02 Saturday May 2020
Posted in hiSTORY, music, Poetry, StorycodeX, Storytelling
Tags
corona, history, Music, musical storytelling, story, Storytelling
A crisis is a strange thing. Paralysing and constringent for some. Liberating and revealing for others. I choose the latter, it’s better for your health.
So I started my Living Room Sessions with a couple of verses that poured themselves over my strings not too long ago. A look back ahead at what’s happenig right now…
20 Saturday Feb 2016
Posted in Business Story, experiences, StorycodeX, Storytelling, Storytrain, What is STORY?
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.
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):
Und wen’s interessiert, so fand’s die tapfere Teilnehmerin Susanne Kleiner:
“Starke Marken erzählen starke Geschichten”
07 Thursday Jan 2016
Posted in Business Story, Ideas, StorycodeX, Storytelling, What is STORY?
Tags
Authenticity, Big Data, brand journalism, brand storytelling, business storytelling, change, Corporate Newsroom, Corporate Story Architecture, corporate storytelling, digital storytelling, drama, expectation, Organisational Storytelling, story, Storytelling, surprise
“You better start swimmin’
or you’ll sink like a stone,
for the times, they are a-changin’.
— Bob Dylan, 1964
Alles im Wandel, immer zu, immer wieder. Evolution, das reicht uns schon lange nicht mehr. Talkin’ ’bout a revolution! Allerorten, politisch, wirtschaftlich, medial. Auch im Land der unbegrenzten Marketingmöglichkeiten des Internet. Hochkonjunktur der Hilf- und Orientierungslosen. Und tatsächlich: Angeblich revolutionäre Trends schießen wie kontaminierte Pilze aus medialen Böden, seit Jahren. Werden uns professionell Kommunikativen auf dem Altar der digitalen Eitelkeiten feilgeboten wie heilige Grale: Folgt dem Messias – oder gehet unter im Fegefeuer der Followerlosen! Und was tun wir? Folgen, natürlich. Wie Brians Jünger der liegengebliebenen Sandale.
Schluss damit, liebe Volksfront von Digitalien! Emanzipiert Euch!
Übt Euch in kritischer Distanz zur selbsternannten Content Revolution. Zu altem Wein in neuen Schläuchen. Übt Euch in demütiger Bescheidenheit, bevor Ihr das Wort ‚Revolution’ in Mund oder Feder nehmt! Demut vor der Geschichte, die retrospektiv gnadenlos so Manches ins rechte Licht rückt – oder in den Schatten stellt.
Mit dem Weitwinkelobjektiv der Geschichte empfiehlt der Literaturwissenschaftler – vulgo Ego – Besinnung auf alte Werte aus Zeiten, als Storytelling noch Geschichtenerzählen hieß, und Content Literatur oder Dichtung. Lest Aristoteles und Opitz, Shakespeare und Goethe und all ihre Erben. Und lernt so ein wenig mehr Gelassenheit im Umgang mit scheinbar neuen Medien und deren Bewohnern, der unheimlichen Spezies namens User. Entlarvt und demaskiert ist dieser gar nicht mehr so undurchsichtig, bedarf gar keiner großer Daten (für Dengländer: Big Data), um verstanden zu werden. Zwar hat die multidirektionale, grenzenlose Erreichbarkeit und Vernetzheit des Indivualmassenmediums Internet (ob 1.0, 2.0 oder x.0) zu einer medialen Gerissenheit und einem kognitiven Vorsprung des Empfängers vor dem Sender geführt. Doch das ist keine schlechte, sondern eine gute Nachricht, führt sie doch im Kant’schen Sinne zu einem Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbst verschuldeten Unmündigkeit. „Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen!“, lautete 1784 der Wahlspruch der Aufklärung, und das Internet ist Aufklärung 2.0: Menschen, die Corporate Messages und Corporate Advertising keinen Glauben mehr schenken, Menschen, die, unterstützt durch Technologie, gleichberechtigte Gesprächspartner werden. Nicht mehr der Leitung anderer folgen, sondern selbst diese Leitung zu übernehmen. Über Marken, deren Wahrnehmung, deren Inhalte. Insofern gibt es keine Content Revolution, sondern nur eine Content Quality Revolution, in der das Wort Content nicht nur für Inhalt, sondern auch Gehalt und Zufriedenheit des Empfängers, nicht des Senders steht.
Menschen sind kein Big Data, keine Nullen und Einsen. Sie sind subjektiv und individuell, nicht objektiv und kollektiv. Ein unberechenbarer Teil jeweils unterschiedlich beschaffener, unterschiedlich großer Gemeinschaften (neudeutsch: Communitys). Diese Menschen sind im digitalen Zeitalter Projektionsflächen für Geschichten, für Geschichten, die sie selbst erleben, aber auch für diejenigen, die sie aufsaugen – oder auch wieder angewidert ausspucken. Sie sind eben nicht mehr nur Rezipienten, Konsument und Lemming, sondern Produzent, Prosument und spielregelverändernde Punks.
