Lately there’s been alot of talk about storytelling as the next big wave in brand marketing. Telling stories about the brand is a great way to encourage the audience to personalize the message, to make it more “sticky” with the listener and to make it easier for people to remember. Last year, Freeworld even released a report about how to improve your CSR Message Through Storytelling (PDF).

Brand marketers are beginning to think like media publishers and creating branded content that can be shared and spread across the web, some companies are even forming internal editorial boards to curate the flow of content about their brand.  So once you get a handle on brand storytelling, let’s take a look ahead at how this fits into a larger framework… the brand narrative.

Narrative Brand Marketing

“Stories” and “narratives” are often used interchangeably as synonyms, but I’d like to draw a distinction between the two terms and explain how a sequence of stories makes up a narrative. Let’s explore how thinking about narrative brand marketing will help guide your story-telling marketing efforts.

A story has a begining, middle and end. But your brand story doesn’t stop. It needs to be continuous and dynamic – allowing audience participation and encouraging sharing through different ways and platforms.

“Narratives, at least in the way I will be using them, are stories that do not end – they persist indefinitely. They invite, even demand, action by participants and they reach out to embrace as many participants as possible. They are continuously unfolding, being shaped and filled in by the participants. In this way, they amplify the dynamic component of stories, both in terms of time and scope of participation. Stories are about plots and action while narratives are about people and potential. ”
John Hagel, The Pull of Narrative – In Search of Persistent Context

To create a movement, a clear underlying narrative is needed to carry the momentum of the stories told about your brand.

Deeper Emotional Connections

The brand narrative resonates the deepest message of your brand… the purpose and reason why your company exists. Ultimately, your brand lives in the mind of the audience and their loyalty to your narrative determines their purchase decisions but you have to think strategically about the long-term effects of your branded content. Ongoing narratives take into account the deeper forces of society and taps into the deeper consciousness of what is shaping those surface events.

Narrative Brand Marketing requires a clear, long-term vision of success. Looking ahead, our lives are increasingly becoming more complex and companies that plant the seeds of a well-planned narrative will see their brand grow and spread throughout the social web, reaping the benefits in the unpredictable years to come.

Takeaway: Make sure the brand stories you share are memorable, convey an intentional message and fit into your overall brand narratives.

_______________________________________________________
Image used under Creative Commons – Some rights reserved by opensourceway

Instagram just announced some big updates at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. They have updated the appearance and re-engineered the app to perform faster.

So now with Instagram approaching the 10 million user mark, brand marketers want to learn how to use the platform to connect with their fans. Let’s take a look…

What Is It?
Instagram is a social photo sharing app that let’s you create and share pictures with your network via Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Flickr and Tumblr. It has an easy-to-use interface that encourages creative photos using vintage filters (similar to the popular Hipstamatic).

Rapid Growth
Instagram is growing twice as fast as Foursquare — which grew faster than Twitter — which grew faster than Facebook. According to “Zuckerberg’s Law of Information Sharing“… each year the number of people sharing information doubles in size. This is great news for anyone launching a new service wanting quick distribution. As the number of social platforms grows, there is exponential growth in the amount of sharing.

Here’s a good infographic that visualizes the data around Instagram’s growth.

Benefits of Instagram for Brand Marketers

• Gives a voice to your fans with user generated content
• Highly Creative & Easy to Use
• Built-in social sharing functions expand your reach

Five Global Brands That Have Experimented With Instagram
It seems Ideal for consumer brands, lifestyle & fashion companies and news organizations

1. Starbucks – The coffee giant uses Instagram to enable their fans to share their everyday moments with Starbucks coffee. (hashtag #starbucks)
2. ABC News – I like what they are doing by creating a Visual News feed. They post photos from the day’s news (hashtag #abcworldnews)
3. Red Bull – “Whatever [marketers] do, they should not lose sight of Instagram’s core mission: sharing a passion for photography and stunning images,” said Red Bull spokesperson. (hashtag #redbull)
4. Levi’s Brazil – Many Instagram users come from Brazil, so Levi’s created a profile (hashtag #levisbrasil)
5. BMI baby – The low-cost UK airline (subsidiary of BMI) is using Instagram to announce company news. (hashtag #bmibabygram)

Lessons Learned From Those Experiments
It’s always good to watch the first movers and learn lessons about what they did well and what you can do to improve upon their experience. Instagram is an easy non-intrusive way to celebrate your brand in people’s lives.

• Use a consistent hashtag to curate the rich range of photos.
• Use it to share brand messages
• Don’t be too over-promotional about your brand, but be sure to highlight the people in your community and let them be the collective voice for your Instagram feed.
• Capture behind-the-scenes images and share them with your fans.
• Activate you fans and encourage them to share.

