECHNOLOGY LEAD THE WAY OF A STORY.
No matter what technological developments the future holds, no matter what devices will surface: Technology is simply an enabler, an easer, a multiplier, distributer, a vehicle. The true power lies in the human nature of communication, conversation, and storytelling.

3. TURN STORY TELLING INTO STORY ENGAGEMENT.
Do listen to, observe your audiences, and maybe(?) realize: The age of (traditional) story TELLING could be over. Never the age of STORY itself, but maybe tomorrow’s audiences will really want fragmentation, want to be stimulated from multiple sources and in multiple places. Of course, THE CONCEPT OF STORY will and cannot change, it’s genuinely human, but: Maybe the future is indeed more about story ENGAGEMENT, involving audiences actively in plot creation or character development. This would radically influence scripting, e.g. by taking devices and reception environments into consideration when writing a story’s various chapters.

Again, all of this holds true not only in arts and entertainment, but also in business, along the infamous, much recited “customer journey”, a journey that is getting more and more complicated, but – if you listen and truly get involved – ever more rewarding for all story and hence conversation participants.

Devil or Angel. Angel or Devil. Both?

Exciting, to say the least.

Hmm, I say.

Again.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • Print
  • Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

How Does Story Relate to Business?

22 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by herr dennehy in Ideas, StorycodeX, Storytrain

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

emotion, leadership through story, negative, positive, Robert McKee

Although I find the following video a little too self-adverstising, and the first 30 seconds are basically a not-to-click teaser, I urge you to go beyond this initial downer.

Because: the essence of Robert McKee’s take on business story quoted here is actually worth inhaling:

  1. Allow the positive AND the negative!

  2. Don’t be afraid of EMOTIONS! All decisions, no matter how rational, cause change. And change causes emotion.

  3. Stories equip us to live. Data and pie charts do NOT!

  4. History’s best (or most influential) leaders (political, business, wherever) have been great storytellers, using stories to lead.

Now that’s definitely a good start to creating more meaningful, more convincing, more persuasive content in business communications.

Give it a try!

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • Print
  • Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

The StorycodeX of Expectation, Surprise and Change; Introducing “Hero 2.0”!!!

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by herr dennehy in Ideas, StorycodeX, Storytrain

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

brand storytelling, business storytelling, change, conflict, corporate storytelling, drama, expectation, hero, hero 1.0, hero 2.0, life, Marketing and Advertising, narration, plot, Robert McKee, story arc, surprise, true story

A couple of months ago, I introduced a schematic, illustrative version of what I believe is the essence of any good, real story: the “StorycodeX”. A very basic how-to and what-to-include. A code with must-have elements, but also a code that allows “X” variations, no one-fits-all execution, but a necessary basis in order to reach your storytelling purpose; be it entertainment, information, infotainment, messaging, catharsis, action, … you name it.

It started off like this, with Story Arc Phase 1:

storycodeX_DHD_1a

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Isn’t that course almost every one of today’s so-called corporate or business “stories” is taking? It begins somewhere … and goes nowhere. Nuthin happenin. Boring! Like totally.

Gladly, there is always an end to this misery, but it’s not a story’s end, it’s an mpeg’s end, and sometimes this misery is a loooong torture. Such communication products are indeed a serious hazard to our mental and physical health, no kiddin, head injuries from falling asleep and banging your head on the table being just one of many to caution.

So, what we at least need is to rouse a little bit of EXPECTATION on the audience’s side, EXPECTATION that the above arrow is actually leading somewhere. And this somewhere needs to be a place we actually want to travel to:

storycodeX_DHD_1b

 

OK, now what happens when you create high EXPECTATIONS? Right: You’re gonna have to deliver. Deliver something interesting to the audience, something you ex- or implicitly promised in the first phase or your story arc. This suggestion can be made by means of story content (meaning the What, action or words) or story making (meaning the How of story creation, music, visuals, etc.). But if you create false hopes with cheesy, cheap special effects or bull-shit-bingo slogans, and then the above arrow goes on in an infinity loop of boredom, and there also goes your audience!