Schreck lass nach!
Ein Entschreckungsszenario in drei Thesen:
1. User sind Menschen. Menschen lieben Geschichten. Und Geschichtenerzählen kann gelernt werden!
„Der storycodeX“ nach @herrdennehy: Erwartunges schaffen und befriedigen. Überraschen. Verändern.
2. Punks wollen sich nicht bevormunden lassen. Sie wollen mitgestalten und mitbestimmen. Lassen wir sie!
Poe weitergesponnen: Konzentration auf das Individuum in der Crowd, Beobachten, Loslassen. Als Marke zur Crowd werden, und die Crowd zur Marke werden lassen.
3. Alles ist vernetzt und organisiert. Drum müssen auch wir es sein!
Der Siemens Corporate Newsroom in der Unternehmenszentrale in München: Pionierarbeit und erfolgreiches Experiment themenbasierter Zusammenarbeit über Abteilungsgrenzen hinweg.
Die „Corporate Story Architecture“ nach @herrdennehy: Von der großen Markengeschichte über all die kleinen Geschichten, die diese zum Leben erwecken und glaubhaft machen, bis hin zur strategisch geplanten Präsenz der Marke im medialen Mark. Ein stabiles Gebilde, das so manchem medialen Hurricane standhält.
(Dieser Beitrag erschien erstmals am 5. Januar 2016 auf der Blogplattform des Content Marketing Forum unter http://content-marketing-forum.com/blog/wir-sind-punks/)
Mehr zur Corporate Story Architecture, dem storycodeX und der Idee der Co-Creation aus dem Corporate Newsroom im Buch „Storytelling – Digital, Multimedia, Social: Formen und Praxis für PR, Marketing, TV, Game und Social Media“, das im Frühjahr 2016 im Hanser Verlag erscheinen wird, nach- und weiterlesen.
06 Sunday Dec 2015
Posted in experiences, hiSTORY, StorycodeX, What is STORY?
Tags
#refugeeswelcome, buddhists, catholics, future, hate, hindus, history, human story, infographics, jews, learning from hiSTORY, lessons, love, muslims, peace, protestants, refugees, story, storycodex, true story, war
Sometimes, it takes 77 years for the true power of a story to unfold.
Sometimes, it takes 77 years to prove that data and graphs are nothing without a story
Sometimes, you read 77-year-old figures, and it simply goes BOOM when you connect them to the present.
And sometimes, the best pieces of content need no further explanation…
#refugeeswelcome or #refugeesnotwelcome ?
#understanding or #ignorance ?
#peace or #war ?
#love or #hate ?
#HIStory or #HERstory or #OURstory ?
#jews or #muslims or #catholics or #protestants or #hindus or #buddhists or #whoeverisdifferent ?
#hiSTORY or #future ?
#lessonslearned or #nothinglearned ?
We will see. Hope dies last, they say. But it dies.
16 Monday Feb 2015
Posted in Business Story, experiences
Tags
Authenticity, Business, business storytelling, cluetrain manifesto, conversation, corporate storytelling, human story, interaction, Malta, Marketing and Advertising, McKee Story, Robert McKee, story, Story Seminar, Storynomics, Storytelling, Winston Churchill
Valetta, Malta, late November. It’s an evening at the end of one of those days. Summer has finally lost his last fight against Jack Frost, reinvigorated by Judas Autumn, his beautiful, deceptive seasonal companion. Stealing the remaining rays of warmth from the year’s sunny season for his own colourful performance. Just to lose his beauty to master Winter with the blow of a November wind. The last moment before the days become grey and miserable, foggy and wet, cold.
Nature’s true game of thrones, a drama of expectation, surprise, and change, story in repetition mode. A perfect platform, autumn the perfect time of year, an island the perfect location for a very unique scene, at least in my life story …
Clouds over Valetta. Nature’s Game of Thrones in the Mediterranean. (copyright: http://idonotdespair.com)
… Dinner with Robert McKee, one of the world’s most renowned, respected and successful story teachers, accompanied by his wife and my dear friend and story consultant James McCabe. Great food and even greater Maltese wine were the witnesses of an evening of lively and inspiring discussions about, naturally, all stories great and small, good and bad. About stories from Hollywood, McKee’s professional backyard, behind and in front of the scenes (very interesting to a provincial Bavarian story lover like me!); about movies galore; about the rise of sophisticated and elaborate TV series like Breaking Bad (the best ever produced, I recall McKee raving, that was some common ground to start an evening on!), and … about the poor state our world is in when it comes to business stories.
From Hollywood Entertainment to Malta Business
“Write the Truth”, he told me.
