B2B Storytelling: Creating Compelling Narratives to Communicate Innovative Technologies

[Music] hello and welcome to another episode of marcom mode your podcast and webinar series for marketing leaders who enjoy the challenge of driving growth for a company but are overwhelmed by being expected to achieve the same or even better results with fewer Resources with marcom mode we bring you meaningful convers ations with marketing and PR leaders who can provide real life examples of how to prioritize for Success overcome common challenges and build effective teams we also discuss what's working well and producing results while sharing best practices for generating a healthy pipeline building brand awareness and achieving Revenue goals as always I'm your host Kristen Jones and today we are fortunate because we have a special guest Susan Lindner who is the CEO and founder of Innovation storytellers welcome Susan and thanks for being on the show today oh my gosh this is going to be such a fun conversation Kristen I'm so looking forward to it oh me too I mean there are just so many things we can talk about um but I really want to dive into Innovation storytelling like what is it like why is it essential and how can we overcome challenges that always arise with any kind of opportunity to craft the compelling story yeah so Innovation storytelling is a little bit different than regular old storytelling in that it requires the Storyteller to paint a picture of the future that other people can't see yet and especially true of entrepreneurs who are you know creating breakthrough Technologies these are anyone who has Innovation as part of their mandate in their job description if it's not specifically stated in their title like a chief Innovation officer who is trying to drive change and so we need to take people from the status quo into a new reality and story is the bridge that gets us there and so when we start to think about what that future looks like it's our job as storytellers to talk about the most important word in my vocabulary which is Goodwill the act of making somebody else's life better as a result of making a change and so when we keep that as the heartbeat of the story Goodwill amazing things happen for both us as the teller and for our listeners I love that I was just talking with a colleague of mine who was talking about you know building purposeful Brands and she said some very similar things about you know it's just really important to make sure that why are you doing something and how are you making life or the world better I recently read a just a small study conducted by Stanford a Stanford University Professor named chip chip Heath and he asked his students to give one minute a one minute speech on non-violent crime and most of the students presented data of course like two and a half statistics per speech but only one out of 10 students told a story and so when the professor pulled all of his students just 10 minutes afterwards 63% of students remembered the stories and only 5% could remember a single stat and that's like that's eye opening about you know because sometimes you know marketing and Communications professional we come in with the stats and the survey questions and the ROI but if you don't have a story behind that then you don't have a story and so I would love to have you talk about you know you talked a little bit about how Innovation storytelling is unique but also when we're innovating we're using lots of stats and showing how we're better than the competition and in the B2B Sal cycle particularly it's about Roi so talk a little bit about how stats are important but they have to underpin a story yes they are you know I think of it as the ice cream rather than the whipped cream of the story right that um those statistics are really important but what's imperative if we want people to remember it and I often quote chip study in my own talks and um and in Consulting with big companies is we're 22 times more likely to remember the story right that's the statistic that you quoted and the reason why that matters is that storytelling now becomes an Executives in like the most valuable executive productivity device because when we our lives especially now postco are just filled with endless Zoom meetings and if we are expected to remember and act on three bullet points and the attached Excel spreadsheet we are not moved to act and so a great story and you know even the numbers require the addition of narrative in order to drive Human Action and so an innovation story in particular needs momentum it needs to build and it needs to um have owners of that story not just the people who tell it but for the listener to say wow that is so fantastic and the way you presented those numbers are so important that now I hear the story I internalize the story and most importantly I'm able to share the story with someone else because without that last piece we are missing out on memorability credibility and frankly the ability to drive change so that's why story Plus data is so important if we have an expectation of action we're not moved by numbers alone I mean otherwise none of us would smoke drink overeat um and sit on the couch instead of exercise we know all the numbers none of them have compelled us right to change our Behavior necessarily um it's not until we actually get an emotion behind it like I got to do this I do this for my kids I feel tons of shame I feel tons of fear I feel tons of guilt I feel elated when I'm done exercising emotion drives action that's why it matters would love it if you could share an example of how you've of a in an innovation of an innovation story that you've helped a client master and how you went about identifying what the story was crafting The Narrative and then bringing it to fruition all the way through having the executives actually be able to tell the story or stories yeah you know and you raised a good point about making that plural Like There's No One Singular story right that moves people into action you'll need like three or four depending on first and foremost laying the groundwork for the audience right