STRATEGIC STORYTELLING How to tell compelling stories that navigate through the noise, boost your brand, and drive sales.

SPONSORED BY:

Lawrence Ragan Communications, Inc. Strategic Storytelling

Table of Contents

Introduction...... 1

The three elements of a story...... 2

How to find stories within your company...... 3

Starting your story: the anecdotal lede ...... 5

How to bring your story to life with video...... 6

How to write memorable speeches & intriguing op-eds ...... 8

How to write compelling press releases...... 12

Storytelling using brand journalism...... 14

How to get emotional with images...... 18

How to educate and entertain with infographics ...... 20 Strategic Storytelling

Introduction

A young woman wakes up in a hotel bed—hung over, maybe—and realizes she’s wearing a ring with a fat diamond on it.

What’s going on here?! She looks around at the mess—a man’s shoes, a room service cart, and ... a wedding dress? A man emerges from the bathroom. It’s her new husband: George Clooney.

The video for the Norwegian bank DNB spins a fantasy yarn and stars the famous actor (when he was still a bachelor). As Clooney turns on the laptop to show his bride the little cottage he has in mind for them to buy, a slogan appears: “Some people are lucky in life. For the rest of us, saving up can be smart.”

The video sparked a major change for the company across Norway, rejuvenating the brand and overturning its old, stuffy image as a place with poor customer service, says Arnt Eriksen, a writer, speaker, and chief innovation officer who formerly worked for DNB .

Your company isn’t just an organization. It is a story. There are narratives to be found in its history, employees, and customers. You can present your story in white papers, videos, blogs, speeches, op-eds, websites, and even press releases. Storytelling isn’t just a clever way to package your product. Stories help our minds process information, and they are how major brands make themselves unforgettable .

This guide from Nasdaq Corporate Solutions and Ragan Communications offers tips for telling your story though different channels .

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The Three Elements of a Story

Estela and the three-legged stool You tell your company’s story every day through multiple channels. But just what is it that makes a story a story?

Once upon a time, Rob Biesenbach—an author, actor, consultant, and former vice president at Ogilvy PR Worldwide—was producing an internal video for a candy factory. He stopped to chat with an employee named Estela who worked on a chewing gum production line.

“Boy, your kids must think you’ve got a really cool job, working in a candy factory,” Biesenbach recalls telling her.

Estela lit up. “They love me!” she said.

She showed him a code on the package that records where the gum was made, right down to the production line. Her kids could read the code. Whenever they went to the store, they would check the packages and tell everybody around, “My mommy made this gum!”

Bingo. A story about pride in work. The gum is good enough for your family, because Estela makes sure it’s good enough for hers .

So here’s how to create a narrative about your Estela. Think of a story as a three-legged stool, Biesenbach says. The legs are:

• Character

• Goal

• Obstacle

“It’s a character in pursuit of a goal in the face of some challenge or obstacle,” Biesenbach says, “and how that character resolves that challenge, gets over that obstacle, provides the dramatic tension and the human interest that keeps us tuned in.”

That would make Estela the character . Quality is her goal . The obstacle/challenge is how to do that in the mundane activity of packaging gum day after day. She meets that challenge by treating her customers like family.

Other examples of employees as characters? A Domino’s pizza video—“Handmade by Domino’s”—featured employees in their avocations away from work: Diego is a muralist, Crystal a painter, Chris a glassblower, Adam a carpenter, and Kimberly a sugar sculptor. The video emphasized their work as artists, not merely workers who slather sauce on dough. Yet the implication is clear: They bring the same craftsmanship to their day job.

Walmart’s “Real People” blog posts and videos featuring employees such as a female West Point graduate and Iraq veteran, and a store greeter who is a diabetic and amputee but is so dedicated that she gets up at 4:30 a.m. every day to get to work on time. The content serves a recruiting purpose, but it also acts as subtle PR, suggesting that the retail chain treats its staff well .

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How to Find Stories Within Your Company

It’s hard to tell a grand corporate narrative, but stories about people can help make your points. Stories transcend all learning styles and cultures. People remember them.

Here are some ways to mine for story gold in your organization:

1. Monitor the Web, especially social media

When Southwest Airlines frequent flyer Paul Lovine wanted to propose to his girlfriend, an airplane seemed like an ideal place to culminate what had long been a commuter relationship.

After she accepted, he blogged and tweeted about what happened, and Southwest’s social media team picked up on the mentions. The airline contacted him and ended up writing a heartwarming story for its blog. All of which proves that Twitter and other social media are not only conduits where passengers complain about delayed flights and lost baggage, but are also a source of stories.

As Southwest’s emerging media coordinator declared, “Every tweet is essentially a story idea.”