Robert McKee is not only Hollywood’s #1 story expert and creative writing instructor: His seminal book “STORY” is as famous and well-reviewed as his four-day “Story Seminar” is legendary, a must-attend guide for every ambitious (screen)writer willing to learn the craft or recall its essence. I have yet to judge this for myself, but allegedly 410 of his alumni have won Golden Globes, Academy Awards and many other renowned prizes. Not bad. Alumni like LOTR’s Peter Jackson go into rapture saying things like “McKee is the Guru of Gurus of Storytelling” (whatever a storytelling guru is…), or John Cleese who less guru-ishly claims: “It’s an amazingly important course that I’ve gone back to do three times.” Not bad either.
McKee has as of late also embarked upon the effort to transfer his knowledge and expertise in fiction story (mainly designed for entertainment purposes) to the sphere of business, corporate communications and marketing – storytelling with the slightly altered purpose of not only telling, but actually selling something, products and ideas, by means of entertainment. (Ideally. Mostly though, the State of the Business Story Union suggests that these means are currently mainly boredom, repetition and tutelage.)
McKee’s seminar builds upon one major notion: That companies are not abstract enterprises, they are not their portfolios; they are their employees. And these employees are actual human beings, people creating and experiencing stories every day. Only: They’re simply not telling them, rather burying them on power- and pointless PPT’s, vertiginous data sheets, and propaganda wolves in a press release’s sheep skin.
Frowning at the sight of too many appalling business stories? Robert McKee’s helping overcome self-centred corporate communication and marketing nightmares. (copyright: http://www.storylogue.com)
Businesses must shift from “We” to “You”.
So, there’s a urgent need for action here, a demand that McKee has identified and tries to answer with his “Storynomics Seminar”, which premiered under the then name “Story in Business” (which I find much more intuitive, to be honest) in Valetta, Malta, on above-mentioned autumn day.
Upfront: I sincerely believe that endeavours like this should be on the mandatory training list of EVERY person responsible for communications and marketing, from one-man enterprises to multi-national companies. Actually, while I’m thinking about it: slam McKee business story seminar it into the PMP files of every manager attempting to lead in a meaningful and not just power-centric way!
And why? Cos it’s good. Not perfect yet, but really a great start to break up fossilized PR and Marketing dinosaurs, and introduce them to a world where people are people and not abstract target groups, people that indeed WANT to embark upon meaningful dialogue with people from companies (not the companies!), for whatever purpose.
Here are a couple of notes I made, ideas and impulses that I got from that one day in Valetta – they’re pretty spot-on and need no further commentary:
Amen.
A little less conversation, a little more (inter)action, please.
The seminar is structured into three parts: Story Purpose, Story Design, Story Telling. McKee convincingly demonstrates the principles of a good story that “serves its purpose” (be that entertainment or a trip down the sales funnel), mechanisms are the same everywhere. A story is a story is a story. With many a business video example, good and bad, reinforces the fact that “story is a metaphor for life”, hence also business life. Very illustrative, very stringent, very substantial, at times maybe a little dogmatic, definitely too much from-stage-to-audience style, and unfortunately almost completely interaction-free (apart from a pre-structured Q&A session at the end). Granted, this is probably the maximum you can do in the course of just one day with such a fundamental topic.
Still: While his screenwriting reputation and Hollywood expertise is the greatest asset and perspective-changing element of this lecture, it’s also maybe the cause for its only weakness, or let’s rather call it room for improvement. I really feel that it’s an opportunity wasted for McKee to have so many interested business people in a room hanging on his lips for story expert advice and only TELL them stuff, and not let them experience it themselves. Not just transfer fiction story mechanics to business story in a demonstrative way, but let them experience it hands-on.
Corporate dinosaurs need more than one day to be story-empowered
Maybe invite a co-lecturer or break-out session lead who actually has extensive experience of working INSIDE and just WITH companies, for the benefit of the much-aspired “like me” effect. To share this business expert’s experiences, especially in terms of overcoming organisational hurdles and convincing notorious nay-sayers nevertheless. Let the audiences maybe even work on short business story challenges amongst themselves, so they don’t just see and hear how it’s done, but can actually do it and feel it. Turn it from a lecture into a true seminar where PR and Marketing professionals are not only evangelized but actually enabled and empowered to go back to their desks and produce their first-ever real business story.
That would probably turn the one-day event into a two- or three-day event. But so what? Why not? Business story lecturing is faced with far crustier mindsets than the entertainment sector where disciples already know the Why’s and want to learn the How’s. Corporate dinosaurs need convincing before you can even get to the tutorial, the hands-on learning part. And that requires more than a day, and more story engagement spice in the story telling soup.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”, Churchill once said.
So please continue, Bobby McKee! And thanks for great insights – and great wine.