so before I I'm happy to tell you lots of great stories but perhaps it's helpful for your readers especially folks who are in marcom like all of us are um and I've spent 20 years as a um high-tech PR person right um running an agency so using those experiences step one it the most important thing before you ever tell a story is to listen and I'm an anthropologist by training so we use tools like ethnography we want to understand the demographics the culture the mindset of the people that we're talking to we want to use a technique called appreciative inquiry for us lay folk um that's surveys and interviews of really beginning to appreciate what is positive and what is um a driving force for our listener that would change their behavior if I'm working in Innovation right I'm not just here to educate I'm here to shift from the status quo to the Future so I want to understand what are the behaviors and the beliefs that will drive action on the part of my listener so sometimes that's um you know I want to save time I want to make money I want to be more productive right your standard B2B cell but the question then becomes so we need to fill in the blank as communicators and ask the next question so that what happens oftentimes our B2B sales and we're trying to get these three bullet points right we save you this much we you know give you this much productivity back we save you this much time but that is the basis of a B2B sale every single B2B company in the world saves you time saves you money makes you more productive so my response to that is who cares if my lawyer saves me time money and makes me more productive because I didn't have to waste three years in law school go $200,000 in debt and then you know and then be able to figure out my $600 an hour problem right um so we need to go beyond that so if I'm a B2B Storyteller my next question is what is my customer doing with the time money and productivity that I'm giving him or her back so when I find that out oh wow you're going to use my product to expand to New Markets increase your product road map um take on new employees fire more employees um you know make decisions about what's coming next our new business model or how we'll deploy capital in a way that we never have before like those are the outcomes of the so that question so I might look at the very big picture and then the next level down I'll saywhat about for you personally maybe I want to save time save money make me more productive so that I can leave the office at 5:30 and see my kids soccer maybe that my cyber security software is not going off at all hours of the day and night and I actually get a weekend to myself you know maybe I want very selfishly I want this Tech to work or I want this product to work so I can get a raise or a promotion in the next two years right so do we actually know what the drivers are of our listeners before we ever start telling the story so as communicators let's make sure we ask those questions before we dive into just blaring out a story it's like pitching a reporter without even knowing what they write about you know I hear you or not knowing our personas around um you know the people that we're selling to the pain points of what their problems are yes you know and oftentimes so my specialty is working with non-native English speakers who are coming to the US to make their mark on the US market so they bring with them all kinds of delights and challenges um coming to this market and so I often say you know we're going to use a very New York example before I ever embark on the story ask yourself where is my customer bleeding from the neck how can I be the tourniquet not just the vitamin right how can I actually save them and make them the hero for stopping the bleeding right mine is just my thing whatever it is I'm selling is just a tool to help them become a hero which leads me to the next question if I could make you the hero of your own story what would need to happen and that for me is the quintessential dividing line and I Came Upon that Discovery when I was working in brothel in Thailand doing HIV education with sex workers and their customers and um those women were in very tough positions seeing about eight customers a night in um in an an area where one in six sexually active people were HIV positive and there were three AIDS funerals a day where I lived and to help get women out of SE out of the sex trade and into something different we had to ask them you know number one what is most important to you right now and across the board the answer was survival but when we said what would it take for you to become the hero of your own story The Answer wasi want to be in control of my own destiny so then the next question for us as development workers was how do we help them do that and the answer for us was entrepreneurship so helping women get out of the sex trade by training them while they were still in the trade to become their own small business owners was a way to put power back in their hands and rapidly reduce HIV infection because now they were motivated to use a condom every single time to make sure they you know they employed safe sex practices and then that became the thing with the the customers who said I'm not just here for pleasure as the hero I want to be the protector of my family I want to come out and have a good time but I don't want to bring HIV home to my wife and my unborn kids my future kids and even for the mamasan who own the broth she went from just being I'm here about the prophet I don't care about anyone else to I want to be the protector of my community and I want to ensure the longevity and the reputation of my establishment that's am that thinking about that shift you know was everything for me of like how do I make the listener the hero and digging way deeper down than just like saves time saves money makes you more productive so I think for your listeners asking even their clients to say what are they doing with all that time money and productivity you're saving them have them go back have the sales team go back and say how's your life changed a year after deploying this