To avoid this mess, Story Arc Phase 2 kicks in:

storycodeX_DHD_2a

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ideally, this something happening is something SURPRISING, but definitely it needs to be something meaningful. Meaningful not for you as producer or maybe even the narrator, if you have one, but meaningful for the immanent story logic and its hero(es):

storycodeX_DHD_2b

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Such an incident again needs to ignite a new sense of EXPECTATION, a hope that this SURPRISING development in scene or action will actually lead somewhere, somewhere else, somewhere new, somewhere unexpected. Because: If just anything happens, expected or not, and the dotted arrow of boredom we started off with slithers on as before: There goes your audience, again. But this time it’s not only bored, now it’s also angry! Because you fooled them, lured them it into watching, listening or reading for longer than initially planned. And then (gee, you actually almost had them!): disappointment galore. Thank you for flying with Never Come Back Airlines!

What the audience was hoping, ideally even gagging for was: a turn in the story’s plot, in the hero’s life, leading him (or her, or them) to a different place (literally or psychologically, spiritually) as a consequence of everything that happened before. Hero and audience are confronted with a different world than when the narration commenced, and both need to deal with it:

storycodeX_DHD_3a

 

This altered direction is indeed a story’s (and in fact life’s) vital ingredient #1, an ingredient every good story ever told has (literally making story a metaphor for life). I’m talking about CHANGE:

storycodeX_DHD_3b

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But no CHANGE without life’s vital ingredient #2: CONFLICT. Corporations hate this beast, lock it up in a cage, try to kill it in every part of their shiny, the-world-is-perfect advertising and PR, but the son of a gun somehow always manages to escape!

Life is full of CONFLICT. CONFLICT is life’s spice, the only ingredient that really fosters CHANGE – as in story. So, if life or a story just steadily flows like a calm river without anything happening, without any CONFLICT occurring, the result might be great for meditation, but when it comes to purposeful, infotaining storytelling, what you get is one great big “YAWN”. This CONFLICT need not be explicit or even literally happening: inner conflict or narrations in retrospect are very often even more exiting modes of storytelling than the in-your-face alternative.

So, somewhere above (or below or in the midst of) every plot, every action (f)lies:

storycodeX_DHD_4a

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONFLICT, however, should never be a self-serving element, a shocker, a special effect. It needs to happen to someone, this someone being (oh, quelle surprise!) a human being. Not a product. Not a solution. Not a service. Generally: Not a thing. So if anyone comes around asking you to create a campaign where “the product is the hero”: Fire him! And if you can’t fire him, cause he’s your boss, please argue him out of this idea. “The product is the hero” communication efforts are the most dangerous of all in regards to the afore-mentioned banging-your-head-on-the-table hazard!

Seriously, I know it sounds real wacky and kind of common sense, but decades of engineers and product managers becoming part- or full-time communicators, decades of one-way make-believe and hiding-lies-behind-effects advertising is over. Maybe not completely, yet. Maybe not today, completely. But soon, definitely.

So, to complete the StorycodeX and give the picture both its frame and its core, I proudly present the conversion of HERO 1.0 (the one who started his journey on the left side of boredom arrow, lived through EXPECTATION, SURPRISE and CHANGE in one or numerous iterations, depending on the story’s epicness) into HERO 2.0 (a different version of the same person, altered, in a positive or negative way) through CONFLICT:

storycodeX_DHD_5

 

CONFLICT and business communications rejecting this phenomenon so fervently, refusing the acknowledgement of the negative is a great topic, definitely worth a blog post here … maybe some other day… 🙂

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • Print
  • Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

What if Giving up Control were not a Threat, but an Opportunity?