I WAS THERE! 😉
25 Sunday Jan 2015
Posted in experiences, hiSTORY, Ideas
Tags
9/11, Auschwitz, Billy Joel, Black and White, charlie hebdo, Christian, Günter Grass, germany, grey, hebdo, history, Jew, Muslim, paris, prejudice, religion, shades of grey, stereotypes, story, terror attacks, Theodor Adorno, tolerance, understanding, World Literature, World War II
„Shades of grey wherever I go
The more I find out the less that I know
Black and white is how it should be
But shades of grey are the colors I see.“
(Billy Joel)
Charlie Hebdo, even the name Charlie alone, has become a sad chiffre for the state of the world we’re in – or maybe have always been. On January 7, 2015, at 11:30 AM, the world stood still for a second, probably even changed irreversibly. Once again.
Like on September 11, 2001.
Like on November 10, 1938.
Dates scarred into modern conscience, because they marked the end of worlds as we knew them. Once again.
Watching the unbelievable Paris scenes, enduring the multitude of talk shows that spilt over our TV screens like the inevitable vomit after a serious case of food poisoning, I could actually physically feel the caesura this event means for Europe, just like 9/11 for the USA. For better or worse, only history will tell.
Stereotypes will grow, prejudices will thrive, the legislative and especially executive countermeasures to serve the earlier will be scarily en vogue. Left, right. Muslim, Christian, Jew. Black and White.
Blueprint “Schreiben nach Auschwitz”
Writing about anything else in the aftermath of the Hebdo murders felt like an impossibility to me, inappropriate, even an act of blasphemy in a strictly non-religious sense.
Posts on communication and marketing trends in 2015 were on the storycodeX to-write list in early January – as for many a net writer interested in this stuff. Topics like the rivalry of Content Marketing and Brand Journalism. Like the true meaning of Content. Or Doc Searls’ and David Weinberger’s “New Clues”, but … just wouldn’t work. It’s like the author’s fingers refused to type, forced their tips to the West, to France, to the city of love.
Emotional thoughts and thoughtful emotions that somehow drew me towards a re-read of a speech by Günter Grass, held as part of his poetry lecture at Goethe University in Frankfurt in 1990. Its title: “Schreiben nach Auschwitz”. In his speech, Grass not only elaborates on his literary story and stories, but also makes a critical reference to Theodor W. Adorno’s discourse “Minima Moralia” as well as the infamous and often over-exaggeratingly dogmatized claim “Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht schreiben ist barbarisch” from his 1951 essay “Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft – Gedichte nach Auschwitz”. The full context of this quote goes as follows:
“Kulturkritik findet sich der letzten Stufe der Dialektik von Kultur und Barbarei gegenüber: nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch, und das frisst auch die Erkenntnis an, die ausspricht, warum es unmöglich ward, heute Gedichte zu schreiben. Der absoluten Verdinglichung, die den Fortschritt des Geistes als eines ihrer Elemente voraussetzte und die ihn heute gänzlich aufzusaugen sich anschickt, ist der kritische Geist nicht gewachsen, solange er bei sich bleibt in selbstgenügsamer Kontemplation.”
It might seem a far-fetched, lame mental leap from World War II to the afterbirth’s of Al Qaida and ISIS, but mental leaps always are, and are allowed, maybe even meant to be. So here’s mine:
Granted, the extent and magnitude of the Nazi terror that forever displayed to the world the ugly grimace of human abyss is by no means comparable with anything we see happening in the name of Allah by a fanatic, blinded-by-hate extremist minority of an otherwise peaceful religion today. Not yet, that is.
Also, the apparent historic facts of the lurching Weimar Republic and today’s crumbling century-old models of life in many parts of the world, not only in the Middle East and Africa, seem to hold little resemblance.
And the respective motives for launching terroristic machinery are quite different. On the outside at least.
On the inside it’s always about power, money, and religion in a wider sense.
NAZISIS – Same Illness, Different Symptoms
Still there are parallels, alarmingly terrifying parallels, between what took its beginning in Germany’s 1933, in a time of ubiquitous uncertainty, political and economic fragility, susceptibility towards extremism, and the rise of organizations like Al Qaida and ISIS. In the end, it’s the promise of a better life for the faithful and devout, a better world, even a better death and afterlife, killing and dying for a greater good.
I figure a young, frustrated, unemployed, sidelined man with no role in society, no prospect for a future, in disharmony with the world, approached by someone seemingly larger than life, promising wealth, meaning and purpose, to serve a cause … and off the soldiers march.
I figure the constant human need to find bogeymen for their own misery, the all-too-human suspicion of everything and everybody different, and how it’s always easier to blame others than yourself. And if you then even get the official mandate to punish those others … off the soldiers march.
I figure the damage that fanatism and the colors Black and White have always done, the pain and the suffering they have created, always for seemingly greater goods, proclaimed by charismatic mindfuckers using people to kill people, turning them into blind-folded soldiers … soldiers that march off to wherever they are told.