Get access to the Instagram API by signing up for their Developer Program

Limitations
Right now, it’s only available as an iPhone app, but CEO Kevin Systrom recently confirmed that the Android App is coming soon:

“It’s hugely important to us, but we’re only six people. Android is a major priority for us, but first we have to build the team, and find the best people in the world to work on these projects. The company is currently hiring engineers and designers to help it move more quickly on all three of these aims.”

Flickr has been a hugely popular social photo sharing site, but Instagram has taken the social photo sharing capability one step further by having the app built into your smartphone. Pretty cool stuff… what do you guys think?

Earlier this week, you may have seen your social network friends talking about the Whole Foods promotion with Living Social. The flash sale created quite a frenzy by offering $20 worth of Whole Foods groceries for $10 with 5% of proceeds going to their charity group, The Whole Kids Foundation.

They sold 1 million deals on Tuesday and experienced heavy traffic that threatened to take down several of the company’s servers. That afternoon, Living Social spokesman Andrew Weinstein said “We’re currently selling more than 115k per hour, or more than 30 per second.”

So why did so many people get excited about this daily deal?

1. Authentically Good Offer The simple recipe for business success is quality & value. The market responded quickly because Whole Foods offers a good product and Living Social provided the incentive for people to get a good value.
2. Exclusivity This is the first time that Whole Foods has offered a daily deal. Their reputation as a high-end grocery store has earned them the nickname “Whole Paycheck” but in reality, they offer competitive pricing on many items. This is a smart move by Whole Foods to attract cost-conscious customers that otherwise may not step foot into their store.
3. Strong Brand Value Whole Foods has created a set of Values that have guided them to become a trustworthy leader in their field. Many people are also attracted to their commitment towards local foods that offer better nutrition, higher quality and more sustainable farming methods.
4. Word of Mouth This was social selling at its best. Influential people in the social networks were spreading the “act now” message to their friends and family that helped the promotion take off so quickly.
5. Cause Marketing The company promised to give 5% of proceeds to their Foundation that supports schools and families that improve children’s nutrition and wellness. Cause marketing creates a stronger connection to the brand and builds goodwill within the communities that they serve. This passive giving component makes people feel better about the impact they are making with their purchase decision.

This was a positive story for Living Social — especially in the wake of their competitor, Groupon’s recent setback with their highly-publicized IPO being put on hold. Some have argued that consumers are beginning to suffer from Daily Deal Fatigue but stories like this prove that daily deals can work when the right ingredients are in place. Expect many changes in the crowded group deals space where smaller competitors will fade away or become absorbed by the leaders. But for now…. well done, Living Social!

Attending a TED conference is an intense, immersive experience where the speakers distill a lifetime of experience into an 18-minute presentation on the TED stage.  When done well, their carefully-planned, well-rehearsed talks leave an unforgettable impact on the audience.

This is the third time that I’ve attended the TED Global conference on behalf of Freeworld Media. Each one has proven to be a life-changing experience and this year’s event was amazing.

The name, TED, stands for three of my favorite things… Technology, Entertainment and Design. The previous two TED Globals were held in Oxford, England and this one was hosted in Edinburgh, Scotland — home of the Scottish Enlightenment.

The Stuff of Life

The theme of TED Global 2011 was “The Stuff of Life” which asked the question… “How can it be better lived?”  This set the tone for the conference that challenged the attendees with a rich new perspective.  My big takeaway was that although there seems to be alot of problems in the world, there IS an answer out there and it’s up to all of us to rethink the life we want to create and question the systems that operate our world.

Taking a step back from the individual talks themselves, is a well-orchestrated event thanks to TED curators, Chris Anderson and Bruno Giussani.  They assemble a roster of speakers around a theme intended to create an intellectual journey for those in attendance.  By the end of the conference, people leave with their brains practically rewired as a result of their exposure to new ideas that challenge their worldview.

What happens on stage helps to accellerate the discussions that happen between the talks.  I had fantastic conversations with optimistic leaders from around the world that ranged from economics, world politics, environmental issues, the future of business, science, breakthrough mobile technology and urban planning.

Here are three interesting TED Talks that really stood out in terms the impact that I can bring back to our Freeworld clients.

1. Paul Bloom: The Origins of Pleasure

The opening party was held on Monday night at the Edinburgh Castle.  I wound up accidently hanging out in the speakers lounge where I met people scheduled to speak later that week.  One discussion that really stood out was with Yale Professor Paul Bloom where we talked about neuroscience and how it applies to marketing and communications.

During his presentation, Bloom explained how people derive more pleasure interacting with things that have an uniquely emotional story attached to them.  It’s been proven that our beliefs about the history of an object can change how we experience it.

Understanding the psychological connections that storytelling creates has tremendous implications for brand marketers and social media content creators.  At Freeworld we will use this knowledge to create better Content Strategy for our clients.  And by creating more engaging stories, we can enhance the relationship people have with a product or brand.

