Colette Ellis of InStep Consulting for Nonprofit Central and Craig’s List Foundation recorded the 18-minute podcast, Once Upon a Time: Create Stories to Engage Your Supporters. It provides tips for nonprofit leaders to create engaging stories that will motivate potential supporters and volunteers (including a model for writing the story). While it is geared toward public-sector organizations, other business leaders may also benefit from the ideas and suggestions.

The Chief Storyteller is a firm that helps businesses tell their stories. Visitors can download short PDFs of these stories.

What I found intriguing is The Chief Storyteller’s five-phase approach to telling a client’s story, especially Phase 1 (see below), which includes an elevator speech, Web site, success stories, advertising/PR, testimonials, marketing/development, and sales.

Each aspect of Phase 1 applies to job-seekers and how they tell their story in the job search:

• Job-seekers, too, need an elevator speech. See entries in my blog-within-a-blog, Tell Me About Yourself, beginning here.
• I recommend that all job-seekers buy their own name as a domain name if possible and craft a personal/professional Web site with a resume and/or career portfolio on it.
• Success stories must be stock-in-trade for any job-seeker, especially on a resume and in interviews.
• Advertising and PR are a little farther afield for job-seekers, but some certainly may want to send out press releases about their accomplishments.
• Testimonials can be included on a resume, cover letter, and in various social-media profiles, especially LinkedIn, which provides an accepted venue for recommendations/testimonials.
• I would characterize marketing and development as the things the job-seeker does to disseminate his or her message, such as direct-mail campaigns to employers.
• Finally, I equate sales to the way the job-seeker sells himself or herself in the interview and closes the sale at the end of the interview.

The Chief Storyteller also has a blog.

Marketing Interactions is offering a very cool, free e-book called Why Marketing Stories Have Catch. It’s full of excellent descriptions of how and why stories are so effective for marketing. Author Ardath Albee aptly refers to stories as “stealth marketing.”

Much of the principles in the e-book also relate to marketing oneself in the job search. This set of questions delving into how a company could define its essence can easily apply to job-seekers:

Albee says stories provide movement, momentum that “pull buyers forward.” In the same way they can pull employers forward:

Albee writes:

If you’re presenting your leads with bulleted lists of why your product is the best one,  they have to work too hard to apply the facts to their specific situation. By putting those  facts into a relatable context (story), you transform the reception and follow‐on  interactions taken by your buyers in relation to your marketing programs.   customers can change the story they tell themselves.  

Same goes for employers. They can change the story they tell themselves by relating to the context of you the job-seeker meeting their needs and solving their problems.

Albee cites Seth Godin for the following:

The challenge for marketers is to figure out how to change the story they are living so that their customers can change the story they tell themselves.

Albee adds:

If they can see themselves in the story, they are more inclined to want to participate. 

Just as customers are inclined to participate when they can see themselves in marketing stories, employers are inclined to participate (by hiring the candidate) when they see themselves in the job-seeker’s story.

Most of the “catch” factors that Albee says appeal to buyer attention also apply to the job search:

• Urgency:

  Every story you develop must play to urgent priorities to gain attention. The more  personally invested with your story the buyer gets, the more attention you generate.  Urgency means aligning the story’s ”plot” (topic/problem) with a priority for the buyer. 

• Impact:

  What will happen for the buyer if they choose to interact with you Buyers are looking for vendors who will educate them on areas beyond their core company expertise. They want trusted partners who work with them instead of just sell them products. 

• Will the expertise included in your story have a direct bearing on the buyers’ success  in accomplishing their objective? 

• How is the value you provide unique in comparison to alternatives?  What stories could you tell that show your expertise and how that expertise will contribute to the employer’s success? What stories can you tell that demonstrate your Unique Selling Proposition — the attributes that set you apart from other candidates for the same job?

• Reputation 

  This Catch Factor is about how credible you are with the buyer. 

Reputation in the job search is closely tied to personal branding. What is your brand, your reputation, your promise to employers? What stories can you tell to enhance your credibility with the employer?

Finally, Albee writes:

By incorporating marketing stories into your content strategy, you enable your buyers to envision exactly that experience. You want them to live and breathe the successes of your current customers and picture just how much competitive advantage they can gain by adding your expertise to the company roster. You need them to see themselves succeeding.

The exact same principle applies to the job search. Let’s just plug a few different words into the above quote:

By incorporating stories into your job-search strategy, you enable employers to
envision exactly that experience. You want them to live and breathe the successes of your current and past employers and picture just how much competitive advantage they can gain by adding your expertise to the company roster. You need them to see themselves succeeding.

The e-book closes with a “Quick Guide to Writing a Marketing Story Article” and accompanying worksheet that could be adapted for developing career and personal-branding stories for the job search.

In this video, Jake McKee, former social media practitioner at Lego, "tells his story," writes Web Strategist Jeremiah Owyang "on how he challenged and changed the culture within the organization to build relationships with customers, share proprietary information, and how customers were in line with employees."

The effect on the audience that hears such a story? They think, "maybe we can challenge the culture at our organization."