Self-sufficient Contemplation – The Death of Civil Courage
While drawing parallels between the spoilt acronyms NAZI and ISIS, and bringing them closer together for thorough examination seems like a worthwhile topic for a Bachelor or Masters thesis in Political Science, Cultural Science or History (that would certainly do this idea more resilient justice than my unstructured, initial thoughts here), the author is drawn back to Adorno and a key phrase in above quote in relation to writing after Auschwitz, after 9/11, after Hebdo: “Selbstgenügsame Kontemplation”, probably best translated as “self-sufficient contemplation”, the enemy of the skeptical, questioning intellect.
Maybe self-centered contemplation is indeed even the death of civil courage, the end of questioning, the end of insurgency. To read about such tragedies and incredibilities, watch them on TV, maybe follow a hashtag that makes you feel engaged, yet de facto going on with your life as if nothing had happened. To go on with writing about meaningless bullshit like content strategies and the best way to fill people’s heads with marketing shit they don’t want to see, at places where they don’t want to be bothered, by companies they care for even less after being menaced. Gosh, how many newsletters or tweets or Linked-In group posts did I receive right after Paris, and how many of them made me think “Why the hell is this important now???”.
I agree, life goes on, and life changes as it does – that’s probably the only constant we can really rely on. And the probability that also storycodeX.com will return to the path it initially set out on is high. Still, sometimes it’s simply time to pause for a moment, take a grateful look around at your own life, your own health and wealth, at the freedom of speech we enjoy, a privilege that should never be taken for granted, a freedom that none of us post-war kids ever did anything for, nothing that makes us actually deserve it. It was given to us a gift by our parents and grandparents, and we need to fight for it, now and forever.
But not by all means, not with uninformed impulses, and never in a way that serves delusional superiority over others, never with a sense of Black or White, but with a dialectic appreciation of the beauty of Grey, the manifold shades of which much better represent our world and everything that has ever happened, everything that is happening right now, and everything that will ever happen. The world is grey, and should we ever learn how great it is that there are always two sides to a coin, that this is what makes life rich and exciting, only then will we be able to do what – let’s be honest – everybody wants: to live in peace and enjoy life.
“Der Verzicht auf reine Farbe”
Günter Grass concludes his speech in Frankfurt and his reference to Adorno (whose famous quote he also, at first, misunderstood as a prohibiting verdict) with the retrospect cognition that his own (and his fellow post-war writers’) literary output would never have been possible without the leaden weight of history, and for him personally without the weight of Adorno’s verdict. In his own reading, Grass notes that “diese Vorschrift verlangte Verzicht auf reine Farbe; sie schrieb das Grau und dessen unendliche Schattierungen vor.” (Grass, Schreiben nach Ausschwitz, 1999.)
Or as Billy Joel put it three years later:
„Shades of grey are all that I find
When I look to the enemy line
Black and white was so easy for me
But shades of grey are the colors I see.“
(Billy Joel, 1993)
So I say: GREY IS THE WORLD. AND GREY IS BEAUTIFUL.
20 Saturday Sep 2014
Posted in experiences, hiSTORY
Tags
change, David Gray, drama, expectation, hero, history, Mix Tape, Sail Away, story, Storytelling, surprise, true story, Truth
Somewhere between getting lost in transmedia and celebrating AOL („Annual Offline Leave“ – you should try it, helps you understand what Lennon meant when he said that “life is what happens while you’re tweeting” … or something like that), I remembered that I wanted to relive the part of my life when a mix tape (o.k., it was a mix CD, but that sounds so … unromantic, so modern, although the round thing itself is already square) actually changed my life. And at the same time catapulted my relationship with Mister G. to another level of intensity.
It started, as it often does, at work. The place where you spend most of your time, and sometimes are lucky enough to meet interesting people with whom you want to be a little more than colleagues – well aware of the company’s ink saying, but what the heck.
That’s where I met her, over 10 years ago now. And, of course, I mean look at her: She already had a boyfriend. Grrrr. What to expect? So it was waiting mode for God knows how long, felt like decades, which sounds pretty “100 Years of Solitute”-like romantic, but was in fact a couple of months, to be honest. Still … an eternity.
Eventually, not in vain.
The tide was turning, the dark knight’s access to the princess’ castle finally denied, for whatever reason, what should I care? This was my “Over The Top” moment, the knight in white satin’s imaginary baseball cap going in reverse, a unique moment and chance in time that I answered with …
… this mix tape (aka CD) titled “Something Beautiful”.
It contained a hell of a collection of songs, broad hint with a capital B. It was clandestinely handed over by a good, discreet and conspiratorial friend … and then the waiting began. Again.
Decades passed.
