Why Story Power
Happy National Screenwriters Day. (Yeah, thatās a thing). Last night, to get into the holiday spirit, I picked up my copy of āStory – Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwritingā by Robert McKee. Great book — especially if you want to be a screenwriter. Marketers swear by it, tooā¦ …especially ones who understand…
The war between the Superpowers has begun. Not a traditional war with guns and tanks and airplanes, mind you. This is a war between two digital Superpowers — Facebook and Apple. Apple fired the first shot when it announced recently that iPhone owners will soon have to give explicit permission before apps can track their…
I woke yesterday at 5 a.m. because I had to finish a proposal that Iād promised to send to a prospect by start-of-business Monday. I was knocking it out steadily whenā¦ …Google broke. You probably heard the news: Around 5:30 a.m. CST, Google suffered a worldwide outage. Google Drive stalled. Gmail gave out. YouTube tanked. …
My business is growing so Iām hiring. Last night I posted a job opening for a software developer to assist with several projects. I described the projects, but only in vague terms. Applications flooded my inbox. Most applicants told me they had EVERYTHING it takes to tackle the projects. One applicant, Noah, said this: āLetās discuss more…
I was eating breakfast the other morning and nearly choked. It wasnāt the spinach and salsa omelette that did it (although that jalapeno salsa made me sweat a little). No, it was the email that landed in my inbox… …with yet another breathless, over-hyped, meaningless statisticā¦ …about yet another canāt-miss digital marketing channel. Hereās the…
Hereās a parable about parablesā¦ ā¦with a lesson that can help you attract attention for your marketing messages and inspire people to act. In the Bibleās Gospel of Luke, someone asks Jesus, ā…who is my neighbor?ā Jesus answers with the story of a ācertain manā who was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho and āfell among…
My friend Cabanne Howard (a great marketing strategist) sent this picture to me the other dayā¦ It’s a closeup of this Duraflame log… Cabanne thinks itās a great example of story-powered marketing. And sheās right. Feeble marketing focuses on features. Better marketing focuses on benefits. The best marketing — story-powered marketing — promises transformations. A Duraflame log features sawdust…
Hereās a tale of two blog posts — both covering the same topic: Why your business needs a customer support playbook and how to implement one. In one corner we have a treatise. Hereās how it starts: Building and managing a help desk in your organization can either become a triumphant, effective tool or end…
I was cleaning out a closet the other day and found an old biology textbook. As I paged through it, I was struck (stunned, saddened) by how little I remembered. Then I got to the chapter about animal biologyā¦ …and my memory clicked: āKids prefer cheese over fried green spinach.ā Thatās the little story I…
Last week, I shared ā5 things you might not know about meā¦ā on LinkedIn. The post included this picture of meā¦ A few people told me they liked that picture, and they suggested I use it as my profile picture — instead of the one I was using. āSure, why not?ā I thought. But before…