Recently came across three similar blog postings about storytelling in marketing and thought I would pretend the authors were having a conversation. Thus, sort of a made-up story with these bloggers as characters.

McLellan Creative (no individual blogger identified) begins the conversation by asking, "When was the last time you were drawn into a white paper by language that compelled you to read more? How many case studies have you found impossible to put down?"*

Joe Pulizzi writing at Chief Marketer notes that not only are white papers dull, but that "the majority of brands continue to use 'interruption' style strategies..." Yet even in the face of persistence of "interruption style," Pulizzi says, "some are turning to “storytelling” instead of overt advertising." Pulizzi explains:

Storytelling, sometimes referred to as content marketing or custom media, consists of delivering the brand product message as relevant and compelling information. Instead of marketers following a playbook, storytelling requires much the same mixture of rational and emotional messaging that you’d find in a New York Times feature, or even on primetime television drama.

McLellan Creative nods excitedly: "... if you want to build a brand or launch a new product or service, a great story will differentiate you faster than an array of colorful bar graphs. ... the best technicians create new platforms, the best storytellers bring them to life."

Indeed, Pulizzi agrees, "Smart marketers are realizing that they don’t have a choice anymore when it comes to reaching consumers. In today’s business environment, the 4 Ps of marketing can be copied verbatim by an outside competitor. The only separation is communication - how a marketer tells its story."

Scott 'Scotland' Drummond of Marketing magazine chimes in with an example, Penguin Books, which I blogged about here. Penguin, Drummond says, "is leveraging the incredible power of word-of-mouth. In this sense, Penguin’s marketing is all about the conversations happening around it’s new product range. The We Tell Stories range are amazing social objects, objects around which great conversations are taking place. This is the best kind of marketing you can’t buy, and in that sense is a great move from Penguin."

Continues Drummond: "And in a broader sense, stories are the ultimate viral. We love to hear them, the best ones have been adopted, retold, repackaged, extended, embellished, they are dynamic and change infinitely in the retelling, and in the end are founded on powerful conversations."

Drummond's blog posting, er, part of the conversation, was prompted by his reading the Cluetrain Manifesto, about which I've seen quite a bit in the blogosphere recently because it's apparently having its 10th anniversary. So Drummond sums up the "conversation" with his "Cluetrain-esque proclamation (with apologies to the authors):"

If marketers don’t think they are in the business of telling great stories, and now of allowing great stories to be told around their products/services/brands, then they are still labouring under the misapprehension that they are in control. They aren’t.

The blogger at the blog seclater (and I am unable to determine who this blogger is) extols storytelling as a marketing tool in a way that is not new to me. But he (or she) offers an "if-I-can-do-it-anyone-can" story of entrepreneurial success:

I had quit my full-time job without any savings, filed for divorce, put my house up for sale, sold my major possessions, loaded the car up with my dog and relocated halfway across the country, moved in with my mother back into my childhood bedroom, withdrew money from my retirement account to get me through the first few months, and set up shop in my mother’s garage. I was just a failure waiting to happen, but I didn’t fail, amazingly enough. I use this story to illustrate the point that no matter what the odds, if you want to start a business and be successful, you can do it –and I’m living proof that anyone can do it — and if you don’t have all of these risk factors staring you in the face, you stand a much greater chance of success than I ever did!

The blogger also offers this advice on entrepreneurial stories:

Come up with a fairly short, 1-2 minute story statement of how you got to where you are today and how that impacted why you do what you do. Make it interesting, share the ups and downs and put your stories on your website, on your business card, in your brochure, on your blog, and incorporate them into your elevator speech. I guarantee you’ll start developing fans right away!

One of the commenters to seclater pointed out a video of Dame Anita Roddick, the late founder of The Body Shop, who used stories to educate the public and gain awareness for the store’s line of natural cosmetics. In the video, she discusses how effective story-telling became part of Body Shop’s PR program.

Oh, and one more cool thing about the blogger at seclater: He or she says: "One of my favorite pastimes as a child was to hang out with my mom and aunts for the 'adult conversations' that weren’t really suitable for children’s ears." Me, too! What I didn't realize until I read the seclater blog posting was that it was probably the stories that drew me to these adult conversations.

Came across a fantastic article by Ray George on brandchannel.com about how and why stories work in branding.

George kicks off the article by declaring: "If brands are an experience, then stories are an effective way to describe this experience to others." He adds:

Brands are also a balance between left brain and right brain thinking—they combine functional, rational aspects of the category (left brain) with a more emotional connection (right brain).

He compares two example organizational stories – one a vague a platitude-filled bit typical of what most organizations tell, the second a specific story that shows (instead of telling), the brand story the organization wants to convey.

Moving on to what makes a good story, George cites the common formula, Situation –≥ Action –> Results, which interestingly, is also a frequently recommended formula for job-interview and other job-search stories.

Thus, it becomes interested to apply George's concepts to personal branding. For each of the Situation –≥ Action –> Results (SAR) components, he offers these criteria:

Situation should be significant and specific.
Action should be brand-relevant and authentic.
Results should be both rational and emotional.