Naturally, every one of the selected songs had its own story, a story in itself, a story for me, but also a connection to many of the stories that my Queen of Hearts to-be had been going through (as I had heard through the grape-vine and witnessed as a sideline observer). So hopes were high for a favourable, comprehending, comprehensive and, from a music and lyric lover’s perspective, appropriate reaction. A reaction that would show whether she was the right one. A simple “Oh, thanks” would have been just as disappointing as her not liking the kind of music her stalker was offering her, maybe even selecting the wrong, meaning most obvious song as her favourite one, one of those I had chosen from a “she’ll definitely love this one” perspective.
BUT … after waiting an appropriate while before even answering to this unasked-for present, she immediately named THE one song as her favourite that I had indeed put on this compilation as a kind of test balloon to check whether our two clocks were ticking in synch. THE one song that was my favourite song, from my favourite singer, expressing my favourite mood … a massive Broad hint from destiny. Or so I wanted to interpret it.
And the song was … “Sail Away” by David Gray. A song that has never been the same ever since, has probably reached an unsurpassable pool position on the past ten year’s hot rotation lists, has bestowed on us a very special moment at Mister G.’s 2006 concert in Munich, and has been the “Honey Call” tune on my mobile since mobile phones could read mp3’s.
Who knows, maybe without this joint Sail Away passion, we would never have gone out, never have kissed, never have, never have, never have …
OK, probably, if it was really meant to be in the first place, we would have gone out and done all that other stuff anyway, even if she’d had named the eponymous Robbie Williams song that found its way onto “Something Beautiful”.
I prefer the Sail Away story.
True story, true love.
Sail away with me honey
I put my heart in your hands
Sail away with me honey now, now now.
06 Tuesday May 2014
Posted in experiences, Ideas, What is STORY?
Tags
Ardbeg, Audience, authentic, Authenticity, Boldness, brand storytelling, business storytelling, cluetrain manifesto, corporate storytelling, drama, Guy Clark, Human, human voice, Integrity, John Gorka, John Prine, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Martini, Righteousness, Schwabing, Steve Earle, story, Storytelling, Texas, Texas Country, Texas Folk, Texas Music, Townes Van Zandt, true story, Truth
Granted, this interpretation might seem far-fetched, but hey, that’s the great thing about having my own blog: I can write, interpret and far-fetch as much as I like, ain’t nobody’s business but mine. 🙂
Thanks to my dear old friend Martin (old as in long-cherished, but also as in older than me, haha…and formerly known as “Müllermartinhallo” to people calling our shared apartment in Schwabing over 15 years ago … Gee, talking about old, is it that long ago???), I have been introduced to the power and beauty of Texan songwriters, bards and troubadours. Often scolded “Country Music” by ignorants (like me back then), “Texas Folk” (aka “Outlaw Country”, “Texas Country” or simply “Texas Music”) is much more, and something completely different. You can clearly hear it in its anti-Nashville sound and instrumentation, which actually brings it much closer to Woody Guthrie’s Folk, Hank Williams’ early Country and Western style, even Blues. One reason why it’s quite rightly often considered “roots music”, music that draws its inspiration and emotional power not only from the roots of American history and culture, but indeed from the roots of mankind, of human being.
Even though it is said that music has a universal power, which is certainly true, it’s the lyrics of many of these Texan songs that do it for me, no wonder: “Lyrical content is the backbone of Texas country”, as the web teaches us. I can indeed understand people simply not responding to hand-made music, raw stuff that sounds more like a garage than a BMG studio, but I do find it hard to appreciate lyrical and poetic numbness in people who don’t just bow down to some of the folk scene’s thrilling lines. And those troubadours like Townes Van Zandt, Kris Kristofferson, Steve Earle, John Prine, or even non-Texans John Gorka and Johnny Cash (unrightfully mistaken as a Nashville guy for too long) simply got it goin on the text side of life. True storytellers of true stories, not by “creative writing course”, but by nature, by heart.
Much has been written about folk music from Texas or elsewhere in the English-speaking world (the language barrier where I would actually draw the line, calling the rest “Volksmusik”or “Folkore”, but that’s surely arguable), and if you want to know all there is to know about Texas Folk, its origins, history, meaning as well as all its great exponents, you’d better ask my old friend Müllermartinhallo himself or read his own words at facebook.com/de.martin.wimmer or deinlandmeinland.com (where he tends to his alter ego Willi Ehms). Nobody knows more about that stuff than him – as I could witness in endless Martini and Ardbeg nights in Munich’s beautiful Schwabing at the end of the last century.
No, I’m not out to write an incompetent take two at a Wikipedia entry or compete with No Depression and other Roots authorities. What made me start this post was actually the short, but soul-pinching lyrics of one of my favorite North American singer-/songwriters Guy Clark (by coincidence from Texas) that have stuck in my heart and mind ever since I heard them first – and have not only accompanied me through life’s many introspective challenges and helped me make one or the other right decision. They have also proven true and helpful in explaining the essence of a good storyteller and good, true and successful storytelling, to myself, and to others.