2. Tell about your humble beginnings

The hero of your story needn’t be an individual. Tell the story of your company’s origin, says Dave Kerpen, CEO of Likeable Local. This “allows even the largest global brands the opportunity to trace their evolution back to the people who planted their roots.”

A New York Times piece on business storytelling amplifies this notion: “Who helped you along the way? Mentors? Siblings? Former bosses? Who was your first customer? When did you get that initial big client or order that catapulted you from mom-and-pop to multiple outlets? When was it clear you had something special?”

3. Create beats and ‘embed’ reporters

If you’re practicing brand journalism (see “Storytelling Using Brand Journalism” on page 14), you’ll probably organize your staff with a newsroom-like structure. Divide your business into beats, and embed your reporters outside corporate offices and in the field.

If you’re running a one-person shop, make sure you get out, see what’s going on, and cultivate your own sources.

4. Use search to find frequently discussed topics

A disproportionate number of video (and article) ideas come from bosses, says Drew Keller, media consultant and owner of StoryGuide. What are your competitors doing?

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Type your topic in a search window and see what they’re looking for, Keller says. Type “golf,” for example, and the first topic is “golf etiquette.” If you’re a golf ball maker, how about a series on manners and rules out on the links?

5. Illustrate trends with people

Find an employee or consumer who represents a trend. It’s the difference between reporting an increase in Black Friday spending and interviewing a customer who is waiting outside one of your retail stores at 5 a.m. Focus on the individual as a way of telling the broader trend story .

6. Use sources to find better sources

Let’s say someone gives you the name of an employee who might be a good interview subject, Keller says. You call her up. She proves to be incapable of speaking without jargon or complex explanations. Rats.

Don’t hang up yet. Thank her for her time, tell her she was helpful, and ask her if she knows anybody else who is passionate about the topic. She might direct you to just the source you need.

7. Spotlight customers who have overcome obstacles

Few stories make a greater impact than celebrating the perseverance and performance of your customers, Kerpen says. “Shine a light on their success and you will share the spotlight,” he adds. Southwest Airline’s blog, Nuts About Southwest, features a customer who was paralyzed in a ski accident but has been improving through care at a hospital across the country. He was helped by the airline’s medical transportation grant program.

8. Take your audience backstage

As a child of the ’80s, Matt Raymond, head of marketing strategy and PR solutions at Nasdaq, watched a lot of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” His favorite episode: the visit to the crayon factory where workers mixed and colored the wax, formed the crayons, and collated them into neat cartons. “From the outside, the plant was nondescript and boring, but inside, there was magic happening,” he states. Where is magic happening in your organization?

9. Cover mistakes your company made and what you learned from them

This is nuts, right—calling attention to a poor decision or crisis? Not at all. Your customers understand that we are all human and we make mistakes, Raymond says. Use these stories to be transparent about your choices and communicate what you learned .

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Starting Your Story: The Anecdotal Lede

Major newspapers use the anecdotal form of news writing on their front pages nearly every day. Bonus: It’s great for wading into a complicated story.

This human-focused, anecdotal approach also can help you lead into sub-points in longer articles or white papers. Consider this example of the anecdotal lede from The Wall Street Journal:

The key to a free night’s stay in Jim Medrano’s New York City apartment isn’t a stellar rating on Airbnb or a lot of frequent-traveler points.

It is really just about knowing the right words to say—in Esperanto.

Through a service called “Pasporta Servo,” speakers of this artificial language developed more than a century ago have access to a directory of hosts from all corners of the globe, willing to open their houses free to promote a tongue with no home of its own.

Let’s break that down:

The first paragraph introduces a character and hooks you with a catchy idea—in this case, a free night’s stay in one of the world’s most expensive cities. What traveler wouldn’t want that? Read on.

Paragraph two highlights an irony or underscores the opening: Visitors have to be fluent in a language with no native speakers. (Often a quote in the second paragraph achieves this purpose.)

The third paragraph is the “nut graf,” explaining what the story is all about.

How to pull all that together in your workplace? Follow these steps:

1. Dash off three or four sentences establishing what your story is about. Example: This 650-word piece will explain how the company’s software helps customers educate their workforce through webinars.

2. Find a customer or employee who embodies that. Example: A medical group that educates remote staff in new treatments or procedures using our software.

3. Interview your subject in a way that provides a telling anecdote, followed by a dramatic or colorful quote. Don’t let your shy salesperson get away with generalities. Push for specifics. Can( you tell me one specific time you did that? What was the funniest/weirdest/most interesting time you...?) One reporter said her best question for getting specifics was simple: “Like, for instance?”

