The Chief Storyteller

Superbowl Ads are Some of the Best

In television, the Super Bowl advertisements are the end all, be all. Most TV ads are 20 to 30 seconds whereas on the Super Bowl, they can be as long as 60 seconds. Cost, depending upon the year, can be several times a regular ad price. Why? Because so many people around the world watch the sporting event. And we have become accustomed to being entertained by the commercials.

Here are some links to a variety of web sites related to the Super Bowl television ads.

- Super Bowl Ads has an archive back to 1998.

- YouTube is running it's AdBlitz 2009 campaign where people can vote on their favorite ads from this year's SuperBowl

- ESPN's best Super Bowl picks

- Sports Illustrated's Best Super Bowl commercials of all-time

Additional Resources
- Consultants are Like Cat Herders--An Old Commercial from EDS (blog entry) [this is one of my all time favorite advertisements]

A Very Different Way of Looking at the Words You Use (Do you Wordle?)

During recent serendipitous Internet surfing, I discovered Wordle. It's really quite interesting and revealing if you use it to discover patterns and trends in your communication.

To explain, here is the about us from the site: Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Wordle visually, by size, shows you word frequency. Sure you can make interesting pictures, art even. The real power is in word choice. How many of what words are you using? Does the output image make you think twice about the language and messaging you are using in your sales, marketing, development, and other communication materials?

I pasted in The Chief Storyteller elevator speech (the answer to "What do you do?" -- first two images ) and my speaker's biography (bottom image). The images are below. As one would guess, "business," "stories," and "relationships" dominate my wordles. 

You can change font, layout, colors, and a variety of other attributes. Become your own "Business Picasso."

Paste in some of your articles, website home page content, blog entries, membership documents, etc. Did Wordle reveal anything insightful for you?

Click on the images and you'll see the full-size.

 

10 Easy & Inexpensive Suggestions on Differentiating Your Organization

Last week I went to see Ron, my printer (Rockville Printing) about a couple of items. On the reception area counter top were writing pads--obviously free to the public (see below).

What a great idea. Both are timely, relevant, and functional. On the bottom in the footer area, they tastefully included their contact information.

Whether it's in difficult economic times or in a boom, what are you doing to differentiate yourself? It should not be on price. There's an old adage, win on price, lose on price.

Here are 10 Suggestions to Differentiate Yourself:
1. Offer Give-aways: Offer relevant, brand complementary give-aways like the writing pads below.

2. Make referrals: Make referrals from and to your clients/members and partners. Especially when you hear him/her mention a problem or challenge they are facing.

3. Give before you get: Think about providing something of value first, before expecting to get your back washed.

4. Remember important dates: Don't you smile when someone remembers your birthday? anniversary? spouse's birthday? child's birthday? and so on. Send a card, e-card, or email.

5. Remember important information: We have a list called The Chief Storyteller 18. There are 18 key fields of interest that we try to collect on our client's and partners. Examples: hobbies, family, taboos, hot buttons, and education.

6. Send a hand-written [blank] card: Birthday, anniversary, thank you.

7. Mail a book: Everyone loves books. Make sure that you have read it, love it, and it is appropriate to the receiver. It can be professional or social--depends upon your relationship.

8. Let Them Know You are Thinking About Them: Send/email an article, website, blog, idea/suggestion personalized to something you know about him/her (See #5).

9. Treat Them: Treat them to breakfast, lunch, brunch, coffee, tea, hot chocolate, drinks, social events (e.g., baseball, football, tennis, and amusement park), and professional events (e.g., networking, educational, professional, and trade).

10. Send Gifts: There are tons of companies offering inexpensive gift baskets and food items. I've seen items as little as $25 to several hundred. Or you can create your own (I did this for the 2007 holiday gift season). Remember to personalize it. Some examples include Mauna Loa, Hersheys, Neiman Marcus, Harry & David, Godiva, Ghiradelli, Hickory Farms, and Wolfermans.

Email me and I'd be happy to send you our tip guide The Chief Storyteller 18.

Kings Don’t Rule the Castle — Queens Do

The 2007 MSNBC article starts, "Men might throw their weight around at the office, but at home, women are the bosses." The article continues later and says, "The results counter past research."

“Most of the research literature in psychology has suggested that women have less power,” Vogel told LiveScience. “They have largely based that on the fact that traditionally men earn more money and so therefore would have the ability to make big decisions in the relationship.” That wasn’t the case in this study.

I find this study dated, quite dated. If you have been a fan of Tom Peters, he has been screaming at the top of his lungs about the decision and purchasing power of women. His site has tons of free articles, blog entries, and PowerPoint presentations. He has written extensively on the power of women including several books.

Look at advertising over the past years. Women are driving the cars, men are the passengers are not in the commercial at all. Women are the stars of the commercials whereas years ago, men were the stars. Women are shown as the breadwinners. Women make fun of the men whereas men NEVER make fun of the women.

Communication is inherently challenging. Knowing your audience is critical to your organization's success. Gender is important. So are lots of other variables like age, title, experience, job function, country of birth, cultural influences, and much more.

One way to help "know your audience" is to define with as much specificity as possible your Ideal [blank] profile? Ideal Client Profile for corporations? Ideal Member Profile for Associations and Non Profits. Ideal Partner Profile for government organizations?

No, No, Absolutely No Emoticons in Employment Correspondence

The other day I received an email from a former student asking me about the use of emoticons while writing to prospective employers. You know my response--absolutely not.

Emoticons are small graphical symbols that represent emotions. The word emoticon comes from emotion (or emote) combined with icon.