I may not know all of Guy’s songs (yet), but I know and I LOVE this one for its simplistic beauty and truth, words to engrave into your wedding ring.
The song’s called “Come From The Heart”, very appropriately from his 1988 album “Old Friends”, and is goes like this:
When I was a young man, my daddy told me
A lesson he learned, it was a long time ago
If you want to have someone to hold onto
You’re gonna have to learn to let goYou got to sing like you don’t need the money
Love like you’ll never get hurt
You got to dance like nobody’s watchin’
It’s gotta come from the heart if you want it to workNow here is the one thing that I keep forgetting
When everything is falling apart
In life as in love, what I need to remember
There’s such a thing as trying too hardYou got to sing like you don’t need the money
Love like you’ll never get hurt
You got to dance like nobody’s watchin’
It’s gotta come from the heart if you want it to work
And the accompanying song sounds like this:
Now … How am I gonna turn the corner on this one? From words that come from the heart, about love and life, to business storytelling? Ah, c’mon! There must be some connection, or did I daydream it while listening to Guy’s song … is it indeed true that there is such a thing as trying too hard, also when blogging about storytelling and trying to find a story connection everywhere?
Ah, got it, I remember: “In life as in love”, it says. And what different is business life to “normal” life anyway? Humans, mostly men, playing a game of thrones, of love and hate, of life and death, even if gladly (most of the time) not in a literal sense, though it can hurt nonetheless. But also people (or colleagues) helping each other through tough times, providing a working environment worth remaining a part of. Or (now I’m really bending this one into shape here!) products (or solutions or services or whatever) actually helping people change their world for the better. These are all the stories great and small that – if true and told in the right way – can convince others and turn so-called “prospects” into customers or employees, or at least brand ambassadors.
And this right way of telling a story is: Truth, Authenticity, Integrity, Righteousness. And Boldness – a virtue most cooperations, especially from the so-called “old economy” or, simpler, the 19th and 20th century, still lack to an appalling degree. The courage to speak (or write) in the true, human and individual voices of each and every one of its employees or customers, even if doing it on behalf of the company. Let’s make one thing clear: There is no corporate voice, cooperations cannot speak, think, feel, or experience anything; it’s their people and the people the get in contact with (communicatively or while making business) who have this human voice that is “unmistakably genuine and can’t be faked” – a voice that can come from the heart, that (if bold and courageous and self-confident enough) speaks like nobody’s listening, like nobody’s watching, like there is no audience.
So here a bone to chew on:
Ignore your audience!
Go on, try it: Tell your story as it is, without thinking about its reception before it’s even written (or filmed)! This may not (right away) be what you audience wants to hear, but it may be what you have to say, what you want to tell.
And it’s gotta come from the heart, if you want it to work.
15 Tuesday Apr 2014
Posted in experiences, What is STORY?
Tags
change, easter, expectation, narration, story, story cubes, Storytelling, surprise
It’s a crux with these holidays: When you think they’re finally over, the next one is just around the bend. Christmas, birthdays, Saint’s Days, … and Easter. Just around the corner, again.
And even though our beloved Easter bunny (apparently) has limited storage capacities (unlike Santa with his big sack), there are somehow always some small oder medium-sized toys (so-called SMT’s) that find their way into the nest where only chocolate rabbits and sweets should be.
But what if good ol’ Bugs accidently brings a duplicate or something unpopular, something endlessly uncool?
No worries, I have a replacement recommendation for you. I mean for Mr. Bunny, of course.
It’s called “Story Cubes”, a simple, entertaining, educating game, and it’s about pure storytelling. The packaging says: “Age 6+”, but it also works with younger children, showing us once again that storytelling is a human gift, engraved into our DNA, a pure form of human communication behaviour for which you need no education, no theory, just infant practice.
“Story Cubes” currently comes in three variations: the “classic” version, the “actions” version, and the “voyages ” version. You can play any variant on its own or randomly combine them.
It goes like this: There are 9 dices (aka cubes) per story cubes set, and every side of every cube carries a different image, like a monkey, the piece of a puzzle or a camera, for instance. The player whose turn it is throws all nine cubes at once. He then needs to bring the cubes into any given order by chaining one image to the next – like chapters of a story. While doing this, he tells the plot of the story he is just laying out on the table – the drama that turns the images from mere symbols into the different acts of a story. This can be short and sweet, or long and epic, depends on the player’s narrative breath and imagination.
What is interesting: The game has no winner or loser. It’s just about telling good, entertaining, surprising stories. Especially for children, but also for us grown-up’s, there’s a high level of creativity and imagination required, in order to have fun and entertain your fellow players.