Many of his Yale classroom videos are available online.

2. Paul Zak: The Moral Molecule

Where does trust & empathy come from?  “NeuroEconomist” Paul Zak talked about his research with the human hormone oxytocin and it’s economic impact.  His research shows that when oxytocin is stimulated, it makes people more generous, empathetic and helpful. You may know about the importance of oxytocin in pregnancy but it can also be released during things like massage, praying and dancing.

I was thrilled to learn that social media produces a double dose of oxytocin!  It creates a better sense of trust and as he said…  “where there is more trustworthiness, there is more prosperity.”  

“Civilization is dependent on oxytocin. You can’t live around people you don’t know intimately unless you have something that says: Him I can trust, and this one I can’t trust.”  

Key Takeaway: Connecting your brand to positive, happy feelings is good for your bottom line.

Zak sprays Oxytocin on stage. (Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED Conferences)

3. Tim Hartford: Trial, error and the God complex

Here “The Undercover Economist” talks about how people are not as smart as they may think they are.  This leads to huge problems when people jump to certain assumptions.  The arrogant “God Complex” is dangerous when people feel a sense of over-confidence in their decision-making ability.   The world is very complex — and complex systems are built through trial and error.

Key Learnings: Experimenting leads to success.  Don’t be afraid to make “good mistakes”.

The thing I love about the TED network is how it encourages people to share their ideas through what has become a new interconnected learning system.  This is promising and I hope it helps all of us develop a deeper understanding of the world.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Also be sure to check out the TED Conference App on iTunes.

June 28, 2011 – Freeworld Media announced today the publication of the report titled Corporate Storytelling and Your CSR Strategy.

The report is co-authored by Jesse Mayhew, founder of CSRcopy, and Sean Wood, founder and CEO of Freeworld Media. The report is their shared response to the most common questions and concerns they hear from their respective clients.

“Today, the number of corporations revising their criteria of values and their definitions of success is truly beginning to snowball,” said Jesse Mayhew. “Each year more and more organizations are adding to their CSR and Sustainability communications efforts to help prove and measure their commitment to the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit.”

“This is happening at the same time that corporations are beginning to adapt new marketing methods more suited to digital media.” added Freeworld CEO Sean Wood. “Often companies are failing to combine their new media and social responsibility efforts, despite the fact that the two could be greatly beneficial to one another.”

Photo Credit: bixentro

You know how some people always have something to complain about?  You know what I’m talking about — that person that never seems to have anything good going in their life and always wants to tell you what stinks? Well besides being a real drain to be around, people eventually stop listening to their complaints.

The same holds true on the social web.  When I visit to Yelp or Amazon and see a nasty review in the midst of otherwise positive reviews, I will click on that person’s profile to see what’s going on.  I’ve found that these reviewers usually fall into one of three profiles:

1.   Negative Nelly: Has a long history of negative feedback.  No restaurant or product has ever met their satisfaction.
Advice: This person has other things going on in their life.  Ignore this Review.

2.   Anonymous Joe: Leaves a single negative review but has no other reviews in their profile.  Most likely, this is a competitor or angry ex-employee trying to make the company look bad.
Advice: This fake profile was created an anonymous troublemaker.  Ignore this Review.

3.  Happy Herman: Leaves mostly positive reviews.  They may have a few negative reviews, but overall they have established credibility and seem pretty reasonable.  This helpful person likes to recommend products that they like and want to warn people when their experience isn’t good.   All-in-all this is a pretty trustworthy reviewer.
Advice: Pay attention to this Review.

For the Customer:

Think back to Aesop’s Fable about The Boy Who Cried Wolf.  This parable explains that when you tell stories that aren’t true, people eventually stop listening to you.  The same holds true in social media. It’s been proven that after a while, people filter out constant negativity because they no longer want to listen to the voice of the complainer.

Social media has made a powerful impact on our lives.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s still pretty new and most people haven’t figured out how to behave yet. Many cultural norms (and manners) are not yet fully developed.  So please keep in mind that whatever you’re doing now will stay on your ‘permanent’ digital record and will affect you from here on out.

However, if you’re really upset and have a legitimate complaint, then by all means… go out and create a funny YouTube video that tells the story of your trouble.  You never know – you may find yourself becoming internet famous.

Advice: When in doubt, think about what your grandma would say and “mind your manners.”   Keep it simple.  Offer good input where you can — make helpful suggestions and offer fair warnings so that other people know what to expect. Hopefully (if the company is listening) the problem will be fixed.

For the Brand:

First of all…. don’t let your fear of a negative review keep you from doing something that will benefit your customers and your business.  According to a Yahoo! Study “66% of brand references in WOM conversations are positive and only 8% are negative.” Although this is a small percentage, we can reduce that number even more with an effective social strategy that outlines how to respond to unsatisfied customers.

