Find a Metaphor As Big As Your Idea Metaphors are powerful because they take one concept and marry it to another one to help someone understand something. They’re a way to create an instantly-shared view of the world. To capture big ideas, you need something big enough to capture both the idea itself and all […]
Storytelling
Story vs. Narrative – EP063
A System of Stories We use the word “story” a lot, but there are several times when we actually mean something else: narrative. The classic definition of story is something with a beginning, a middle, and an end, but Ron Ploof’s definition is: “a thing that results from people pursuing what they want.” A narrative, […]
Why Telling a Complete Story Doesn’t Always Work – EP062
In Medias Res We talk a lot about telling stories with our messages, but a common mistake is to tell a story that’s already over. Nonprofits have been talking about stories for a long time because they’re a great way to get potential donors to understand the impact of a gift. However, when Tamsen worked […]
The Last Six Miles
I’ve lived in Boston for 25 years now. And if you’ve lived there that long, the famed Boston Marathon has this sneaky effect. You start thinking after a while…”Could I?” Or “Wouldn’t that be ‘fun’?” (And let me tell you right now — there is NOTHING about running a marathon that is fun, so put […]
What creates the best brand experiences? (or: An ode to Chris Gillespie and Bemelmans Bar)
“Grab your coat / Don’t forget your hat / Leave your worries on the doorstep / Life can be so sweet / On the sunny side of the street.” On the Upper East Side of Manhattan stands a jumble of memories and grace called The Carlyle. It’s a hotel, but like The Pierre and other […]
Just as good in half the time
When I was in high school, my senior English teacher was a granite pylon of a woman. Bat Masterson. I don’t remember her real first name. But in a brilliant end-run around potentially (usually) cruel high schoolers, she started calling herself “Bat” long before any in my class knew her. She had stuffed animal and […]
What is the Shape of Your Story? – EP048
The Three Story Shapes Kurt Vonnegut had this idea that stories have shapes. Here’s how it would work: if you could map a story with the horizontal axis representing time and the vertical axis representing our characters’ fortunes, you could see how it’s structured over time. While it sounds like an interesting theory, nobody had […]
Why Jargon Is So Dangerous – EP043
Jargon’s Many Meanings We all have jargon that’s useful in our industry or company, but we also need to make sure that our message is clear. A clear message means there’s a clear meaning, and a clear meaning is what inspires action, so that means we want to make sure that the words that we […]
A Shortcut to Business Storytelling – EP042
The Three Acts of a Story One the biggest problems that businesses run into when they try to do business storytelling is that they mistake stories for storytelling. However, if we understand story from the right perspective, we have everything we need to turn anything we have to say into something that feels like a […]
An Easy Way to Find Pieces of Your Personal Red Thread – EP040
Understanding Power If you’re trying to figure out what your personal Red Thread is all about, start with what you can do better than anyone else. For many people, figuring out what’s going to be powerful for them is easier said than done. Power is energy sustained over time. So, where does our energy come […]