Brock { Abroad }

Just FYI, I will be writing monthly posts for Sparksheet on new storytelling practices, content development and content analytics that feature some of the work we are doing at RAPP as well as what folks across industries are doing within this paradigm shift. I believe that the role of agencies in particular is changing such that they will continue to be key enablers in how brands evolve as publishers… and in very positive ways.

Storymaking is a word I’ve made up to describe the discipline of good curation. Brands and marketers have become curators of stories, most often so that they can provide people – their customers – with relevant content, or empower them to curate content and connect to other like-minded people.

If communities are connected through content, then they are also encouraged to build upon those conversations by sharing stories of their own.

Good storymaking consists of four core tenets – the “4 Es”:

Entertainment – how does the story make you feel about yourself, your culture or your environment?
Engagement – how does the story foster participation with itself and with other people?
Enlightenment – what do participants learn (and perhaps teach others) in the process?
Experience – how do participatory moments or events culminate in stories that live alongside or beyond the media channels they are delivered in?

 

Leading storymakers

In 2009, Pepsi followed Coke’s Open Happiness example and developed the Refresh Project as a means for enlisting people to tell stories about their local communities and to participate in activities centered on doing good.

Starting last year, Gatorade tapped into various American high school communities to tell real stories about football, and aligned these values brilliantly with those of the brand.

One example, called “Replay,” gave middle-aged men a chance to return to the field and experience the thrill of playing again. Their experiences were documented in a series of videos.

Another series, “Beat the Heat,” featured stories about competing in the summer months. Both campaigns sparked a flood of online conversations, which contributed to the next set of Gatorade-curated stories, and culminated in various commercial campaigns and social media content.

Red Bull has been a frontrunner in the storymaking game since the brand began placing large cans on the rooftops of cars in local neighbourhoods. Using the metastory theme of adventurous pursuit, the brand has done everything from creating its own sport (Flugtag), to putting on breakdancing contests, to outfitting adventurers with tools to blog about their exploits, to building an innovation platform for inventors (Red Bull Creation).

Two years ago, Red Bull acquired its own TV network so it could broadcast these stories and recently launched a magazine showcasing these experiences as journalistic stories.

 

Tapping into niche communities

Nestlé, Kraft and Unilever have all tapped into niche blogger communities to curate new stories about how important issues like child healthcare and nutritional science impact families.

These have culminated in branded media platforms that drive product development through customer participation, including Kraft Recipes, Kraft Hope Kitchen, Unilever Sustainable Living, Unilever Food Solutions and Nestlé Good Start.

Nestlé used the Good Start platform in particular to address issues around its baby formula recall and to take a proactive stance regarding healthy alternatives by enabling “mommy blogger” communities to tell their personal stories.

Dermalogica has created a platform called FITE (Financial Independence Through Entrepreneurship) that uses the stories of women entrepreneurs to drum up financial support for their businesses – businesses that support the brand’s production efforts in local regions all over the world and those that are bringing communities together to create financial independence.

In the automotive world, Audi has used driver mythologies to develop stories and online utilities (calendars, configurators, etc.) around the relationship between man/woman and machine. This has culminated in everything from cross-media narratives like “The Heist” (2005), to the creation of unique augmented reality apps and open innovation platforms for engineers and drivers.

BMW has done a similar thing with the BMW Films franchise and its own innovation explorations. More recently, Ford has headed down a similar path with “The Ford Story” and its strong efforts in social media.

Brands aren’t just using storymaking techniques to empower their customers; they’re using them to empower their own employees. Just this year, Cisco leveraged a uniquely crafted ARG (alternate reality game) called “The Hunt” to improve management skills and communication within the company.

Note that these story executions go far beyond the idea of “branded content.” These are strong narratives with real cultural impact. Better stories lead to better communication and better experiences, which ultimately result in better sales.

 

Storytelling and the bottom line

Brands are economic power centres that have the ability to influence culture and change behaviour for the better.

If done authentically and transparently, brands can sell products and services more successfully by doing good or by socially responsible means than by resorting to methods that merely grab attention.

This also requires patience. Building brand value through storytelling does not happen overnight. And like anything good, it takes trust to co-create something meaningful with your customers. But if you can build audience trust, you can build a better brand.

Gunther Sonnenfeld will be leading a discussion about brand storytelling at the Canadian Marketing Association’s National Convention in Toronto this week.

Since the peak experience of the Mindful conference in Melbourne, I have been contemplating the multiple-layered nature of reality. 

There is no one reality. There are many layers – separate yet intertwined,  independence yet interdependence. Holding the space between them, acknowledging their paradoxical nature, is a key skill in seeing the complex beauty that is our lives. 

Well, I think so, anyway.

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Let me explain a bit further as I am aware the aforementioned prose may sound like a load of hippie rubbish.

Here is what is on my mind.

The human mind occupies many different worlds. Simple, right?

