Monthly Archives

February 2016

brand stories data stories

A strong casey from Mr. Spacey

Oh, Kevin Spacey. He did it again. He gave a speech and the audience was smitten. At Content Marketing World in Cleveland, Ohio, he talked about how conflict and authenticity are essential to good stories. Agreed. My favorite point, however, applies to the world of marketing: “The audience doesn’t care about the platform—they care about the content.” Heck yeah. So many clients get excited about podcasts, billboards, Twitter, etc. as if those tools make their messages more intriguing. Create some good content, choose the…

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best practices character selection self-advocacy

You’re not the boss of me

The other night, I gave a guest lecture to a public relations class of working professionals. The students had lots of stories and even more questions, including one that stuck with me. A major l’esprit de l’escalier situation. Too bad you can’t retrofit emotion. A student was tinkering with a story about an engineer (protagonist) who worked on a tricky project (full of obstacles) in order to save his company money (objective). She was stumped because she had the first layer of parts to start but couldn’t pinpoint…

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