4. Write your three-paragraph top. Feel free to pose a question in the “nut graf” that sets up the rest of the article.

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How to Bring Your Story to Life with Video

E. M. Forster, the novelist best known for “A Passage to India,” once wrote that, “The king died, and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot.

A narrative requires causality . One domino knocks over another . A causes B. His Majesty dies. Mad with grief, the queen then dies. How? Did she take her own life? Lock herself in a room and waste away as courtiers fought over power?

Your story also requires causality. Your company provided equipment and training to health care volunteers in rural Africa. Health improved in the area. Can you establish causality?

Biesenbach—who made the video about Estela, the candy factory mom—cites an all-caps memo by playwright and screenwriter David Mamet to the writers of the CBS drama “The Unit.” It’s a terrific memo for anyone making a video.

Read the whole thing when you have time, but note this:

THERE IS NO MAGIC FAIRY DUST WHICH WILL MAKE A BORING, USELESS, REDUNDANT, OR MERELY INFORMATIVE SCENE AFTER IT LEAVES YOUR TYPEWRITER. YOU THE WRITERS, ARE IN CHARGE OF MAKING SURE EVERY SCENE IS DRAMATIC.

With that in mind, we offer some techniques to use in your video storytelling.

Establish character. This could be an individual, such as an executive or Estela the candy lady. Even if you’re telling a company story, think small: Which individual epitomizes your bigger story? Remember, visuals are more dynamic out in the field, away from the cubicles and corner offices.

Filson, a Seattle outfitter and clothing manufacturer, has made a high-country-on-horseback video, Open“ Door to Solitude,” that runs more than six minutes. It’s about a man who heads up into the high country every year. We feel we know him as he saddles up his horse. Note the tight shots that establish intimacy. Plus, there is barely any product mention.

Knock your character off stride. Show an “inciting incident” that rattles him or her. Arnold Palmer Hospital’s “The Tin Man” doesn’t boast about the facility’s great surgeons or state-of-the-art medical equipment. It presents an ordinary couple who discover their unborn baby has a major heart defect. Have a box of tissues handy when you watch it.

Create an obstacle that must be overcome. The more vital the goal, the more compelling your video. In the 97-minute documentary “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead,” Breville, a high-end maker of juicers, tells the story of Australian businessman Joe Cross, whose obesity and poor diet are making him sick. He vows to lose 100 pounds through a juice-only regimen during a trip across America. Along the way, he teams up with an overweight trucker who is even sicker .

Again, there is only a brief product placement in the movie, but when it was released, Breville “sold out of juicers in three days,” says Andrew Davis, author of “Brandscaping.” (Breville was a client of his.) “They didn’t even have any in

6 Strategic Storytelling their Australian offices to ship to us. … That’s the power of inspiring content.”

Drive suspense. Will your character achieve his or her goal? Will the juicer guys lose weight, or end up in a cardiac unit? Will the baby in “The Tin Man” recover from a high-risk surgery?

Resolve the problem. You don’t have to save a baby’s life to make a good video. You could simply show how you solved a client’s problem. A video for MasterCard Netherlands focuses not on credit cards, but on a baker who doesn’t want his employees handling grubby euro bills, then grabbing a loaf of bread off the rack for customers.

The issue may not be as life-or-death as open-heart surgery, but it’s a problem any customer can identify with.

Meet your audience’s needs. Video doesn’t always have to be highly polished or done on a major budget. Consider Gary Vaynerchuk. Before he became a bestselling author and social media influencer, he inherited his father’s wine store in New Jersey. It did a few million dollars a year in business—until Vaynerchuk realized that people collected wines the way he collected baseball cards, says Davis, the “Brandscaping” author.

Ding, ding, ding! An idea. He asked himself, “What about all those men who watch the Jets [an American football team] on Sunday and would like a no-nonsense, ESPN-style show that was all about wine?” Davis says.

Five days a week, Vaynerchuk produced a quick, inexpensive, regular-guy video in which he reviewed three wines . The video series became a hit. Return on investment? His business grew to a $60 million a year powerhouse, and roughly 90,000 people watched his videos weekly, Davis says. What topic can your company discuss with passion and teach your audiences about?

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How to Write Memorable Speeches & Intriguing Op-Eds

SPEECHES: HOW TO INSPIRE YOUR AUDIENCE THROUGH STORIES

When Jon Favreau, then a novice speechwriter, started crafting speeches for Sen. Barack Obama, he would ask himself, “What’s the snappy sound bite? What’s the clever and memorable line that I could write?”

The future president taught him that such questions are artificial. ocusF instead, Obama said, on this: “What’s the story I’m trying to tell?”