There is the world of current inner interior - thoughts, feelings, perceptions we have in our head right now. A reality that is uniquely our own. And although language can help us articulate it, language by its very nature can only convey a portion of what is going on in our minds. Language is, after all, a technology that humans invented. The full depth of our inner world cannot fully be articulated in words, no matter how hard we try. And just because you aren’t able to put it into sentences does not make it any less real. 

Along the lines of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, where he describes the nature of intuition – or the power of thinking without thinking – I like extrapolating his ideas.  I think intuition is the direct tunnel that connects our inner interior with the outer world. When we don’t have the words to describe things, it comes out as a heightened sense, a feeling, a perception. Behind language lies this higher intelligence that manifests itself as intuition. As Obi-Wan says, “Search your feelings Anakin…” . Understanding that your feelings are based on a deep sense of self, a knowingness of what is right, even if you don’t have the language to put it in a rational context, is an vital part of owning your truth.

Along the same lines comes the expressive reality of ourselves. How I see myself in this world. My identity. What people think. The self that I use to make sense of the world. This expressive self gives us context, the car to drive through the complexity of life. A strong self is important; it gives us confidence, strength and a belief in who we are. In 2011, we are increasingly seeing more avenues for the expressive self to understand his/her role. Twitter allows us to express ourselves in a way that five years ago we couldn’t have done. Blogging gives us a platform to write what we think, to show who we are. We have become our own media, allowing us to move beyond the collective ‘matrix’ and start exploring our outer sense of self.

On another layer, related to the inner world, is what I have entitled, the aspiring inner reality. Victor Frankl, founder of logotherapy, advocates that a fundamental part of the human spirit is to find meaning in life. We all want meaning. We are all aspiring to grow and become better people. We all want more of ourselves. It is why we all are striving. It is the fuel that gives us the energy to go forward. Human inherently aspire to become more of who they are. Sometimes, it is hard to articulate our aspiring reality – where we want to go, how we want to grow, but its there. Like a dormant fire within waiting to be unleashed.

As we go about our lives and interact with others, we are often only interacting with one layer of their reality.

The inner, The expressive, and/or The aspiring.

I might meet someone who has a strong expressive reality. Mr Joe Johnson might be a successful entrepreneur. Or Ms Jill Davidson, a highly intelligence social activist.  I might believe that to be ALL of him or her. But behind those personas lies other realities – his inner child who wants love, or her aspiring sense of self who wants to have a massive impact on the world. I might not ever see these worlds but they are there. No doubt about it.

In the same way, my mother knows a lot about my inner reality. She has seen my successes, my failures, my flaws. However, my mother does not know the full extent of my aspiring reality. She doesn’t know what the hell I am saying when I rant on about the networked economy-collaborative-consumption-web2.0-blah-blah. She might not know that I have this strong aspiration to contribute to unlocking human potential of Planet Earth.

What is important, I believe, is holding the space between these multiple realities

Both within yourself and when interacting with others.

In my current context, I am in an odd situation. I have been living at retreat centre the last few months, recovering from a few health issues. And yet, I have this aspiring vision in my head. I want to play a part in unleashing the awesomeness of the world. Sometimes, I feel a bit of dissonance between my current situation and where I want to go. But I am learning to hold that space, balance that tension. It will come in time. I don’t have to be Gandhi right now- but I can still hold that aspiration.

In other ways, I see a lot of people’s expressive realities. I am very grateful that I get to interact and connect with the most amazing individuals all around the world. Sometimes, this provokes envy and FOMO. Why ain’t as successful as him or her? Why haven’t I started my own NGO yet?Why am I not Steve Jobs? Is everyone just showing off all the time? What the fuck?

There was a point where I once interpreted people’s behaviour with a mild cynicism – they are all just showing all. They are all bullshitting. But I have had a change in heart. Everyone wants to share their greatness. It is natural. But behind what they show are different realities which I cannot necessarily see. 

The chatter of their inner world.

The aspirations and dreams they have for the future.

If you are not mindful, social media land can be a haven for thinking that people’s expressive reality is the full depth of who they are.

Holding that space, and, more importantly, understanding that I am only seeing a fraction of that person gives me this sense of groundless and balance when connecting with others and swimming in the interconnected, networked world of 2011.

‘I’ am not me. Nor is they, them. ’I’ is multi-layered and rich with complexity. ’They’ is infinitely rich and multi-layered. Holding, sitting, with the paradox  that emerges as these torrent of realities collide, gives one a sense of awe at how amazing the world actually is.  Well, at least in my experience anyway.

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On a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Sydney, Steve Hopkins and I had a conversation along these lines.

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How are you holding the space with the multiple realities within yourself?

How are you staying mindful that when you “see” someone, you are only seeing a part of them, and behind them, lies an infinite field of awesomeness?

How are you holding the space within this complexity and paradox?

What does it mean to have this compassion for yourself  + others and the dissonce of it all?