technology using our product being in relationship with you having this partnership whatever it is how has your life changed not just how's your work changed right get a plethora of answers you never thought possible that's was a bit of a securious way to answer the question what's a cool story told but I think we really have to ground ourselves as storytellers in thinking about the audience before we ever start speaking yes I love that I mean that's such a great and just poignant example of how you can really make change and like you said Behavior changes hard Behavior change was hard anyway but you know trying to any sixy old and you know like you said even in B2B sales we are actually selling to people and having them to make a big decis decision often that is quite expensive and we're all emotional creatures and we all know that emotion drives and influences us way more powerfully than you know data or a PowerPoint presentation or Roi I mean they have to have those things to close you know take it to their Executives but to like want to buy from you they have people buy from people they like and and businesses that they believe in and ways that can help them like you said become their own hero and Achieve what they want to achieve not what not what the salesperson wants to achieve so let's talk about you know again storytelling it's hard I mean if it were easy we'd all be writing blockbuster movies that's right and AI will be doing it next week yes um it's particularly hard like you said for companies and Executives who are in that Daily Grind of trying to make a product and you know grow the company so how do you get them what are the what are the biggest challenges that you have faced or that your clients have faced related to getting that Innovation story crafted and told and how have you helped them overcome those challenges yeah so let's talk about some of those great stories that you were asking me about um and how we do it so I'll use this as both a howto and an example so before we start writing the story ask yourself as the Storyteller now thinking about the change that you want to enact what do you want the listener when you are done speaking what do you need them to think what do you need them to feel and what do you need them to do so from a reputation standpoint or about a product or service maybe we need to educate them about how the product works or maybe we need to talk to them about uh the reputation or the brand right maybe we want to talk about um sticky situation like what we think about pending layoffs right or we're cutting that product that you've been working on we're now going to redeploy you somewhere else so what do we need people to think so I want to make sure that I have my data my information correct in my presentation in a way that's digestible what do I want them to feel so if I go to my next my call to action what do I need them to do if I need them to buy something if I need them to invest if I need them to partner if I need them to back off or get engaged if whatever the end goal is now make a map of the emotions your listener needs to feel in order to do the thing so make a list of of emotions like I need them to trust me I need them to feel energized I need them to feel supportive or helpful I need them to feel fear or disgust or rage you decide as the Storyteller tell ER like any great screenwriter when at what point do you add the suspense or the feeling that makes the listener Palm sweat and their heartbeat faster that's all on you the Storyteller so think about what is the thing I need them to do and now we back into the what do I need them to feel in order to do the thing and then so I'll give you an example so I got to Corning Glass um which is one of the biggest glass manufacturers in the world and I was assigned to work with the team of fractographs I don't know if you've ever had the Good Fortune Kristen of working with fractographs I had not and I didn't know what they were something about light FR light no great guess but these are the scientists who study how glass breaks very vital right what how it fractures fractures yeah so um so these are the folks who determine when your head hits a windshield whether or not the wind will pop out whether it will bend or whether it will break into a thousand little rounded marbles so you don't get shards of glass in your neck right very important people in a glass factory and they were about to announce or to ask rather the CEO and the board for funding for a new windshield that they were creating so this windshield they decided they were going to present to the board with a 59 page PowerPoint deck that began the first two slides with an electron model of the sand that went into the making of the windshield and I thought oh my God I'm going to die from boredom if we are starting off at the sand level um we're never going to get to the benefits of this fantastic windshield and so in the middle of that presentation one of the fractographs became an ant and Amy was ooing and eyeing showing us the pictures on her cell phone of this adorable little baby um that was just born in Ohio and so after the oooing and eyeing the fractographs went back to the sand diagram and we getting into the protons and I was like my eyes were just in the back of my head and so I said Amy Show us the picture of that baby one more time I said guys look at this baby imagine those tiny little neurons firing at a million miles an hour as it learns everything new it absorbs and imagine those capillaries growing and just bringing blood to every corner of this kids's body and their pancreas growing at just amazing proportions right with each heartbeat of this baby and they looked at me like I had three heads and they looked back at their electron model and said we're getting a little granular aren't we I was like yes and that's the worst sand joke ever I see what they did there they got it so so with that in mind I said you know we need to we need to zoom out and step back and really think about what matters so long story short we got down to a 10-page slide Deck with the Storyteller beginning the story