Here are some tips on how to do that:

Prioritize three ideas Speechwriter Michael Long says quickly sketching out your three big ideas saves time and gives you an instant outline. Then, whether your speech is five, 10, or 20 minutes, you can fill in detail as you go. It’s a great way to work on a tight deadline .

“As simple as that sounds, it’s the great forgotten skill of speechwriting,” he says.

Tell about values in action The best way to show a value is by modeling it on your own life, recalls Rob Friedman, Eli Lilly’s senior director of executive communications. Lilly was promoting work/life balance, and the former president of the company’s U.S. operations illustrated the principle when he explained why he’d changed his speaking time at a conference.

It was the third “dad’s day” since the exec’s son had started school, but only the first that the father had attended, he told his audience. He confessed, “I realized that’s really bad, and I’m never going to miss another one.” Then, choking up a little, he said, “Put your family first.”

That story—a genuine, unscripted moment—carried more power than any corporate directive.

Motivate and inspire Motivational speeches generally have one theme: “I got knocked down, and I got back up,” Lilly’s Friedman says.

How about that of Wilma Rudolph, an African-American girl? She was born prematurely in Tennessee in 1940 and had a weak, deformed left leg. Unable to get treatment at a local whites-only hospital, her mother took her to a black medical college in Nashville twice a week, Friedman says.

She was 12 when she first walked without corrective shoes and braces. In September 1960 in Rome, she became the first American woman to win three medals in the Olympics.

Use such stories to lead into your message or convey a value to your audience. Inspirational stories don’t have to be about a person. They can be about your company. Just make sure you can make a genuine connection to your message.

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Provide a framing story Used early in the speech, a framing story serves as an analogy that the speaker returns to throughout. Friedman cites a speech titled “The Sound of Leadership: What Women Know and Businesses Need to Hear,” delivered by Barry Salzberg, CEO of Deloitte, and written by speechwriter Elaine Bennett.

In a speech to a women’s leadership conference, Salzberg considered Maria Von Trapp—whose story was told in “The Sound of Music”—from her manager’s point of view. She won’t stick to her duties, nor to the working hours she’s assigned. Compliance was a challenge for her. “Eventually, her co-workers get so frustrated that they complain to management—singing, ‘How do you solve a problem like Maria?’” But, Salzberg said, given different opportunities, she thrived .

“There are ‘Marias’ in companies everywhere in the world,” Salzberg said. “Women whose talents have not been properly recognized or deployed.”

Tell a human story This type of story captures indelible emotion. Melvin Goodes, retired chairman and chief executive of Warner- Lambert, began a speech, “What do you do when sit with your doctor and he starts with the only words you didn’t want to hear: ‘I’m sorry; you have early-stage Alzheimer’s’?”

He added, “It was my doctor speaking, and he was addressing that difficult message to me.”

With that opener, who can forget Goodes’ call for speeding up the pace of scientific research and innovation?

So many companies tell a story with itself or its products as the primary subject, but we all share the human experience and can relate to stories that focus on people. Look around you. Look at your colleagues and customers. How did your company play a part in their story?

How to Write Intriguing Op-Eds

Perhaps you’ve been there. Your chief executive says, “Say, how about whipping up an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal?”

If you want to land a piece in the Journal—or even The Canton Repository—it takes more than a vague desire for publicity. Op-ed page editors can tell you all about the panic-attack-inducing mush that clogs their inboxes every day. Here’s how to stand out.

Be passionate What gets your thought leader’s blood pressure up? What makes him or her growl: There oughta be a law!

Journalism—including opinion writing—thrives on conflict, not stasis. If the author’s pulse doesn’t race when he or she discusses a topic, why should an editor’s (or the reader’s, for the matter)?

“If a CEO is unwilling by nature to stick his or her neck out, then it’s not worth the trouble,” says Fraser P. Seitel, managing partner of Emerald Partners and co-author of “The Practice of Public Relations, 12th Edition.” He adds, “It’s got to express something that people feel strongly about.”

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Peg it to a news event Align your topic to today’s news, says Michael Long, director of writing for the School of Continuing Studies, Department of Public Relations and Corporate Communications, at Georgetown University.

This shows that you’re not just pawning off marketing copy. “The editor needs to see that it’s part of the public conversation already,” Long says.

Tell a story Here’s a secret: Most op-ed writers overlook the power of anecdotal ledes. They think they’re supposed to start out pontificating. But check this out:

“On March 5, police officers handcuffed the hands and feet of an eight-year-old girl in an Illinois school, then hauled her to the police station. The offense? Throwing a temper tantrum.”

Wow. That’s the opening to an opinion piece in Politico by Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Editors will remember a powerful story when they cull a few lucky winners from the hundreds or thousands of submissions they receive every week .