Leave casual and informal dialogue, words, phrases, images, and the like out of all employment correspondence. I can recite way too many bad stories of job seekers losing opportunities because of bad manners, bad jokes, bad first impressions, or something else to make the prospective employer send the dreaded "no thank you" letter.

Emoticons started years ago when email was simple, text-based communication. There are well over 50 text emoticons used today. The popular ones are:
- Smile/happy   :-)
- Frown/sad  :-(
- Wink   ;-)
- Sticking tongue out  :-p
- Wow  :-o  or :-O
- Angry  >:-<

Today, emoticons can also be represented in some form or another, by the yellow happy smiling face icon. For example, here are the emoticons when you use Skype chat:

 

In the end, always be formal in all employment correspondence.

McDonald's Take Out Packaging is Using Stories as a Metaphor

I was at a client's office the other day and he was eating take out (take away for those outside the US) from McDonald's. I noticed the word "story" on the bag.

Headline: "A great story has two sides."
Text: "Take the McDonald's hamburger. It's sear-sizzled on the grill so both sides come out perfect every time. Whichever way you look at it, it's the one story that always has a happy ending."

I like the idea quite a lot.

McDonald's is all about convenience, good taste, and family. As such, here are a few and easy-to-implement suggestions to strengthen the packaging and messaging.

a) Put some smiling happy people pictures, especially children on the bag.
b) Tie in the story concept with your website. There is nothing on the main site connected to this advertising and message
c) Include your website or a personalized website on the bag such as www.mcdonalds.com/story

Teens Divulge Risky Behavior on Social Networking Sites

More and more articles are being published about the sharing, over sharing, and the lack of awareness by teenagers and young adults on posting to social networking sites.

I wrote some earlier blogs (see below). What I do not see are articles on educating the teens and young adults on the why's of being private. What the articles are skipping is the human behavior side of things. The "perpetrators" have for the most part, grown up with the Internet as a known communication method and style. It is a complement and substitute for telephone calls, letters, post cards, and in person conversations. My generation and earlier generations were taught the importance of privacy and the potential abuse and misuse.

The Washington Post recently published an article, "Teens Divulge Risky Behavior on Social Networking Sites" that (again) just scratches the surface.

Additional Blog Entries
- When Mom or Dad Asks To Be a Facebook 'Friend'
- Keep Your Online Personal Life to Your "Home" Friends

Did You Know that the Senate & House of Representatives are on YouTube?

With their collective tagline of "Discover, Connect, and Engage with Your Government," the United States Senate and House of Representatives have official home pages on YouTube.

Called the senatehub and househub, each offers quite a lot in terms of functionality and access to come. For example, there are pages specific to the Senate Leadership [e.g., Mitch McConnell (KY-R) and Harry Reid (NV-D)] and House Leadership Channels [e.g., Nancy Pelosi (CA-D) and John Boehner (OH-R)].

According to an Associated Press article, Congresswoman Pelosi's "office said Pelosi was the first House member to use YouTube, in May 2006. Now they, the American people, and the world have a video hub offering unprecedented access to the US government. Many of the Senators and Representatives have original content as well as videos of them in session. You can watch the combined "Welcome to Congress" video.

So...what stories will Congress be telling versus the stories we want to hear?

Six Secrets of Slumdog Millionaire's Success

I like reading the headlines on Yahoo!. And whatever headline strikes my fancy, I read.

If you are not familiar with advertisting and copy writing, it's all about the headlines. The headlines do the heavy lifting of getting you to read more, to act, to call, to write, etc. Headlines can also be verbal as with television news and radio news announcing.

Here's the basic process we all follow if the headline does its job.

a. Picture or headline attracts our attention
-- Look below and you'll see the center image of Freida Pinto, one of the stars of Slumdog Millionaire. To her right is the headline, "Why 'Slumdog' caught fire" (click on the image and a larger, better quality version will display).

b. Subheadline explains just enough to whet our mental appetite
-- Right below the headline you'll find "'Slumdog Millionaire" was supposed to go straight to DVD. Now it's an Oscar favorite.'"

c. Have a call to action
-- Yahoo! includes a clickable link "» New starlet helps"

Article writer Jonathan Crow then delivers on the article's promise of giving us the six secrets. While #2 is all about the story of the movie itself, truly, all six of the items have a story to tell. Here are the six secrets.

1. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
2. An Incredible Story
3. Director Danny Boyle
4. Actress Freida Pinto
5. The Tourist Factor
6. Bollywood

Finally, a College Course on Flirting for Techies

Reuters posted an interesting and short review of a new college course on flirting for techies. Potsdam University, south of Berlin, started its new course yesterday. Philip von Senftleben, course professor, summed up his role as helping "get someone else's heart beating fast while yours stays calm." (Use Yahoo!'s Babel Fish to translate both sites from German to English).

According to Reuters', "The 440 students enrolled in the master's degree course will learn how to write flirtatious text messages and emails, impress people at parties and cope with rejection...Students also learn body language, public-speaking, stress management and presentation skills."
 
"We want to prepare our students with the social skills needed to succeed both in their private life and their work life," said Hans-Joachim Allgaier, a spokesman for the institute at Potsdam University where the course is being offered.

Very, very interesting. There are so many sources for helping people find love. Television shows, magazine articles, web sites, radio shows, blogs, studies, you name it, claiming to help you be better at helping attract and helping to be more attractive. Like everything else in communication, this course attempts to put a science on top/into human behavior.

In my humble 40 plus years as an adult, I can emphatically state that there is no substitute for in-person social interaction. The more and more the Internet replaces and substitutes physical interaction with bits and bytes, the more troubles everyone will have in attracting and keeping friends, colleagues, and business partners.