with imagine yourself sitting in your self-driving Tesla cruising through traffic in the middle of LA but instead of stressing you get to rest and recline and watch the second half of Bridget Jones diary or catch up on those last couple of emails you left in your draft folder at the office and that's because your windshield has now become your personal productivity and entertainment device imagine your 55inch flat screen TV has now just replaced your windshield gosh that's the windshield that we're offering to Tesla today with your help of $1.5 million going from way too Grand and this is the problem right a lot of storytellers get either super granular or super grandiose we're going to die from if we don't address climate change right yeah we get down to electrons and there's oftentimes nothing in between so story tellers need to meet Their audience where they are and and don't forget everyone on that Corning board has a BD after their name you know their phds in chemistry and and physics and everything else but that's not their day-to-day and that's not where their brain is and so that's how we need to tell a story by figuring out exactly what matters to the people in the room so how did you get them to I mean to make that transition and get to I mean how did you coach them and help them down that path to get down to 10 slides in such a great story you know first is a recognition especially with innovators that like at some point in time our school system has failed us right at the University level one side goes to the humanities side of campus and the other side goes to the science side of campus and the science side folks are told that everything that's happening on the humanities is right it's fluff it's nothing it's um it's not even verifiable everything we do is empirical and true and provable and the deeper you get into your specific area of expertise the more granular the more focused the language becomes and so what the scientist forget is that there's this whole field of communication science that the rest of us mark on folks have been working on for a very long time you know and and certainly chip is one of the leaders in that discussion right so as we think about it um joining these two folks back together again is first a reminder we've got science too that I'd like to share with them and by the way if you want to get this chocolate with this peanut butter together you're gonna have to speak a little bit of this other language so that we can understand you otherwise we're just lost and and so I also think um some innovators never get to the customer at all so while they're so thrilled like they've fallen in love with their own invention rather than the client's problem that um and they don't get to talk to the customer so that the fact that they've invented a new kind of sand is the most exciting thing to them the fact it actually has to be applied and put into an automobile at some point is a reminder to reconnect back to like why it is that we're doing what what is the Goodwill that we're actually offering the market yep and it goes back to your first statement of how are you making life better you know yeah and especially the audience in the room right the fact that they're going to make bajillions on it fantastic right that might be a good reminder for the board and the CEO um but also we're going to have the most Cutting Edge freaking coolest windshield on the planet right and we have the smartest scientists in the room making it happen with these new Innovations in sand absolutely absolutely this is why we can do it and no one else can right how do you make sure when you're telling these Innovation stories how do you make sure that it's aligned with business priority priorities now I know that was a good example that you just gave about you know this great new windshield that we're going to bring to Market and self-driving car cars is a burining market and so we're entering this new market of self-driving cars with new windshields so obviously that ties in to the business strategy how do you how what do you do you go through a process of understanding what the business goals are and where they're trying to you know expand Revenue as you're embarking on this journey yeah and revenue may not always be the biggest driver right for me for my clients who are largely Chief Innovation officers and their teams product managers sometimes ux and customer experience folks oftentimes they're operating on fantastic experiments and they're at prototype level and so the next rung of influence as we look at those concentric circles is maybe the engineering team whose plate is already full just trying to meet each quarter's demand but now we're like we've got this cool new idea and it looks like it's going to work can you help us scale it and the engineering team goes uh with what extra hands yeah so now my Innovation story now I shift and go what matters to the engineer what's going to make them the hero of the story not necessarily the customer sitting in his Tesla but rather now my engineering team so now I got to think about what benefits they incur as a result because frankly for most of the Innovation team someone else always takes credit for the Innovation it's not that they created it it's who got to scale it sell it Market it um watch the stock price go go up all those other people take credit for it while the innovator is already failing in their next new experiment right so it's figuring out that next level and sometimes you know sometimes it's um it's hard stuff it's how do we get people to be productive for the next six months knowing that we're about to lay them off you know I've talked to clients who said we're embarking on an AI program that is absolutely amazing and groundbreaking and everyone who helps up the AI will be out of a job right they're training their own robot to replace them right that's disheartening I'm sure so how do they motivate them so you know the story is you are going to be at The Cutting Edge of learning how to do this work and if not here you can take these skills and use them elsewhere it feels quite self-serving but in