Hurry! Be timely, Seitel says. Got some thoughts on last week’s big news event? Too late. You won’t write it until the end of the day, nor get it approved until next week. Write while the topic is hot.

Don’t write by committee Talk to the exec, then shut the door of your office and write it alone. You can’t compose an op-ed by committee, Seitel says. Others might want to review it, but you can’t gather a task force in a conference room or you’ll end up with: “Acme Rocket-Powered Roller Skates™ Welcomes New Approaches to Trade.”

Don’t brag about products Chairman and Chief Executive T. Boone Pickens didn’t toot the horn of BP Capital in an op-ed in Politico. He pushed a perspective: free market reforms in the energy industry. You can cheer his proposals or criticize them, but his points are of national interest. Nothing irritates editors more than self-promotion.

Promote a good cause It must be sincere, and one your organization has genuine expertise or interest in, as when Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates put their names to an op-ed on eradicating polio . There has been a vaccine for decades . Why does the disease persist? Outrageous!

The Journal granted them a big piece of real estate to discuss a health calamity. Would it have done that for a piece about your latest produce enhancement?

Think short—and be witty, pithy or offbeat Newspapers get plenty of 1,000-word pontifications on important topics. But how about a 500-word piece that offers a fresh perspective? Think about how you can make a stronger, more memorable point in fewer words.

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Think regionally No, no, no, your boss says. You’ve gotta place it in The Washington Post, where senators will see it. But a well-placed op-ed in a less competitive regional paper might serve your cause as well.

Do you have a plant in Tennessee or Ohio? Are you importing containers through Tacoma, Washington, or Long Beach, California? Try arguing your case in papers from those cities, where the competition for op-ed space isn’t as fierce. Illustrate your point with local examples. You can even “syndicate yourself” by placing it in several non- competing markets—something the Times and Journal won’t let you do.

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How to Write Compelling Press Releases

Bea Broderick, associate vice president at Prosek Partners, once heard a speaker who likened press releases to tires on a car. Those maligned press announcements are necessary for your PR machine to go anywhere, but nobody buys a car for the tires. They buy it for other reasons, such as the engine.

“The story is the engine of your PR,” Broderick says. “You really need to focus on the thing that’s going to move your car.”

Here are some ways to rev up the engine in your press releases:

Focus on people “Stories can show how your product or service lives in the world, how it shoulders our burdens, meets our needs,” says Ann Handley, chief content officer of MarketingProfs. “Stories also make our companies real-world and human, because we are telling stories not about technology, but about people.”

Whether you sell technology or toasters, your story is always about people, she adds. To incorporate storytelling into a press release, focus on clients or customers. Tell their story—how you helped them sell more, expand market share, conquer the world .

To do so:

• Make your customer the hero of your press release. • Provide the inside view and give specifics. • Offer details on what exactly happened.

She cites a press release for an event hosted by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Though technically about a Wharton executive summit, the subject line was “What a Wasabi Ginger Potato Chip Can Teach Us About Your User-Generated Growth Strategy.”

“Notice that it focuses on the story of the Lay’s wasabi chips (and Pepsi), and not the Wharton summit itself,” Handley says. “It’s not about the summit; it’s about what I will learn there.”

Write it for your external audience, not for your CEO A lot of PR pros, pressured by executives, use press releases to regurgitate key company internal messages, Broderick says. Instead, write for your audience—journalists and customers among them.

Likewise, remember that press releases are no longer read exclusively by members of the media, Broderick says. Today press releases also reach bloggers, consumers and constituents. Yet many organizations still take a “For Immediate Release”-type approach when they write a news release.

Use the narrative arc, says Broderick. That is, begin with a quandary. Relate the journey to resolve this. Explain the outcome. Tell the lessons learned. Often people read through press releases very quickly, but they want to be engaged.

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Think about mobile Almost 2 billion people are using smartphones worldwide, including journalists. No one is consuming content merely via a desktop computer.

Write a short headline and brief overview that grabs people’s attention. Make it catchy, descriptive and honest. Don’t bother with that two-page press release. No one’s going to read it.

Make it part of a cascade of content “The press release is functional on its own, but it needs to be part of a cascading event of content,” Broderick says. “You have to have more content associated with the press release to keep people engaged and to draw people in.” This could be a multimedia blog post, an infographic, a video, a survey or other content. You’ll get nowhere just putting out press release and waiting for someone important to read it or tweet it.

“The press release is the initial part of the conversation,” Broderick says. “You’ve issued your press release, but you need to have a formal strategy of engagement after the fact.”

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Storytelling Using Brand Journalism

Some envision a communications future in which organizations spread their messages like bread-crumb trails through Twitter, Facebook or whatever platform emerges next week. A new movement sees the future in an old media institution known for bad coffee, snappish editors and storytelling prowess under pressure: the newsroom.