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by herr dennehy in experiences, Ideas, Storytrain

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Bob Dylan, brand journalism, brand storytelling, Business, business storytelling, change, Christopher Locke, cluetrain manifesto, Co-creation, conversations, corporate storytelling, David Weinberger., Deep Space Nine, Doc Searls, Edgar Allen Poe, Human, listening, loss of control, Rick Levine, social media, Star Trek, Truth

Copyright: article.wn.com

 

Let’s admit it: We’re all losing control.

First of all, in the part of life that we call private life.

Where the day starts with an always-charged, smart-ass smart phone coldly grinning at me, relentlessly turning Beethoven’s wonderful “Klavierkonzert Nr. 5 Es-Dur” into my own personal groundhog-day experience. Gladly, this hasn’t spoilt my love for this concerto yet: For years now, I prefer being carried from the land of peaceful sommeil et rêves to the gates of daylight by Ludwig’s silent power than by Steve’s awful ringtone selection or distressingly well-tempered radio hosts.

Still, Beethoven aside, that’s the first loss of control of the day. Over my morning. A control (I thought) I used to have, at least before my own school days when there was just me and eternity. And also after school’s early-bird-my-ass 13 years, at university, when I could freely decide whether to get up for some early-morning lecture, or not. Probably that was an illusion, too … Aaah, whatever!

But now control’s definitely gone, along with the good-night’s sleep from pre-children days that used to precede the alarm bell’s toll.

The rest of an average day just goes with a flow that doesn’t seem to be mine (or ours, more correctly) anymore: Shower, tooth-brush, razor. Wardrobe, kitchen, espresso machinetta. Wake up kids, dress up kids, breakfast kids. School, kindergarten, metro. First mails, social channel check, maybe a little Spotify or FM4 on the train, blocking the rest of the underground world with my on-ears. Then it’s on to the office with its own very special affluent of Outlook, multiple phones, meetings, inter-desk chats, occasional join lunch breaks and … social channel checks.  Metro back home, social channel check, more in a rush than in the morning. Dinner, kids to bed, cleaning up. 2100 hrs sharp: time for twosomeness, music, movies or … maybe writing a blog post?

But then: Swoosh! In comes this invisible force from out of nowhere, hangs leaden weights to my eye lids, message clear: Don’t fight it! You’re tired! Go to sleep … maybe last chance for a social channel check, then … zzzzzz.

OK, I may be overegging the pudding a little, but the point is clear: Life has taken control of me, not visa versa. But it’s never too late to fight back!

If only I weren’t so tired … 🙂

TIRED

 

Then there is this other part of life that we call business life.

And I’m not speaking work-life balance here, that’s an outdated, unrealistic concept anyway in the age of smart iDevices (not “i” as in internet, but “i” as in “i am the device and the device is me”).

I’m talking about the life of a business, of a company, of a cooperation, call it what you like.

Whereas I personally admit to the fact that I’m losing control and maybe have slight hope of escaping as time goes by, (most) enterprises actually still believe they are in control – a control they have literally already lost, and will never get back. In control of the products they produce and sell (Henry Ford’s many heirs still alive, producing cars in various shades of black: Shut up, eat your spinach, it’s good for you!). In control of the people they can hire, retain, or fire. And (this is most obviously the biggest heretic belief) in control of their brands, their reputation, their communication efforts.

Will anybody out there please wake up, open your eyes, put an oversized espresso machinetta on the stove, extra strong, and realize that the times they are a-changing, or better: have already a-changed???

Read a brief history of the Internet, then come again. It’s been a long time coming …

… So: What does this mean?

“Companies that don’t realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.” (cluetrain.com, Thesis 18)

Opportunity is the right word. Not threat, as many still see it. Challenge maybe, yet a threat only for companies who decide to remain lonely regents of Shannon-Weaver Island. But opportunity for those who recognize that the sender-recipient model has served it’s time.

In private-life situations where networked kids are getting smarter, no longer just say “SIR, YES, SIR!” when you tell them what to do, but – like it or not – want to understand, want discourse, want dialogue, want to be taken seriously, and embark on a life-long conversation journey with their parents. And this is quite admirable, actually.