this age the ability to get your get hands-on experience for converting a call center let's say from what was to what will be that person's skills are now going to be in demand a hundredfold where they didn't have them before all they knew how to do was answer a customer call right that's very true so thinking about you know how do we find the positives and going and asking that team what would you want to get out of this experience because we're going down we're going down this route yep and then helping them get achieve that goal like you said maybe that's just upleveling their skill set so maybe they can get not even just another job but maybe a better paying job because now they have this AI expertise that's right and now they're The Prompt engineer the best prompt engineer for um call center AI which apparently those jobs are going for like $350,000 right now yeah I'm changing my title [Laughter] totally um let's see let's watch let's walk through an example okay you've engaged the client to help them build a narrative you understand their business priorities and you've crafted a compelling story or like we talked about a series of stories to help them achieve whatever business goal they have where does this process where does the process typically break down I mean like what problems get in the way of your clients actually telling the stories in a way that enables them to achieve that business goal is it do you have to give them much like media training do you have to train them on how to tell the story you know so where does that breakdown happen yeah so ask anybody you know uh that you work with and I'll say this to all my comp's friends out there is ask them how many people have actively received storytelling training right it will be a very small group even though McKenzie pegs it as one of the top 40 skills that any executive must have because it used to be that those scientists that I work with could just talk cross it over to um internal coms and marketing to tell the story to somebody else now they have to and so that's part of getting promoted of being visible and of being able to communicate across Global teams right most most of these Executives have people you know from Peru to you know Peoria to everywhere in between so um so step one is getting the right training around how to tell good stories and then flexing that muscle if you're not accustomed to it um you know I like to remind people that virtually everything we learn in the world only happens two ways the first is you know experience I touch the stove I burn myself and the other is Mom going don't touch the stove you burn yourself that's a story right so we think of that as this kind of rarified air but in reality the way that we communicate information all day long if whether we got it from a teacher or professor or our favorite Chef whomever it's story and then taking a step inside the boardroom strategy is just a story until you execute on it it's a fiction right we're going to hit this number of Revenue you know this amount of Revenue and we're going to put out this many products and sell this many widgets by the end of 2023 well that's a fiction until it actually comes to Bear yeah or and I might add into that that that executive needs a really good story to motivate his his teens to to execute against that strategy so there there's that story plus the story of when it's done right so many times what that CEO story is I want to be the best I want to be the greatest I want to smash our competition and if you don't hit it you won't be here that's such a bad story motivated now although I think he's leading with the fear element yeah right and and the Raw like we're the best um so getting people trained in that storytelling and I like to give people examples many times people ask me I want to do the storytelling thing I don't know how to find a story help me find a story I don't know what to use and so you know for your listeners if you're looking for a great story instead of just staring at a blank screen you can use chat GPT help me write a great story about X right give it a prompt see what comes up for you but if you want delve and make it really personal and you want to make it stick so that people get to know you and respect you as a leader I often direct people to four ways of finding a great story so the first is people who are the people that you admire the people you respected the people that you hated the people who you feared right big emotions around people and the same holds true for places so we can all relate to having been you know to the Eiffel Tower or but maybe it was I hid under my bunk you know at Sleepaway Camp because I was so afraid that you know Bobby Ryerson was GNA kiss me right there was a fear lurking right so think about a place it doesn't you know the haunted house at Disney world like the most terrifying place on Earth right whatever it may be think about that place so people places events I graduated from college I failed my driver's test for the fourth time um those are great stories maybe about persistence or perseverance or Charm or cunning or um I slept through all my classes but boy I put in a performance on that final right whatever it is that you need to convey think about the people the places the events and the last is objects so a treasured heirloom that you could bring in to tell a story about something um you know something that your grandmother gave you or um something that you lost that meant a lot to you um an object can really resonate with people it can also even become a symbol after you're done telling that story and I remember being in a workshop when I got my first storytelling training and um Christina Harbridge she's just an amazing human she brought in a big bag of nothing it looked like garbage and then she just started hurling things at us and I wound up getting a straw like a regular plastic drinking straw and she goes make a story about your business out of that straw go now and I was like I remember that day in the winter of 1979 when me and my neighbors got um decided to go out in the middle of the night and go slay riding