#508: How to Apply Mediocrity Repellant to Your Brand Storytelling

#508: How to Apply Mediocrity Repellant to Your Brand Storytelling

Ever wonder what it takes to survive the insane career of advertising?

Cameron Day, author of the acclaimed “Advertising Survival Guide” trilogy, is here to show you how.

Cameron brings four decades of experience from the creative trenches, where he’s developed crazy disruptive campaigns that have transformed brands.

From the profound influence of his father’s wisdom – who was Guy Day, co-founder of the iconic ad agency Chiat Day – to navigating ageism in a youth-obsessed industry, to harnessing AI as a creative superpower—Cameron shares the kind of insights you can only gain from being a creative gladiator in a soul-crushing coliseum.

From his mediocrity-repelling mind, he’ll inspire you to find those fundamental human truths that make advertising magic happen and your career extraordinary.

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#507: How to Quickly Turn Minutiae into Marketing Momentum For Rapid Growth

#507: How to Quickly Turn Minutiae into Marketing Momentum For Rapid Growth

Have you ever taken one week to keep track of every critical *To-Do* on your sales and marketing plate?

Regardless of the size of the task and the effort they command, they’re important to the success of your revenue growth.

But they can be exhausting. They take your time, your attention, and can drain you of the energy you need for more creative and productive pursuits.

Our guest today, Mike Allton, has created an AI-powered Chief of Staff that you can implement to quickly turn the minutiae that are strangling your growth into momentum to build your brand and business.

Mike encourages you to start with a small pilot program to learn what AI can do to increase the efficiency of your company.

An example would be to use our new StoryCycle Genie™ to reframe and refine your brand story in minutes, not months.

Unbeknownst to Mike, I fed the Genie his The AI Hat brand using his URL, and it revealed his story: the gaps, the missed opportunities to connect with prospects and customers, and inspiration for fresh ways to think about a more clear, concise and compelling narrative.

He had me on his AI Hat podcast over the weekend where we revealed each of his brand story elements the StoryCycle Genie™ conjured.

This is just one example of how you can join the Fourth Industrial Revolution of AI to spend 80% less time on repetitive tasks and 100% of your time on building your brand and growing your revenue.

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#506: How to Tell Your Startup Lifecycle Story to Sell Investors & Customers on Your Brand

#506: How to Tell Your Startup Lifecycle Story to Sell Investors & Customers on Your Brand

We’re in frantic startup mode with our new StoryCycle Genie™.

Now you can refine your brand story in minutes, not months, as our AI Agent whisks you through our proven Story Cycle System™ which has grown brands by 600 percent.

Perhaps you’re in startup mode, tool.

Maybe you’re launching a product. Introducing a service. Or trying to get your people to buy into a new initiative within your organization.

How you craft your startup story to be clear, concise and compelling is critical to your success.

That’s why you’ll enjoy our guest this week who has conjured startup-to-exit magic for years, like selling one of his companies to eBay for north of $900 million dollars.

Gregory Shepard is the founder of StartupScience.io and author of the new book, The Startup Lifecycle: The Definitive Guide to Building a Startup from Idea to Exit.

You’ll learn the crucial steps in telling your startup story to attract investors and customers.

Or to get your people to buy into your new initiative.

I even put Gregory’s brand through our new StoryCycle Genie™.

You’ll learn from the advice he gave me on our startup.

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#505: How Audacious of a Brand Storyteller Are You?

#505: How Audacious of a Brand Storyteller Are You?

What’s one of the most audacious marketing stunts you’ve pulled for your brand?

In 1983, I interned at The Fearey Group public relations firm in Seattle, WA.

One of my jobs was to promote the Seattle Symphony Golf Classic, a fundraiser featuring no less than Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.

So I borrowed a yacht from John and Lyla Fluke, owners of Fluke Manufacturing, to cruise the Evergreen Point Bridge at rush hour the Friday before the event.

I dressed some buddies in tuxedos, assembled them on the bow, and pretended to play orchestral music as I blared recordings of the greats through speakers to the parking lot that the bridge had become.

My audacity also landed me and my fledgling career some publicity.

Time’s Columnist Michael Conant wrote about our publicity stunt in the Sunday paper.

I’m wired to find weird ways to tell our client’s stories. Plus I love to train them and their people how to find their fun and fascinating storyteller within.

That’s why I so enjoyed Mark Schaefer’s new book, Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World.

Audacious is brimming with stories of crazy promotional stunts, whacky word-of-mouth marketing, and awe-inducing customer experiences that will inspire you to get a little nutty with your brand storytelling. (more…)

#504: The Layer Cake Approach to Creating Your Sweet Brand Story

#504: The Layer Cake Approach to Creating Your Sweet Brand Story

I love cake. Especially chocolate fudge cake with a middle layer of cherry goo slathered in white cream cheese frosting with ice cream…Moose Tracks chocolate chip mint ice cream, to be exact.

That’s my brand of cake. What’s yours?

So when a podcast guest promoter contacted me to feature Allison Capaldi, I asked why?

She said that Allison has a delicious way of growing businesses called “The Layer Cake Approach to Brand Building.”

As you’ll hear, Allison loves analogies.

She thinks of them as a parlor trick to connect with the subconscious buying brain.

Allison lives by her Layer Cake analogy because it’s a way to highlight that you have to think about the layers behind your brand.

Because like brands,  two cakes can look very similar from the outside but it’s what they’re like when you cut in and taste them that makes you come joyously back for more.

