Storytelling
613 posts
Efficiency, Quality, Value And Soul
A new public hospital is opening in Perth this week and along with cutting edge medical facilities patients can expect a state-of-the-art “free-roaming food delivery robots”. Our local newspaper reported that, “The 300kg AGVs will deliver up to 2200 meals a day, directly to wards without human inter
Make Things People Want
Marketing means different things to different people. To some businesses it’s about Facebook engagement, to others it’s all about analytics or SEO, advertising or PR. If you’ve got the budget it could be a glossy image of Hugh Jackman—your 18K red gold watch, which has been “Crafted for New Heights”
Which Would You Choose?
If you could only pick only one of the following, which would you choose? 1. Would you like more people to know about you, your product or service? OR 2. Would you like your existing customers to be blown away by you, your product or service? Awareness doesn’t always scale. But creating difference f
Where Are The Holes?
It’s hard to be objective when you evaluate your competitors. When you’re feeling vulnerable there is a tendency to think about all of the things your competitors are doing right and how you don’t measure up against them. The irony is that opportunities are realised and groundbreaking ideas are brou
What Lens Do You Use?
I’m a huge fan of Human’s of New York. It’s the kind of generous and rare content on the Internet that makes you grateful, sad and optimistic all at once. Brandon (lying down in the photo above because he is 6’4″ and always wants to get down to the level of his subject), will happily…
Lessons In Non-Profit Storytelling From The Best In The World
If you think times are tough in a marketing world where you’re actually providing goods or services in exchange for money, spare a thought for the marketers of charities who need to convince us to part with money without wrapping up something for us to take home. One of the biggest challenges non-pr
How Great Products Are Born, Not Made
When you’re designing a product or service it’s easy to believe that making it the best in the world is what gives you a competitive advantage. But the thing about ‘best’ is that it’s subjective. ‘Best’ isn’t determined by you, it’s your customers and users who decide. The truth is that people don’t
How To Be Different
When Apple and Microsoft went head-to-head Apple didn’t ask, “How can we be different from Microsoft?” No, the question they asked was, “How can we be more of ourselves and how do we amplify that in the work we do?” The reason it’s not easy to copy a truly great brand is because they have…
The Myth Of The Digital Shortcut
What Donald Draper wouldn’t have given to be an ‘ad man’ in 2014. No more sitting around in bars scribbling on napkins while watching people going about their business. No more trying to work out what they’re thinking and how they want to feel in order to sell that feeling back to them, for a…
Price Is Not Just A Strategy, It’s A Story
There was a palpable buzz when one of the most gifted leaders in retail, Ron Johnson—the guy who led the creation of the Apple Store experience, took on the role of CEO at the hundred-year-old company J.C. Penney. All eyes were on him. The business world wanted to know how he was going to transform…
The Truth About Vanilla
Almost one in five people who order an ice cream in the U.S. today will order vanilla. Vanilla then is an easy flavour to make because we know that most people won’t have an objection to it and 17% of people are likely to order it. It feels more risky to be the company that…
Don’t Change Your Pitch, Understand Their Story
Back in the days of stay-at-home Mums and morning newspaper deliveries, a memorable tagline on the box (or a coveted toy inside), was enough of a sales pitch to sell us a ton of breakfast cereal. Frosted Flakes were Grrreat because Tony the Tiger said so. And if Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Micha
The Most Overlooked Part Of A Marketing Strategy
How often do our potential customers come to us and invite us in? That’s exactly what happens when someone visits an about page, they are asking us to tell them more and most of the time we blow it. We spend billions of dollars and countless hours every year trying to get people’s attention and…
Why A Good Idea Is Not Enough
It took at least 40 years for the computer to go from being a series of ideas and advances to a commercial success. The difference between a good idea and a commercial success is context—the understanding about where that idea fits, how it will be useful in the world and who will care about it.…
Lessons In Brand Storytelling From The Airbnb Rebrand
I have to be honest, as an Airbnb evangelist and user I felt a little disappointed as I watched the company’s relaunch unfold. Of course I wasn’t viewing the whole thing through the eyes of an impartial observer. Anyone who is an early adopter of something that begins on the fringes wants that thing
A Brand Is More Than A Label
We’ve been branding things from cattle, to jewellery and even people for thousands of years. We began by burning our mark into things to signal ownership. When technology and infrastructure gave us access to things beyond our villages branding began to signal a different type of belonging, one that
What Gap Is Your Business Closing?
Business is all about closing gaps. Closing the gap between aspirations and attainment, intention and achievement, between wants and experiences. Products and services can also close gaps between needs and functionality, innovation and utility, feelings and facts. But perhaps most importantly, what
Are You Using Soft Data To Create Value?
It seems like a no brainer to suppose that local businesses like a cafes, dry cleaners or dental surgeries—the kinds of businesses that serve the same customers week in week out, where the staff have the opportunity to look their customers in the eye, would take advantage of the fact that they look
3 Simple Ways To Tell A Better Brand Story
Brand storytelling is complex. A brand story evolves over time and is a result of doing many things well. But there are still opportunities to start telling a better story in the short term. Here are three things you can do today to improve your brand story. 1. Create an ideal customer profile When
Are You Ready To Tell People About You?
Have you ever come away from being asked the, ‘so, tell me about you’ question in a professional setting and felt like you nailed it—even just a little bit? How do you sum up the essence of who you are, what you stand for and what you’re capable of without sounding like an over-rehearsed egotist,…