down our Hill it was already confirmed that we weren't going to have school the next day and I was so shocked because my mom came with me and it was the one of the greatest winter events of my life we sat in a tobogan and went down our big Steep Hill laughing and giggling the whole way well when we were Thor thoroughly soaked and absolutely exhausted our neighbors invited us over and they made mint chocolate chip milkshakes with these silver straws and they got colder and colder as we sucked up the milkshake and the chips got all stuck inside but it was absolute Heaven it was like tasting the winter right out outside and I thought there's nothing more special than being together with my neighbors on the Block and having this super treat and feeling like I was in the perfect place in the world you know so I could take that moment and then go what is it like to pull together with a team when we want to do something special and accomplish The Uncommon so then I took that story and told it to my team serving them milkshakes and they were sucking on them while I was telling the story and said what could we do together as a team that would make for the most memorable year ever because that's one of my greatest childhood memories you know and it was so improvisational it was so off the cuff and I have no idea why that story came to me just from looking at a plastic drinking St straw which I've had in my mouth a thousand times right and so I I encourage any of your listeners to try that out with the comms team just do it on a Monday morning bring in a big bag of nothing and watch creativity unfold as people look for people places objects and events that they can tie back into it so if I just ask you this question Kristen what do you remember most from the story I just told you um giggling with your mom as we're going down the hill yeah yeah that's a beautiful memory and if you ask that question to 10 other people they would remember other elements of the story mattered to them right and so then you begin to see what wow so from that story what can we draw what would be exciting to our audience what would be exciting to The Listener what would actually move someone into action and now how do I take this idea of something that happened in my life and now how do I apply it to the business world you know do the unexpected surprise and Delight them as Starbucks would say right think about that how do we create a close Bond and a connection with our customers in a way that they really care and remember like me and my mom right yeah so give it a shot right it's a fun it's a fun storytelling experiment absolutely do you think um like having a story bank or a bank of different story you know stories to tell for different scenarios is a good practice and is it something that you've worked on with your clients to create yeah I mean I've come to find no one story is going to change change the world right maybe one would start but we want to keep the wheel going um then we certainly need more than one story so base it on the emotion right and based on what I need to do so I typically start off with a theme so that emotion might be persistence or perseverance or breakthrough results or hitting our number whatever that theme is so I start always with the end in mind what do I need them to think feel and do and then I go back and say okay where's the story that I can draw from that hit on these things of persistence or hard work or teamwork or whatever I go back to my personal life and figure out from those four categories where I can pull examples and then I begin to map out the story and I don't have to always start at the beginning right action adventure movie start at the car chase so it might be you start at this was never going to work our team had already lost the Championships and we were walking home sad right you know you can start with the end and sometimes it's like damn that you know and then we can back into what it is but we you know the next year when we came back or even though we lost here's what we gained right even in the face of tough times here's what we gained so all of those things are possibilities when you think about trying to capture and tell a great story we need lots of them and we can start them and stop them in different places even the same story depending on what the audience needs I I once took a a speech writing slash giving training course and the woman who is a very amazing coach she had told me that it doesn't have to be your story it can be a story you've heard or another situation that you've been part of that has nothing to do with you that you can adopt and create and tell a story about something that you saw or heard that's related so you don't have even if you can't find it within your own personal life or within your own employees or even your own customer base I think you can draw from you know the universe of stories and make them relevant for your audience that's such a good point kisten because um the way I got inspired to take that example from Thailand and bring it to corporate boardrooms was actually I I double measured in anthropology and religion and I was always fascinated as a comps future comps person I didn't know I was at the time I didn't know what PR or marketing and Communications were really back in the the late 80s but um I was fascinated with how the prophets move the word around the world certainly in an era before Twitter because 5,000 years later we're telling the stories for them right think of the prophets Jesus Buddha Muhammad Moses as like The Greatest Story viral storytellers of all time because we didn't just hit the like button like we're hit the share button for thousands of years were we telling these same stories and so how did they do it and so I started to deconstruct how the prophets told their stories to get their followers on board and get them to tell the stories for them I think in addition to the word that they spread that's one of the greatest things that they did was get the rest of us telling the stories right and so there's a formula for that too you know and thinking about how to do that and