A growing number of organizations are embracing a communications philosophy under the name “brand journalism.” They are hiring reporters and photographers to write articles, shoot pictures and produce videos that draw readers to their websites and heighten brand awareness .

Brand journalism is the effort by any organization—corporations, the military, rock bands, nonprofits—to position itself by creating content ranging from articles to video to white papers, says David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of “Real-Time Marketing & PR.”

“I think all websites in the future will look like The Wall Street Journal online or MSNBC.com,” Scott says. “The good ones already do.”

Advocates cite examples such as iQ by Intel (see below), American Express OPEN Forum (ditto), and HSBC Global Connections. This can rope in potential customers.

The style of such articles is journalistic, geared toward informing rather than marketing a product. Media outlets once would have balked at using corporate-produced B-roll, but with declining staffs these days, they are more willing to bite .

To pull it off, though, it’s necessary to hold marketing at arm’s length (even if you’re under the umbrella of the marketing department), says Shel Holtz of Holtz Communication + Technology. Brand journalism differs from old-fashioned advertorials. Companies including Cisco and Intel are trying to build credibility while reporting on their industry.

Former CNN bureau chief leads Chrysler’s brand journalism team Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne was at the company’s plant in Belvidere, Illinois, which assembles the Dodge Dart, when he saw a familiar face in the crowd.

Ed Garsten, head of FCA Digital Media, had brought a crew to shoot stills and video and to produce stories. Marchionne told Garsten with a smile, “You’re everywhere, just like the reporters that hound me.’“

Garsten smiled back. He was pleased. The team looked more like journalists covering a story than PR guys recording an event .

Chrysler Digital Media was one of the early adopters of brand journalism. Starting in 2006, Chrysler began producing journalistic video stories that are spread across social media and on Chrysler’s website. This helps journalists to better visualize the story and hear how sources sound in an interview.

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His team’s work is shared on Chrysler’s blog, YouTube channel, Livestream pages, and across its social media channels. They live-stream from auto shows, and produce feature stories designed to interest journalists as well as car buffs.

Its “Objects in the Mirror” blog offers stories such as “The Jeep Girls trek to ‘Fabulous Las Vegas’” (part of a series) and a piece on how Chrysler hosted a Halloween party “to help keep Detroit youth off streets on Devil’s night.”

Chrysler produces a weekly news recap, “FCA Replay,” which has won multiple awards, as has the media website, Garsten says. The recap seeks to interest members of the media in both major news and under-covered stories. A recap discusses matters such as pricing and fuel economy numbers for the 2015 Ram ProMaster City and a nationwide FCA challenge to high school students to design a new Dodge vehicle.

On the blog, Chrysler has responded to current events, such as last winter’s weather. One story featured a Jeep owner in Peachtree Corner, Georgia, who drove around in a snowstorm helping dozens of stranded people.

A video story on the new Chrysler World Class Manufacturing Academy in Warren, Michigan, succeeded in interesting journalists who might not have shown up otherwise.

“We produced the feature ... and sent it out to the stations so they would see just how cool the facility is,” Garsten says. “It worked. All of the Detroit TV stations covered the story.”

Garsten’s corporate newsroom consists of eight people works within corporate communications, which has 45 staffers. There’s an in-house studio, and three multimedia reporters are assigned beats around Chrysler’s brands, as well as subjects such as technology. The staffers handle blog posts, video, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Vine.

The return on all this activity? Garsten notes that the company has had 55 consecutive months (and counting) of sales increases, “and we like to think we’re a big part of the overall success,” he says.

What makes American Express’s content site a raging success? It’s an alarming statistic, hinting at shattered dreams and financial ruin for hardworking moms and pops all vero the U.S.: Nearly 60 percent of small businesses fail within four years.

American Express wanted to reduce that number, says Carrie Parker of American Express OPEN Forum, a content marketing website dedicated to small-business education.

What the company figured out was this: Small-business owners excel in the area of their expertise. If they build widgets, they know those widgets inside and out.

What they tend to lack, however, is the knowhow to run a business: finding real estate, setting up payroll, and hiring temporary support. “They are desperate for content,” Parker says.

Thus American Express created OPEN Forum—an information and business community platform—to provide just that. The result is an object lesson for communicators and content marketers of any stripe. Look for ways to focus editorial output on consumer needs, not on blabbing about your organization’s righteousness.

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The approach makes financial sense for the credit card company, but helping business was more than that, Parker says. It is a calling for people who see successful small businesses as individual cells in a greater economy of growth.

OPEN Forum began as a series of conferences and events to educate small-business owners about best practices. AmEx also has programs teaching people how to land a government contract.