BazaarVoice claims that ”Most word of mouth is positive. Across all Bazaarvoice US clients, 80% of product ratings are 4 or 5 stars out of 5.”   So when Freeworld implements social media monitoring platforms for our clients, the software pulls in open data streams from the social web to filter word-of-mouth conversations.  Sentiment analysis helps us determine what’s being said and in what context.  Please make sure that your community manager is well-trained and highly capable to handle these situations.

Social CRM & Priority Levels

How much weight do you give people’s feedback?  This is a new area, so most likely you don’t have the time, the staff or the budget to handle all the social media information coming into your organization.  So what should do with these reviews?  Having a solid social media process will optimize your time and help you determine the best response.

As we look ahead, what we’re seeing is that different priority levels should be applied. Suggesting that web users deserve different responses can be controversial, but just as in “real life”, some people are more influential than others and you should be more attentive to them.  Companies should be asking, “How will this person’s level of service impact their social network?”

Please take a look at several of the well-documented Social CR case studies to understand how to best manage customer relationships. Your response may be based on what happened in the past but this is like driving by watching the rearview mirror.  Soon we will be able to look ahead at people’s response to our corporate communications.

The social web gives us a powerful way to connect with each other.  Both customers and businesses need to be considerate about what they say and how they say it.

So what do you think… Got any constructive feedback?

image credit: Luca Sartoni

The 2011 SXSW Interactive festival just wrapped up in Austin.  Because of the sheer size of the event, it was difficult to attend all of the panel discussions and speakers you wanted to see — but that wasn’t the best part.  The highlight of SXSW was the great people you met in those seemingly “accidental moments”.

I enjoyed talking everyone from social media superstars to influential music industry people — from masters of the mobile space to those that push the boundaries of advertising and technology.

“By intelligently using social technology, businesses can find opportunities in the new economy.”

image credit: Doc Searls

The idea of creating situations where people serendipitously meet others and have unexpected experiences has fascinated me since reading the book, The Power of Pull.  It was a pleasure to finally meet author, John Hagel and hear him speak again at the Social Business Summit (put on by the Dachis Group).  On Thursday, Mr. Hagel talked about “unexpected encounters that surprise and delight.”

The ability to enhance these moments of serendipity can be shaped by creating environments that bring delight and fortunate encounters to those in attendance.  (Experiential Brand Marketers should definitely be paying attention to this!)

The idea presented was that most people “don’t even know the questions to ask.”   This ties into Maslow’s Four Stages of Competance. So the question then is… “how can we find things when we don’t know what we’re looking for… when we don’t even know what’s out there?”

Here are some soundbites from Hagel’s talk about the future of Social Business.  Please keep in mind that I was typing as fast as I could!

Engineered Serendipity

• Carefully choose your environments. (ie: Attend SXSW if you want to meet motivated people in that industry)
• Don’t create and stick to a regimented schedule.. you might miss out on those “moments”
• Tell people the problems you’re working on to get their input and fortuitous help

Knowledge Creation

• Social Media builds relationships that allow us to build new knowledge together
• New knowledge is created by coming together… comes from relationships
• The only way new knowledge gets created is through an incredible amount of friction and argument
• To create productive friction, you should urge more friction… rather than less friction
• There are opportunities to shape serendipity… through choices you make at various levels
• those who do make those choices will be more successful

Social Media Programs

• These are not about programs it’s about People… especially passionate people.
• But  passion is embarrassment in a corporate setting… so what do you do?
• Take passionate people and connect them to pain points in the organization.
• How do you find them? These people are usually camouflaged…
• When you find them, help focus them on pain points and get them using social media and you will have good things happen.

Lessons from the Edges

• Dont go to core… go to edges. Go to the areas with high uncertainty because those areas attract people with passion

For me, the highlight of the entire SXSW experience was the question… “What’s your serendipity strategy?”

“We’re seeing a vastly different set of factors driving reputation than we did 10 years ago” says Richard Edelman. “Trust is now an essential line of business to be developed and delivered.”

Corporate Transparency is Smart Business.

Companies are making public commitments to build public trust through transparency and honest dealings in their interactions. This goes hand in hand with transparency and ethical / social business. When you connect the dots with the social technology being implemented into more open “Social Busienss” environments, you see the need for open communications to create trust in the eye of the public and the employees.

In the past, companies would only sit up straight and behave when they felt the “cameras were on them” but now we see that everyone has a camera and everything is being recorded reported through the social web.

The Edelman Trust barometer reports that In the United States, after quality and price… Social purpose (at 47%) ranks higher as a purchase motivator than brand loyalty (27 %) and design and innovation (26 %).