H happy to share if that's appropriate be wonderful yeah so you know what the prophets did was they first and foremost started off with a shared history so the way I make this rapport with my audience right with my listener is what do we have in common what is our shared history so if I'm a prophet I'm looking back on the calendar of events that like shape Our Lives whether it's you know rashash and yam kipor if you're Jewish or Christmas and Easter right we look back on our lives together and we think about what are those moments so in the corporate world that translates into why did I come to work at this company maybe if I'm Ge I'm enam enamored by the entrepreneurship and Ingenuity of Edison you know maybe um the benefits and the people were great and so I'm here for the camaraderie and and the folks maybe it's a purpose-- driven organization and I'm motivated by that so where's the shared history step one step two is they derived the unity of their message around values so can you articulate what the core values are that you need for my group of innovators what are the values that you need to hold on to the group together and then the new values that you need to invoke change so if you're Jesus right and I'll anoint all of your listeners as corporate profits r o p ETS right not the profits with an f um don't get big heads though but if you think of yourselves as Messengers as profits of a particular message imagine trying to take people from going from an eye for an eye to turn the other cheek that's a behavior change right right so how do I get people to change their behavior well you and I both come from the same background we know that way of doing things we share these same core values of family and ritual and understanding of both our enemies foreign and domestic and yet we need to add new values now of patience and forgiveness and maybe kindness and I'm not saying that um Judaism doesn't possess any of those because they do in Spades but the way that we're presenting that now is moving those values front and center right so it's a different positioning because Jesus never said he wasn't Jewish right the rest of us said a new way of looking at things and often by the way Innovation looks very different in the rearview mirror than it does when it's actually happening so that shift from an eye for an eye to turn the other cheek is an installation of new values and new purpose and on some level it says we have to leave the old stuff behind we can't keep doing things this way anymore it doesn't serve us and then the next is who are I the next is the message so for us for us marcom folks crafting the message is the hardest thing it's the most important thing and it has to be the most memorable thing so crafting that message is critical and that message an eye for an eye to turn the other cheek is a big one right but maybe it's read my lips no new taxes or and you can fill in the rest right right so figuring out that message it's critical and it must say we can't do things the old fashion way anymore there will be winners and there will be losers and the losers are continuing to do the old way the winners are moving into a new Direction and the last two steps are finding the early adopters right that's our Tech term for it Jesus would have looked for 12 close friends right who would have helped him spread the message or the Buddha took 20 friends into the forest to give his teachings there um so who are the early adopters who will carry the message for you it's really important if you're a change agent to find allies in your network who can help spread the message and the last is great viral language so we don't do it just by you know the three bullets the Excel spreadsheet or the four paragraph email right we need catchy language so I'm going to ask all of your listeners to go back to seventh grade English when they first learned what a metaphor simile an analogy rhyme um you know even alliteration uh using all the same letters in a row think about what's going to make the message stick because when it does that gives people the power to transmit it to somebody else so we need to give them the right language so those are the five steps history values message early adopters viral language that's what all the profits did so well so we can learn take a page out of any of those particular books absolutely that's really good stuff I'm just thinking about I'm thinking about messaging and positioning and telling stories and trying to differentiate a company from another company that does almost the exact same thing and so many companies go through this exercise and they come out without good messaging and positioning or even a decent story right so why do you think if you were going to give advice to someone who is you know a marketing executive or a PE executive who's embarking on a messaging and positioning slash creating a narrative how would you what would you tell them to do right and what would you tell them to avoid how do they know they're doing it how do they know when it's being done wrong what a great question Kristen wow so first I would say you know ask that question if we're doing the save time save money makes you more productive make sure they go back and ask the customer so that I can do the following right give me the big benefit to me personally to the business to the department to the company to the planet maybe right so ask the so that question um the other is our differentiator oftentimes if you're an entrepreneur starts with your DNA so you have a very particular I mean there are probably 10,000 books written on storytelling right but everybody has their unique perspective it's really important as Simon synic would say to find your own why so if you're on the entrepreneurial side and if you're on like a big corporate then you can tack back into some of those core values but the differentiator comes with ultimately how we're able to do right by the customer in a way that they haven't before you know and sometimes I think back to an example like um the iPod you know many of us had MP3 players prior to the iPod um if you're as old as me and mine