And in business-life situations all the same holds true for companies and their “kids”, which they disparagingly call stakeholders, users, target groups. But they’re actually people, human beings. Employees, customers, investors, journalists, bloggers, talents, politicians, etc.etc.etc. And as my kids are getting smarter by the day with their own real-life Internet (still very offline, gladly), so are a company’s kids, aided by the powerful global conversation that has begun through the Internet, “getting smarter – and getting smarter faster than most companies.” (cluetrain.com)

Whereas the Cluetrain Manifesto was at the time (very far-sighted, considering it was 1999) describing what was going on in a (compared to nowadays limited) community of Internet users and how this would need to impact the way corporations talk and act towards these networked, conversation-driven markets, I would like to take this notion a step further:

What if the future of companies, corporations and brands is a future, in which their brand story and their image no longer belongs to them?

What if these networked communities would not only co-create campaigns or isolated contents for companies (as they already do increasingly often today), but co-create and co-develop entire brands, communicatively manipulate a brand’s genes, its DNA? Co-write their history, story and stories?

What if reputation management wasn’t a thing a company could do by itself or have an expensive agency do, but something that is taken over by its “stakeholders”?

And now, while this still sounds like a threat, like a mob raging outside my fortress walls, here’s another thought:

What if … the above were all things a corporation would DELIBERATELY do?
Meaning: Go from telling “Who We Are!” to asking “Who Are We?” or “Who Should We Be?”

Imagine the outcome!

Imagine the level of relevance, content (as in “Zufriedenheit”), and respect you could harvest!

Imagine that you couldn’t imagine who you would be as a brand in, say, 50 years!

Imagine you could build a business not on ROI (Return on Invest), but on ROT (Return on Trust) or ROL (Return on Love)!

“And in the end, the love you get is equal to the love you give.” (The Beatles, “The End”)

Gee, scary thought.

The recipient would become the sender, the sender the recipient. The crowd would become part of the communications, marketing and brand department, and corporate comms would diffuse in the crowd. True emancipation, the foundation stone for every lasting relationship that makes love and trust its pillars.

Taking Poe’s “Man of the Crowd” to the next level: The follower doesn’t simply watch his target vanish into the crowd, but would actually follow. Dive into a kind of Great Link like DS9’s Odo and his fellow shape-shifters, a place where sender and recipient, comms department and target groups, brands and stakeholders amalgamate, for the benefit of both …

Copyright: treknews.net

Freakin’ esoteric stuff!

So let’s better round this off with something more down-to-earth.

With the famous words of Robert Zimmerman:

“Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown

And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin’

Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'”

 

Thank you, Bob! Right on!

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • Print
  • Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

11 Ingredients for a Successful Business Story

06 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by herr dennehy in Storytrain, What is STORY?

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

authentic, Authenticity, brand journalism, brand storytelling, business storytelling, change, conversations, corporate storytelling, Don Quijote, expectation, hero, Human, listening, Storytelling, surprise, target groups, true story, Truth

Here are 11 ingredients that will get you to your successful business story.

It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s worth the effort. It needs determination, honesty, and courage. The willingness to introspect, listen, experiment, learn, and optimize based on what you learn.

These ingredients, or tips, don’t necessarily need to come in the below order, nor does it suffice to go through all of them just once, over and out, success here you come! There’s a lot of inevitable repetition in these efforts, a kind of “perpetuum mobile of business story”.

Here we go:

 

Listening1. It’s listening time, the age of attention and conversation. So: Listen to your audiences. Find out who they really are. What they really need, what they want. And where and how they want it.

 

Competition2. Observe your competition. Don’t be a “Me Two”. Be different. Be authentically you.

 

Big Story3. You can only be you, if you know who you are. So: Find your big story, your identity, your character, your DNA. Again, this can only be achieved by listening. To yourself, your own organization from top bottom, left to right. To your audiences (or target groups, as you might call them). See where the delta is, where it matches, where it doesn’t. And somewhere amidst that cacophony of data: there’s your big story. Once you find it: stick to it!