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#503: How to Maintain Brain Health to be Your Best Storytelling Self

#503: How to Maintain Brain Health to be Your Best Storytelling Self

Top minds around the world are making artificial intelligence smarter, easier to use, and more intuitive at a dizzying pace.

Hopefully, it will make all of our lives better.

But what about your brain health?

What are you doing to become your best and brightest storytelling self?

I recently heard a remarkable presentation on creating and maintaining a healthy brain from Dr. Greg Wells, best-selling author of the new book, Power House: Elevate Your Energy, Optimize Your Health, and Supercharge Your Performance.

We both spoke at the Ascensus annual sales conference.

I was so impressed with how he translated complex neuroscience into practical strategies for peak performance that I invited him to share his brilliance with you.

Luckily for all of us, he happily agreed.

Greg is the founder of Wells Performance which helps teams, schools, and businesses become places where people get healthy, perform optimally, and reach their potential.

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#502: How a Brand Story of “Turning AI Into Actual Intelligence” is Driving Growth

#502: How a Brand Story of “Turning AI Into Actual Intelligence” is Driving Growth

Did you see Jerry Seinfeld on the Tonight Show describing Artificial Intelligence?

He said, “We’re smart enough to invent AI, dumb enough to need it, and so stupid we can’t figure out if we did the right thing.”

I still crack up at the term “Artificial Intelligence,” because as Jerry points out, most of our intelligence is artificial anyway.

And there, my friends, is the crux of the brand narrative we created for Tampa-based Green Irony, which turns AI into actual intelligence you can activate to drive smart growth.

Meet Banks, Green Irony’s flying pig mascot.

Aaron Godby, founder Green Irony, said, “We first set up shop in 2016 as a highly-specialized Salesforce integration and implementation partner.

“Working alongside technology leaders across a range of industries, we grew increasingly frustrated watching organizations become seemingly so accustomed to underperforming tech investments, that seeing a new initiative deliver tangible ROI felt akin to pigs flying. “

His journey has taken him from solving large-scale systems integration challenges for brands that include Spirit Airlines, Anheuser-Busch and Primerica, to now infusing AI into the enterprise using Agentforce as one of Salesforce’s leading partner implementers.

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#501: Fixing the Misery of Board Meetings With Engaging Storytelling

#501: Fixing the Misery of Board Meetings With Engaging Storytelling

Have you read Cormac McCarthy’s final two books Passenger and Stella Maris?

I just finished them.

They came across to me as a nihilistic meditation on the mathematical certainty of death.

Fun stuff.

McCarthy sneaks in witticisms throughout his writing. There’s one thought he shared that I can’t shake. It goes…

“You shouldn’t worry about what people think about you because they don’t do it that often.”

I thought it was hysterical given our narcissistic social media world where we all compete for attention.

But you want your brand story to stand out.

You want to draw rapt attention to your product or service.

You even worry about how it’s being communicated, because you want people to think of you often. You care about what they think.

Robert Wolfe, co-founder of Moosejaw (sold it to Walmart), CrowdRise (sold it to GoFundMe), and now Zeck, the brand that is taking the misery out of board meetings, knows how to attract and retain attention to his business.

Like the “No Pants” catalog Moosejaw published during the Great Recession because people couldn’t afford complete wardrobes.

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#500: How to Refine Your Brand Story Strategy in Minutes not Months to Rocket Your Revenue

#500: How to Refine Your Brand Story Strategy in Minutes not Months to Rocket Your Revenue

As a business owner or content creator, you probably want to create the same impact with your brand story as…

• Avein Saaty-Tafoya grew Arizona’s Adelante Healthcare by 600 percent.
• André Martin Hobbs has made Prêt Auto Partez one of the fastest growing auto dealerships in Canada.
• Sean Schroeder and his partners at Sacramento digital agency blueriver™, creators of the MURA content management platform, had a profitable exit in 2019.

They all have one thing in common: They each refined their brand story using the Story Cycle System™.

Ours is a proven process to create compelling clarity that aligns your people, engages customers, and accelerates your revenue growth (many of their stories are in the links below).

But like all approaches to branding, the Story Cycle System™ – as effective as it is – can take months of research, discovery, brainstorming meetings, and creative content development before you can start implementing your brand narrative.

What if you can accomplish the same thing in under an hour?

Sean Schroeder joins me today to show you how you can now refine your brand story strategy quickly using our StoryCycle Genie™.

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#499: How to Create an Enduring Business Based on Your Timeless Brand Story

#499: How to Create an Enduring Business Based on Your Timeless Brand Story

André-Martin Hobbs became one of the fastest-growing auto dealerships in Canada precisely because he dialed in his brand story back in 2017.

His Quebec-based auto group is Prêt Auto Partez, which means “Auto, Loan, Go” in English.

Their singular focus is to help Canadians repair their credit by purchasing a car they can afford without missing a monthly payment. In two years, their credit will be repaired.

The tagline/unique value proposition that we created using our Story Cycle System™ is…

Your vehicle to financial freedom.

But it opened up a can of worms, and by worms I mean competitors.

Other dealers recognized the power of André’s business model and have tried to copy it.

But to little success.

The reason, as he explains in this episode, is that competitors give lip service to helping people repair their credit.

“They don’t live it,” he said.

Prêt Auto Partez is the dominant category market leader because its brand narrative captures the vision, mission, and honest outcomes that the brand stands for.

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