AmEx created an online platform to post its conference videos and help people share business information. The team studied how journalists would play a role in this, visiting newsrooms for media outlets such as Business Insider, Mashable and Vocus to learn the mechanics of their news production.

“We wanted to learn how,” Parker says. “Not the ‘what,’ but how do they operate. ... We wanted to replicate a lot of that as we built out our newsroom.”

Today that has grown into a site with a paid editorial staff, as well as guest writers who contribute in five areas: leadership, marketing, customer service, technology, and money and finance. Users sign in with their LinkedIn credentials, creating a social media aspect.

Stories include “Could Gamification Be Your Secret Weapon?” “How a ‘Thinking Dumb’ Strategy Helped This Business Innovate,” and “How a Simple Story Can Improve Your Business.”

How Intel tripled traffic to its online magazine in under a year Intel has made a thought leadership play with its Web magazine iQ, which features stories about people doing amazing things in technology, from health care to music.

The stories help position a company that doesn’t directly sell to consumers, but which manufactures components used in Dell and HP computers. Intel is trying to move beyond clicks and page views to measuring engagement and time spent on the page. iQ finds tech angles in surprising places. Stories include Big“ Data Steers Recreational Sailing Team in Race Across the Pacific” and “Congolese Miners: In the Trenches of the Conflict-Free Mineral Movement.”

As a part of a series on wearable technology, one story explores how matters such as speed, strength, size, endurance and workload are becoming easier to measure. “Coaches gobble up the valuable information that can be used to improve an athlete’s fitness level, gauge injuries and stress fractures, offer methods on how to push potential,” iQ reports.

Note that many stories don’t mention Intel at all. The point isn’t old-fashioned promotion, but positioning the brand through interesting content .

The site’s stories and content are created both by staffers and by a stable of freelancers, says Intel’s Luke Kintigh. In 2012, iQ was publishing 10 to 15 original stories per month. That has jumped to 70 to 80 a month, giving Intel “the volume to optimize, to find the winners,” he says.

Intel offers an object lesson not only in brand journalism, but also in paid promotion of one’s content. Rather than pushing everything, Intel cuts its losses on less-popular content and promotes its best-read stories on channels such

16 Strategic Storytelling as Facebook, Outbrain, LinkedIn, Twitter, Taboola and Reddit. This strategy tripled iQ’s traffic in less than a year.

Monthly unique visitors shot up to 657,000 in September 2014 from 200,000–250,000 a year earlier. That means the value of its promotional spending also spiked.

“We’ve seen five to six times the traffic delivered to our website for the same amount of budget,” says Kintigh.

Intel developed its approach after it realized that 10 percent of its content brings 90 percent of the page views. What if it could identify that top content right away, rather than at the end of the week, and reallocate its promotional budget to push the popular stories?

In an article that goes up at 8 a.m., Intel can decide, in Kintigh’s words: “It’s noon now. It’s been published for four hours, but based on the traffic, it’s projected to hit a certain threshold.” iQ can then promote the story on Twitter, Facebook or another channel.

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How to Get Emotional with Images

It doesn’t take dialogue, narration or moving images to tell a story. Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and other platforms can be powerful platforms for telling your story. Even your blogs and website can do that.

Think story, not product. If you can’t find good images in your organization, maybe you need a different approach. Consider your people and what they do, not just the goods or services you provide.

“I would argue that there’s a story in any organization,” says Jeremy Porter, vice president of social media and content marketing practice at the marketing agency Definition 6. “There’s a visual story there. ... You just have to go out there and find it.”

How? Pretend you’re a local newspaper reporter (or photographer), and the town you cover is your company, he says. What visual “news” would interest your “residents”? Here’s where to look, Porter suggests:

• Cover the “government beat.” Talk to the “mayor” (your CEO, founder, or president) for ideas. From their perspective, what stories haven’t been told or images captured?

• Eat lunch where others in your organization have lunch, and gather news and image ideas while you refuel.

• Check out your employees on social media. “You may learn about interesting out-of-work hobbies or adventures your co-workers have, or causes they support that are relevant to the work you do,” Porter says.

• Talk to the makers— that is, the people who design or create your products or services, whether current or up-and-coming. Backstage photos could fascinate your customers and fans.

• Corner the sellers. Your salespeople are closest to what you do well. They know who your best customers are, and what changes are going on in the marketplace.

• Ask the buyers. Some of the best ideas from customers . Talk to customers about their business and how you started working together .

Toyota’s viral image Toyota in Cyprus had a simple idea. The brand created an Instagram image that teaches the dangers of taking selfies while driving. In doing so, Toyota proved the power of simple images in telling your story.