 

Small Stories4. Continuously search for all the stories within and without your organization that fill your big story with proof and bring it to life – credibly and authentically, verifiably and true. No matter how small or irrelevant they may seem: They are the only currency you have that differentiates you from your competition. Messages, Brand Ambitions, Visions, and all those bullshit-bingo Whatchmacallits are interchangeable, just hot air, written by expensive agencies to make you feel special. What truly makes you special are your stories, and your people or the people who make up your target audiences, for they are your stories’ heroes. And nobody else!

 

Formula5. Become Sinatra, find your way, and then do it your way. If you believe in your idea’s brilliance and capability to tell all your stories great and small, the stories that in the end all make your big story, the accuracy of fit to your character, then go for it! Always follow The STORYCODEX of Expectation, Surprise and Change … and eliminate the taste factor. Nothing worse than management killing an idea just because they can. Because they have a position within your hierarchy that demands of you to ignore or tolerate that they don’t have a bloody clue what they’re talking about. Oh and: If these grey-suited folks demand of you to make their product the hero, remind them of the Ninth Commandment, the one about lying and false witness. A product can NEVER be a hero, and thou shalt never attempt to do so, thou will fail!

 

Pilot6. If your idea, your concept is truly brilliant, unique, something different, maybe even a little crazy: There’ll be armies of Bedenkenträger in their trenches, armed with “Buts” and “We’ve never done this before’s”. This should encourage you, not the opposite: You’re probably on the right track. To get past the army of doubters, call your project a “pilot”. Management feels comfortable with pilots, has a finite touch, limited risk and all that crap.

 

Windmills7. Once your pilot’s taken off, make no casualties, no compromises. Be resilient and consequent. The windmills of doubt and Schadenfreude will be blowing into your face from all directions. Don’t let them stop you. And find yourself a trustful companion who will stick by your side, even if one or the other of the journey’s adventures turns out to be a failure or at least different than expected. If this companion is also willing and able to tell your story and stories, a good and true storyteller, who doesn’t necessarily need to be an experts in your field of business, all the better. He (or she) just needs to understand you and be able to translate your management brand identity mission-vision-value-proposition messaging bullshit into stories somebody actually wants to hear.

 

Jacko8. Even if you’re out (or in) there alone, all by yourself: Be consistent, stick to who you are, what you believe in. Work on your own little moonwalk and surprise audiences and critiques, leave them awestruck.

 

Measure9. How do you convince critiques and Benkenträger, prove them wrong? Right: through hard facts and figures they can’t neglect or deny. Seriously, anything procurement sharks, engineers or sales guys trust more than numbers on a paper or screen or power point? So give em what they want: Develop objective KPI’s, measure every customer’s every movement and interaction with your story, present the results in a comprehensible and comprehensive way, and then: Poke your tongue at them, or – if the figures suggest so – have the guts to admit they were right, and it didn’t work.

 

Trust10. All along the way, every second of your adventure of finding yourself, understanding your competitors and your audience(s), finding all your stories great and small, finding your formula, pulling it through and sticking to your idea like Jacko to white socks … make sure you do it with someone you trust. Someone on your wavelength, with the same vision, as well as balls and management position to back you up when the FBI is up your fundament to shut your business down.

 

Invest11. Last, but oh so very not least: Every truly unique, innovative and successful business story needs … investment. Not only of money, although it needs a lot of that also, make no mistake; investment in the stories themselves, of course, but also for the stories’ marketing, as nobody is really waiting for your corporate story! But you mainly need to invest a looooot of time, and need to give your story project time to grow, like a tree: from seed to graft to full-grown plant. In a nutshell: You need Herzblut: belief, commitment, passion, and stamina.

Good luck!

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • Print
  • Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

Three Arrows. Three Words. One STORYCODEX.

