Ken Kerry

#200: How to Use Storytelling in Your Direct Response Advertising

#200: How to Use Storytelling in Your Direct Response Advertising

To sell any product or service you have to grab the attention of the consumer and show how it provides them value. But we live in a world where attention spans are fragmented and developing a meaningful connection can be difficult. That’s why it’s critical to truly listen to the stories your consumers tell you so you’ll understand how to connect with them. (more…)

Dr. Randy Olson

#199: How to Use the ABT to Focus Your Brand Stories

#199: How to Use the ABT to Focus Your Brand Stories

Most executives communicate and care but bore. Therefore, this episode is all about using the ABT narrative framework to make your audiences and customers sit up, listen and care. (more…)

Adam Goodman

#198: How to Inspire People With Your Purpose-Driven Brand Story

#198: How to Inspire People With Your Purpose-Driven Brand Story

We live in a time of mass consumerism and that has resulted in a plethora of brands all vying to get more sales. But with a vast sea of competition in just about every industry, it is easy for an organization to miss the mark. Therefore, finding a way to differentiate yourself by focusing on what your brand makes happen in peoples’ lives has become a proven success formula for purpose-driven brands.

Vantage West Own It: Goodmans from BRINK on Vimeo.

Our guest on this week’s show has become an expert on how to differentiate your brand to not only survive, but to thrive. Adam Goodman is the third-generation President & CEO of Goodmans Interior Structures, a leading Phoenix-based office furniture company that values community service. Adam realized that through a shared higher purpose, his employees and customers found deeper meaning in Goodmans than just selling furniture.

What became evident to Adam was that a purpose-driven brand story empowers employees because it gives them a common goal to rally around. It encourages them to contribute their best and most meaningful work.

Adam also wants to inspire his competition and compel them to have a higher purpose, so Goodmans generates and gives their purpose-driven “ideas playbook” to other businesses so they, too, can do good for their communities. Why share their secrets to success?

The idea is to elevate the entire furniture industry, so that we can all rise together. ~ Adam Goodman

The Goodmans Vision:

Topics Discussed in this Episode

• How Goodmans has created its own version of Herman Miller’s “Living Office”
• How Adelante Healthcare has increased its ROI using purpose-driven storytelling
• How Goodwill of Central Arizona has increased its ROI using purpose-driven storytelling
• The importance of repetition to keeping your purpose-brand story alive
• How Goodmans is celebrating its 65th anniversary in an unusual way

Resources & Links

• More about Certified B Corporations 
• The ROI of storytelling for Adelante Healthcare
• The ROI of storytelling for Goodwill of Central Arizona 
• Conscious Capitalism Arizona 
• Living Office Discovery Session
• Rooted in Good 
• AIM to Make a Difference 
• Goodmans Eye for the Good Guys
• GoodART
• Goodmans Chair Hockey
• GoodTHREADS
• Goodmans Interior Structures 
• Adam Goodman at DATOS 2018 
• Adam’s Twitter
• Adam’s Linkedin
• Adam’s Instagram 

Tania Katan

#197: How to Turn the Mundane Into Novelty with Your Storytelling

#197: How to Turn the Mundane Into Novelty with Your Storytelling

Most of us have a job or boss to report to throughout each week, and more often than not this feels like more of a chore than an opportunity. But what if we all had the power within us to create opportunity in place of mundane?  Fortunately, the power of creative storytelling can take any situation out of a state of menial to meaningful. (more…)

Roger Nierenberg

#196: Leadership Stories You Can Learn From a Symphonic Orchestra

#196: Leadership Stories You Can Learn From a Symphonic Orchestra

You want to achieve operational excellence with your organization and that starts by understanding how to optimize your internal storytelling to get everyone buying into the same story. But most traditional team-building exercises seem to be antiquated and ineffective. So where might you look to build your leadership storytelling abilities? The key may be somewhere unexpected: symphony orchestra. (more…)

Mike Huber

#195: How to Get Your Story Found Online

#195: How to Get Your Story Found Online

You and I are bombarded with information. As a defense mechanism, our brains are brilliant at filtering out the nonsense.

But our important content often gets lost in the messaging maelstrom, too.

So it’s important to approach your brand storytelling by understanding and appreciating your customer’s journey first. Place them at the center of your story and then follow and search engine optimization strategy to make sure ou get found and heard.

Mike Huber is Senior Director of Business Strategy and Education for Vertical Measures, a Phoenix-based company that has a strong reputation for digital marketing strategy, content marketing, paid and organic search, lead nurturing, and conversion rate optimization.