was the size of a brick it had 50 buttons on it it had a CD player and it had had a radio in it and for me this was heaven right I could listen to I could discover new music on the radio I could put in my favorite CDs I could borrow steal music from Napster and my friends who downloaded their music there and I had infinite music and somehow Steve Jobs managed to convince us that a thousand songs in your pocket was a better idea that we didn't actually need all the songs on the planet yeah all we needed was a thousand that we could stick in our pocket because I certainly couldn't stick that brick in my pocket and boy the world shifted on that but what for me what's most intriguing about that is Steve Jobs also wore a turtleneck to work every day and jeans because he hated buttoning his shirt he hated doing the same act every day what an absolute waste of time he thought and also picking out new and different clothing gave him decision fatigue and so he said to his designer Johnny IV he said I want to create an MP3 player but I want you to make it with as few buttons as possible because I hate them that's a personal preference yes and when we can find those things that we love and we hate those things that cause big emotions in all of us we find lots of other people hated all of those things too right suddenly the click wheel is born and we're finding music in this whole new way of Discovery just cuz this guy didn't feel like buttoning up a shirt every day like so those little those little pieces of DNA that get stuck to the things that we create you know that we take our why into the world and we create beautiful things with it those are oftentimes opportunities for differentiation when we ask why did you make it that way how does this relate to your bigger purpose of really changing things or shaking things up the why doesn't have to exist you know exist on why did I um you know come into the world or what is my big purpose but why did you decide to make it that way what's different about how we make it or how we sell it or how we package it like thinking about any product or service as being this incredible diamond and our responsibility as marketers is to find all the coolest facets to bring to the surface and when you can tell a great story about any one of those facets then you know something's sticking if it's like wow it has 50 buttons okay that might be exciting for my future MP3 manufacturer but it might not so try out the stories around all the different facets and see which ones get your audiences most excited right if I just asked the photographers they would have told me how exciting the sand [Laughter] was compelling story but maybe maybe we should have taken a little more time to figure out why why sand could have been the best part of that story it yet haven't found it yet okay one more question I just wanted to ask I mean the question is is there something I should have asked you that I didn't that you think would be really insightful to share um so you kind of asked me a different question earlier and then I didn't answer which was how do I know I'm telling a good story and how do I know if I'm in an environment where I can tell a great story and some environments lend themselves better to stories than others I had the chief Innovation officer and chief scientist from 3M on my show and I told her that Corning Glass story she goes never fly at 3M you know we like our fluff we are the manufacturers of the Post-it the diaper you name it right the adhesive that closes every Huggies she has 77 patents in that technology alone is how a diaper closes um she goes but know your audience so my engineers would laugh at that Corning Glass story what they want to hear is tell me it's the stickiest or the least sticky like a Post-It on the planet tell me about how you decided to make it that way tell me other things about this that really work so I would ask like what is number one are you in an environment where you have safety where you can tell a story and be regarded for that story and if you screw it up are people going to be like try that again yeah you know see if you're in an environment that works and don't stop with the first story keep trying we would never put out a product without AB testing at first right or launching a website do the same thing with your stories try it on a couple different people your spouse your family members your kids see how they respond um this is all audience approval based so we got to make sure we're testing and trying I love that okay so that that wraps us up for today Susan this has just been such a great conversation I've learned so much from you I admire all that you've achieved um and most of all I am appreciate you joining us on the show today and of course we'd love to do it again sometime um to everyone listening thank you for checking out marcom mode make sure to subscribe on Spotify Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your podcasts but before you take off Susan um where's the best place for people to connect with you oh so um they can certainly listen to my podcast where I interview Chief Innovation officers and their team members about the cool new things that they're working on but most importantly the stories they tell to get their Innovation to their Finish Lines and those Finish Lines may include failure and that's okay too um the other thing is they can sign up for my newsletter and I'm happy to give all of your listeners for free the five steps to Innovation storytelling that is a worksheet so you can start mapping out your story directly from it you can just go to Innovation storytellers dcom and there's a form to sign up right there for the newsletter and all the tips you need about storytelling to make your marcom life that much more fun and engaging I love that thank you Susan I'll definitely share that when we share the podcast we'll share that Tip Sheet as well fantastic and thank you everyone for listening until next time remember story spark engagement and every strategy needs a good story [Music] [Music]

2024-07-19 10:58

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