03 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by herr dennehy in Ideas, Storytrain, What is STORY?

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Aristotle, change, digital storytelling, expectation, Robert McKee, storycodex, surprise

People often ask me: What is a story? And what isn’t?

Where to begin? Where to end? How to convey the essence of this ancient concept in a so-called elevator pitch – which is even much shorter than the infamous management summary?

Epic’s have been written, filmed, recorded about this topic. From Aristotle to McKee. All very well, all very correct. But also: all very long.

This is my elevator-pitch attempt at less-than-twitter brevity, a visualisation of story motion. Three arrows. Three words. My storycodeX in a nutshell:

herr dennehy's storycodeX

You can always apply more detail. More academia. And I’m sure I will, bit by bit.

But for me: This is it.

Agree?

Disagree?

Why?

Let me know!

cheers
herr dennehy

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • Print
  • Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Storytrain Manifesto: the end of corporate messaging as usual.

04 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by herr dennehy in Ideas, Storytrain

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

brand journalism, brand storytelling, business storytelling, Christopher Locke, cluetrain, cluetrain manifesto, conversations, corporate storytelling, David Weinberger., digital storytelling, drama, expectation, social media, story, storytrain, surprise

15 years down the virtual road, it’s time to take the Cluetrain Manifesto to the next level.

cluetrain wordle, created by Tobias Dennehy on wordle.net

Back in 1999, it predicted “the end of business as usual”, caused by “a powerful global conversation [that] has begun through the Internet.” Talking a lot about why “markets are conversations and getting smarter”, “markets that consist of human beings”, conversations that need to be “conducted in a human voice [which is] unmistakably genuine [and] can’t be faked.”

About the fact that these “markets [actually] want to talk to companies.” And about the genuinely human constituents of these markets who will only talk to any company or institution on one condition:

“If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it something interesting for a change.”

Tacitly accepting the risk of redundancy and repetitiveness here: I truly believe that this “something interesting” is the core of the Cluetrain Manifesto. A core without which the conversations that these markets are about, would be impossible.

Why?

Thesis 75 not simply states or claims something, or tells corporations what to change, which many of the other theses do in an at times slightly patronizing way; it actually hints into the direction of how to solve the corporate dilemma posed by the internet and social media paradigm shift.

This “something interesting” is, has always been, and will always be: STORY.

The right story told to the right people at the right time and in the right way will create open ears, open minds, loyalty and stickiness on the sides of the people you’re talking to. Even if it’s just one single person who is more open and susceptible to what you have to say than before you said it, and that’s the one single person you want to reach – isn’t that a beautiful thing?

I mean, let’s be honest: It’s not always about the mass of anonymous, meaningless Facebook friends or the 10 million views on your YouTube video that makes communications efforts successful – even though we all love to pretend otherwise in our “Oh my project was such a great success” power-point attacks on human intelligence. It’s what happens AFTERWARDS that proves if there’s any meaningful outcome to what we said, wrote or showed. [Side note: Do you know how long you need to watch a video on YouTube before the platform counts your action as a ‘view’? FIVE seconds. So much for that as a relevance KPI! Ha!]

So, what does it take to make your train of stories not only leave the station on the right platform and the right track, but also pick up passengers along the way who really like the direction you’re going and actually want to follow you?

A Storytrain that ideally never reaches its final destination, but gathers many a compelling story and fellow storytellers and passengers along the way?

A Storytrain that never returns home, but bit by bit is actually driven by its passengers to destination unknown, merely aiming at never-ending on a dead-end track?

Find it out when you jump on the bandwagon of The Storytrain Manifesto RIGHT HERE at storytrain.org.

Become a passenger, blind or seeing. Be my guest. My co-pilot. My chief guard. Help me make this work! Thanks. 🙂

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • Print
  • Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

Join 498 other subscribers

Archives

Archives

Follow storycodeX on WordPress.com

Looking for something?

Archives

Website Powered by WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • storycodeX
    • Join 74 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • storycodeX
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: