Why Story Power
I bumped into a group of grumpy marketers this morning who think storytelling is worthless. Said one: “I have never understood the appeal of storytelling. I know people talk about the importance of it over and over again, but I really can’t give a f*%k. Story, mission, vision, it’s all bulls*%t; I only care about…
I hate HP printers. The one I owned with ink that disappeared faster than an ice cube in the Sahara. The next one which mangled forests of printer paper. And the one that NEVER kept a wi-fi connection. The endless, fruitless customer “support” calls with clueless overseas reps who read from scripts and dished out…
Here’s a new one. One of those appointment-setting firms spammed me yesterday with a twisted pitch that… …ummmmm… …impressed me with its wicked genius. The subject line was “Tom, referral candidate…” and the email started like this: “Tom, Do you guys work with smaller businesses? I run agency/consulting partnerships for Floor 9 Ventures, and I…
Want to watch a marketing master at work? Tune into Better Call Saul… …especially Season 4, Episode 4. That’s the episode when Jimmy (soon to rename himself “Saul”) works at the mobile phone store. Prepaid phone sales are slow. So Jimmy buys some yellow and red window paint and writes in giant lettering: IS THE MAN…
Yesterday, email marketing master Laura Belgray broadcast a rerun… …and I loved it. It was a story about a Grammar-Cop Attorney who criticized Laura for using the phrase “‘Looking forward to hearing back” in an email. That “…is NOT a sentence. It is a sentence fragment,” Grumpy Grammar Puss sniffed. Laura shared the story to…
Today is National Grilled Cheese Day (according to my handy-dandy holidays calendar)… …so I think I’ll grab a couple of Kraft singles and two slices of Wonder bread, smear some butter on the bread, slap it all together, fry it up in a pan, and enjoy a warm-gooey sammie. Toss in a some Campbell’s Tomato Soup,…
How do you write entertaining, humorous content if you’re not an entertaining, humorous person? So asked a “Serious Sadie” (name changed to protect the innocent) during yesterday’s meeting of the Mastermind Book Club. We were discussing Joe Polish’s Hello Kitty wallet (I wrote about that yesterday. Subject line: “How the ‘Hello Kitty Effect’ can help you…
Someone asked me recently which superhero I like best. No contest, I said. It’s Batman. Here’s why… He didn’t drop in from planet Krypton with the power to leap tall buildings in a single bound. He wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider. He’s merely a man named Bruce Wayne… …who mourned the murder of his…
A priceless story and lesson from marketing legend Dan Kennedy… When he broke in as a speaker, he loaded his speeches with as much information as time allowed. He bragged he delivered more “meat per minute” than other speakers. He said so in advertisements. And then he learned better. Says Dan in his book, Make ‘Em…
When I first came up with the idea for my soon-to-be-released Story Power Profit Pack, I thought of publishing it as a pack of playing cards — 52 pointers in all. I shelved that idea because, as cool as the cards might have looked, they would been less useful than the format I settled on.…