The company worked with Marketway Strategy, PR & Advertising to place 12 filters on a photo of a car that had been totaled by a driver who had been shooting a selfie.

It took off, spreading from local TV to worldwide media outlets. CNN mentioned Toyota in a story “Young drivers snapping ‘selfies’ at the wheel.” NBC Nightly News broadcast the image in a segment.

18 Strategic Storytelling

Disney’s 140 characters Every brand and organization out there these days is trying to do something clever with 140 characters. Leave it to Disney to launch a promotion by gathering 140 of its movie characters, lining them all up in the shape of a hashtag, and tweeting the photo.

The characters—among them Mickey Mouse, Peter Pan, Pocahontas, Bowler Hat Guy, and Woody and Jessie from “Toy Story”—generated tons of love on Twitter and YouTube and in the mainstream media.

The tweet and accompanying video trumpeted a bicoastal “all-night extravaganza” on Memorial Day weekend in 2014, the traditional start of the family travel season, Disney Parks’ Social Media Director Thomas Smith wrote in a blog post.

The stunt was accompanied by a press release, but the success underscores the power of social and digital platforms to score retweets, shares, and mainstream media impressions from mere images and video.

BuzzFeed ran a picture of the image under the headline “Presenting the greatest hashtag to ever exist: thank you Disney!” Fox 8 WGHP ran a piece that itself scarcely differed from a press release, blaring that “Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, Pluto and 135 of their friends came together to trumpet the countdown to ‘Rock Your Disney Side: 24-Hours’ this Memorial Day Weekend.” Mentions came in Orlando Attractions, the Orlando Sentinel, and other media outlets .

Disney topped it off with a “behind-the-scenes” video of how they got the picture. All in all, a huge PR boost from just one image .

Illuminate your products through stories. Rather than just show shelves full of organic raisin bran or bottles of olive oil, Whole Foods offers images with a story behind them.

The Whole Planet Foundation makes micro-loans to developing world farmers and others whose products are sold in the stores. In its Share the Buzz Web page and Pinterest board, Whole Foods emphasizes the importance of honey bees in agriculture. The company posts pictures on topics such as “Who wants dinner?!” and holiday festivities (don’t click; you’ll gain a pound just glancing at the dessert-laden page).

Publish fun pictures, such as holidays. “It’s OK to let the world know that your company likes to have fun,” writes communicator Chuck Gose. “Many places allow or encourage employees to dress up on Halloween, so why not let your customers and the world see it?”

19 Strategic Storytelling

How to Educate and Entertain with Infographics

Infographics are a great way of illustrating concepts or brand messages. Take a look at some of the stellar infographics around, such as the World Bank’s “Inclusive Green Growth,” Late Deals’ “Around the World in 80 Ways,” or Jessica Draws Media’s “The Chinese Social Media Landscape” (animated).

“Effective storytelling can help you cut through B2B information overload,” LookBookHQ says in a blog post . To drive home the message, LookBookHQ and Beutler Ink created (what else?) an infographic.

Here are some of their tips to make sure your storytelling is effective:

• Frame it as a story. Make sure it has a strong title and interesting hook.

• Show, don’t tell. People engage with visuals, particularly when combined with other content.

• Write catchy headlines. This helps focus engagement where you most want it.

• Manage information. Don’t rely on your audience to piece your story together; make your narrative clear.

• Don’t let your information get lost. “Bits of your story are scattered across the web,” LookBookHQ states. “Package the relevant pieces up and deliver your story.”

Be colorful—and recognizable A Harvard study, cited by Katie Bascuas in a blog post for Associations Now, showed that color and recognizable objects—such as icons and photos—were found to be memorable. The more varied and novel the visualizations, the more memorable they were. Diagrams, grids and matrices were retained better than bar graphs or lines.

Make it meaningful A powerful infographic is social media gold, Nicole Lampe writes for the Nonprofit Technology Network. Your graphics must be meaningful, and the data they convey must matter.

She recommends asking yourself questions that include:

• Whom are you trying to reach? Once you’ve identified your target, develop an infographic that resonates with them .

• What’s the takeaway? After all, everyone has seen graphics full of figures without a coherent narrative, Lampe writes.

• Why should your audience care? Can you tie it to current events, or people’s homes, health and happiness?

20 Strategic Storytelling

Finis...

Whether your company was founded in 1892 or in your garage last week, you have stories to tell. How so? Because a company is made up of its people, and people are living, breathing stories.

Treat your channels as vehicles in telling your story. Whether it’s through print, images, video, blogs, speeches, op-eds, brand journalism or press releases, you have multiple ways to create stories that help customers remember your brand.

21 YOUR PR TOOLS DON’T JUST NEED TO WORK. THEY NEED TO WORK TOGETHER.

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