Mike and colleagues have written a book about a fictional character, Sophia, to illustrate how providing the wrong content at any phase of the customer journey can create dire results. The Customer Journey: How an Owned Audience Can Transform Your Business, is a terrific example of business storytelling given the tale they tell of Sophia to make what can by dry educational points on SEO come to life.

The customer journey can vary wildly, but most steps can be simplified into these four: awareness, consideration, decision, and advocacy. It is extremely important to know where your customer falls on this 4-step journey because that will help determine what sort of brand storytelling is relevant to this individual customer at a particular point. And missing this, as so many companies do, can leave your content drifting lifeless out in cybersapce.

You’ve got to have content in every stage of their journey otherwise they are going to fall out of your journey and into someone else’s. –Mike Huber

But how do you get to know where your customer is on their journey? According to Mike, his breakthrough was consultative selling — actually listening to and asking questions of your clients and/or customers.

It’s amazing what you can find when you start asking questions. –Mike Huber

And, what happens when that content is thoughtfully tailored and individualized? Once you have asked the right questions and listened to the needs and goals of your customers, it is much easier to tailor their customer journey experience. Now, instead of selling and interrupting people on your website, you’re guiding them through the customer journey by informing them and helping them understand your product or service. This care and consideration creates a bond between the customer and brand and ultimately these customers become your greatest marketing asset. 

Topics Discussed in this Episode

• Journalistic headlines versus search-focused headlines
• The evolution of the ways in which consumers can purchase items and goods, for example, you no longer have to go to a car dealership to purchase a vehicle
• How marketing used to work is the sales department was focused on awareness, consideration, decision and advocacy, and marketing was kind of involved in that awareness phase, nowadays, marketing is involved in everything except sales
• What it means to have and the importance of an “owned audience”

Resources & Links

• The Customer Journey: How an Owned Audience can Transform Your Business written by Blake Pappas, Brad Kuenn, Shana Sullivan, Drew Eastmead, Mike Huber
• Restaurants Near the Mesa Convention Center by Mike Huber
• Vertical Measures
• The Customer Journey: How to Create, Optimize & Amplify Content That Converts
• Arizona Tourism
• A Beginner’s Guide to SEO
• Mapping Your Customer’s Journey Worksheet
• Business of Story Masterclass & Deliberate Practice Program
• Mike Huber’s Linkedin 
• Mike Huber’s Twitter 
• Vertical Measure’s Twitter 

Neal Smoller

#194: How to Create a Healthy Brand Story

#194: How to Create a Healthy Brand Story 

Big pharma has taken over television advertising with its brand storytelling for every conceivable medication while the natural supplement industry counters with organic health advice and products. But there is an immense amount of misinformation on both sides of the drug store aisle. This week’s show introduces you to a man and a brand that is out to combat what he calls the “horsesh!t quackery” in the drug and natural supplement businesses that consumers have to navigate.

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Dr. George Basile

#193: How to Harness the Energy of Story to Drive Your Brand

#193: How to Harness the Energy of Story to Drive Your Brand

Society today faces unprecedented climate challenges. Yet many people either do not believe this is a real threat, or they don’t want to do anything about it. Much of the resistance to facing these challenges comes from fear and beliefs that are a result of outdated stories. Therefore, if we begin to update our narratives surrounding climate change, the result may have a tremendous positive impact on the future of businesses, societies, and our planet.

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L.S. Larson, Author

#192: How to Immerse an Audience in Your Brand Story

#192: How to Immerse an Audience in Your Brand Story

As our attention spans grow shorter, most of us look for new ways to absorb stories. But it’s challenging to make your story stand out amongst all the noise and distraction. On this week’s show, welcome to the world of the virtually immersive novel where tech and the printed work take you on a Sci-Fi adventure.

The creator, L.S. Larson, president of Axon, formerly Taser International, shares his inspiration for creating the future of storytelling and how your brand can immerse your audience in your stories, too.

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Chad Gabriel, Sherpa of Purpose

#191: How to Wake the World With Your Purpose-Driven Brand Story

#191: How to Wake the World With Your Purpose-Driven Brand Story

You hold the power to create the life you want. But the world has become so chaotic and so full of noise it’s difficult to distinguish your own authentic story from the story the world is telling you. Therefore, it is important to pause and take a journey back to awaken the aliveness that is sleeping within you through the power of a purpose-driven brand story.

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