Where to Find Your Brand Story
Learn How to Captivate Your Customers With a Bewitching Brand Story In March 2019, I sniffed into an old claustrophobic bookstore in Queenscliff, Australia, like a mouse searching for cheese.…
What B2B marketers can learn from the Doritos “Ultrasound” Super Bowl TV Spot
As all of you students in my Executive Master of Sustainability Leadership communications course know, a universal structure to storytelling pervades our lives. We see it in the movies we…
How Brand Storytelling Created the Largest Water Conservation Outreach Effort of its Kind
“Don’t tell me to save water, show me how.” That was the consistent message we received from three separate consumer surveys in metropolitan Phoenix back in 1998. Interesting that it…
How to use the Hero’s Journey to create epic business stories for your B2B marketing
Have you ever struggled to get an important concept across to your peers? We’ve all been there. The powerpoint that sucked. The big idea that didn’t penetrate smaller minds. The…
Why business storytelling is always about the personal dilemmas behind your professional pursuits
Story marketing must be at the heart of your content marketing Every business leader or communicator must “humanize” their brand. This is especially true for the cold, feature-and-function advertising that professional services firms run. But a…
How Downton Abbey resembles B2B marketing
I admit it. I’m a Downton Abbey fan. My wife and I started watching it around the first season of Breaking Bad. If Breaking Bad is the opiate of TV programming, then…
The Brand Storytelling Strategy Behind Goodwill of Central Arizona’s 400% Growth
In 2003, Goodwll asked our team to help freshen their eighty-year-old brand in metropolitan Phoenix. The organization was generating $17 million in annual revenue through twenty-four thrift stores. The revenue…
What happens when you place your audience at the center of your brand story
Madcap Theater in Tempe, AZ now knows that the best brand stories always star the audience. This fun Friday evening word of mouth marketing stunt made a fashion runway out of a sidewalk…
Brand Story Reframing: From Water Utility to Experts at Scarce Resource Management
The first step in the Story Cycle brand authoring process is to establish your backstory: the setting of your story. We ask three questions to spark conversation what your brand’s…
How to create a thriving culture for your professional services firm through the stories you tell
All great business leadership has three dimensions to it, according John Oechsle, President and CEO of Swiftpage, the providers of ACT! customer relationship management (CRM) software for small business. Oechsle…
Is global business exciting or scary?
I was honored to be part of a panel for a Global Chamber of Commerce gathering yesterday morning discussing the merits of global business in Arizona. Doug Bruhnke, founder of the Global…