Plus: You can’t fool kids like you can fool inapt managers or other advertising- and PR-spoilt business individuals: you can’t put anything over them, can’t simply chain one image or word to another and claim it’s a story, when it’s nothing more than bullet points or corporate messages (to stress the manager metaphor once again). And I made the experience, while playing Story Cubes with my daughters, that the infant, naïve rejection of a boring, plot-free succession of words not only happens when they are forced to listen (aka as audience), but also when they are the storytellers themselves. They actually interrupt themselves with the comment “Can I start again? This story is boring, nothing’s happening!”
That’s how they learn the craft – and intuitively follow the StorycodeX of Expectation, Surprise and Change. A CodeX that also needs another vital ingredient, the Hero or Protagonist who this surprising change is happening to, always an organic, unwitting part of my kids’ Story Cubes stories …
But I’ll write about the Hero Phenomenon in a later post – when I’m back from my Easter Holidays, NOT playing Story Cubes, as the rest of the Mr. Bunny’s presents were indeed a slam-dunk. 🙂
03 Thursday Apr 2014
Posted in What is STORY?
Tags
authentic, big story, brand journalism, brand storytelling, Content Co-Creation, conversations, corporate storytelling, Crowdsourcing, digital storytelling, listening, Marketing and Advertising, Nike, Simon Pestrigde, social media, social web, story, story in social media
In 2009, Nike’s Simon Pestridge said:
Of course, these words sound more far-reaching than they actually are, and Nike’s marketing activities since then imply that Pestridge was actually referring to classical “one-way” advertising only. Still: It’s a bold statement and I admire him simply for making it. And I second the way his quote from this interview with marketingmagazine.co.uk continues:
“Advertising is all about achieving awareness, and we no longer need awareness. We need to become part of people’s lives, and digital allows us to do that.”
It’s great, if a company can say that. Not too sure, if it is ever really true, that a brand doesn’t need awareness, but whatever: bold statement, deliberately and successfully provocative. But what is true (not rocket science, but a truth long evident, yet still hidden to blindfold marketers from the last century) is the fact that digital is becoming more and more important for leveraging a company’s brand awareness and reputation. One day, it may become the (main) place, but it’s not yet.
Digital in the 21st century, digital in the so-called 2.0 age of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and all the many platforms around today (and the unknown one’s that will pop up tomorrow) is not about broadcasting, about messaging, about patronizing uneducated audiences. It’s about interaction, about engagement, about openness, verifiable authenticity, and consequently about conversations. The end of the age of broadcasting and (classical one-way) advertising has long begun, as has the beginning of the age of shared content creation with audiences. Audiences meaning people, human beings with emotions and opinions, with maybe better ideas closer to your product’s true core than any single person in your marketing department could have.
This power of the crowd and its potential is still heavily unused and underrated, like diamonds laying out in the open and mistaken for plastic accessories, apparently worthless, of minor quality, maybe even dangerous. Oooh, scary!
Nike has made this move very consequently, as David Moth kindly summarized last year at econsultancy.com. The people who experience the brand (in marketing speech: target group) and wish to interact with the company and its people, are not only allowed to do just that, they are actually encouraged to do it. To become part of the brand and even help create its future perception by being an inventive part of what it does today. And not only in the digital world; Nike’s effort cross the borders of online and offline, as their audiences do, too.
Here is one of my favorites from Moth’s collection, mainly because it does exactly that: bridge the artificial gap between digital and analogue:
The true power of tomorrow’s communication with (and not marketing for!) people takes place everywhere where these people are, regardless of online or offline, above the stupid line or below it, internal or external, blue-collar or white-collar, or whatever artificial distinction we have made up for decades to pigeonhole he stuff we do and the people we do it for. [By the way, Nike does not limit its co-creating approach to marketing and communications, they also integrate customers in the creation process of their actual products, see here.]
Apart from having the right people with the right visions and insights around at the right time to create such a shift from glossy TV and print broadcasting to customer-engaging digitally crowd-sourced advertising, Nike has or at least claims to have one massive advantage compared to other companies, especially in the B2B area:
“We know who we are. We know what we want to achieve and we go for it 100 per cent of the time.”
Says Pestridge, again.
If only that were true for more brands. How much more courageous, engaging and entertaining would advertising and corporate communications be.
I truly believe that THIS is THE CORE and foremost homework any company needs to do: find out who they are, what their BIG STORY aka their identity is. That’s a massive undertaking that requires quite some investments, both time and budget-wise. Sometimes this undertaking is a tedious one, as it requires a lot of relentless self-reflection and open, honest introspection.
But also a great deal of listening. To people in touch with your company, it’s products, its people, its communications – everything. And once you’re through the results of these listening exercises into one data bucket, analyze them and put your cards on the table, you’ll see: It’s worth it.
Finding your BIG STORY is the prerequisite to purposeful storytelling about your brand, your people, your products – and to any truly and sustainably meaningful conversation, the best-case result from good storytelling. All corporate stories that don’t follow a company’s big story, its identity, its DNA, are just meaningless debris in the vast web space of content overload.