Let's analyze a job-interview response story from my book, Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers, to see how these criteria apply:

Situation: Recently my firm was facing a huge turnover problem, especially in our technical staff because of lack of growth within the organization. No defined path was shared with the employees. To address the situation, I not only had a huge task of defining grades and identifying and compartmentalizing our employees’ growth needs but also a race against time.

George notes that the protagonist of the story, in this case the job-seeker, should hold some significance to the audience, in this case the interviewer. In this case, the candidate is interviewing for a position in human resources and has described s situation significant for an employer hiring an HR pro. George also asserts that the story must be specific, and here the job-seeker has detailed a very specific situation.

Action: I knew the tasks would be time consuming, but I set a deadline for each piece. I aggressively collected information on the employee growth needs by sending questionnaires via emails and reaching out to the workforce. I compiled the data and determined short-term and long-term achievable goals. I developed a small-projects subset of the bigger project. I designed a system so that we could track each other’s project and meet every day. The most prominent finding was lack of challenge at work. I decided to implement a leadership program, effectively identifying the top 10 to 25 percent of workers suitable for the program based on the performance reviews, peer-reviews, and qualifications. I set an aggressive target of 15 days each for each zone to complete this part of the survey.

George says that the action must be brand-relevant, summarizing key tenets of the brand. In the job-search situation, brand-relevant means summarizing key skills that comprise the personal brand. In the action segment above, the candidate has described his brand-relevant skills of goal-setting, organization, and innovation, among others.

George also notes that the action taken must be authentic – something that the audience can relate to. The candidate's description rings true to what a good HR manager can do in this situation.

Result: I met the deadlines, and by the end of a second month, we were ready with the budget for the training program, targeted pilot training group, location, and a trainer selected. We rolled out our first training on effective leadership, and by the end of the quarter, data showed that employees were now engaged and challenged. As a result, turnover was cut in half.

George offers the interesting dichotomy that the result should be both rational and emotional. Rational results are often quantified; in this case, the candidate reduced turnover by half. The emotional element is that employees were now engaged and challenged.

Just a quick note to say that I have added a few entries to my section Story Log, my running list of storytelling in marketing and pop culture.

One of my favorite pieces of information that I get via e-mail is the monthly trend briefings from Trendwatching.com. This month's is on Status Stories. Here's how Trendwatching defines them:

STATUS STORIES: As more brands (have to) go niche and therefore tell stories that aren't known to the masses, and as experiences and non-consumption-related expenditures take over from physical (and more visible) status symbols, consumers will increasingly have to tell each other stories to achieve a status dividend from their purchases. Expect a shift from brands telling a story, to brands helping consumers tell status-yielding stories to other consumers.

The report notes that "It is ... up to the customer to tell a story, any kind of story, with the brand providing the ingredients." Certainly that's the branding idea behind marketers' use of social media – to get buzz and encourage consumers to tell the branding story.

These Trendwatching reports are always comprehensive and loaded with examples and images.

• Blogs about Storytelling/Branding ~ Storytelling/Marketing



Storytelling category of Servant of Chaos



Storytelling category of Brand Story



Partum Intelligendo



Brandtelling/a>



Narrative Assets



Storytelling Category of Marketing Interactions



Laurence Vincent



Narrative Marketing category of James Phelps



Let's Talk Story

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  Storytelling: Branding in Practice. Publisher's description:
  

  As a concept, storytelling has won a decisive foothold in the debate on how brands of the future will be shaped. Yet, companies are still confused as to how and why storytelling can make a difference to their business. What is the point of telling stories anyway? What makes a good story? And how do you go about telling it so that it supports the company brand? This book is written for practitioners by practitioners. Through real life examples, simple guidelines and practical tools, the book aims to inspire companies to use storytelling as a means of building their brand - internally as well as externally.

• A part of Hitachi's Web site is True Stories, in video form, like the one below:
• Trollbeads' current tagline is "Every story has a bead."


• citibank's current tagline is "What's your story?" ("Whatever your story is, your Citi card can help you write it.")


• Theme parks, especially Disney, are often associated with storytelling. Quote in Orlando Sentinel, 4-14-06: "Story telling has always been the hallmark of attractions at Disney and Universal Orlando, where pre-shows immerse people in the theme of the ride." Similarly, Sea World Orlando launched a new killer-whale show, Believe, in which trainers become storytellers, emerging from the water to tell their personal stories.


• JetBlue, which previously sponsored a Story Booth project, invites customers to share their stories.



• A company called The Fund runs a site called MyRealEstateStory.com in which real people tell real-estate horror stories to promote the idea of hiring a real-estate attorney.


• Glamour magazine runs a section called Real Stories.


• The makers of Gardasil, the cervical cancer vaccine, ran an ad with the headline: "Calling Gardasil a cervical cancer vaccine is only the beginning of the story."


• MoveOn.org produced a video of members' success stories for 2007.


• A site called MyFamousName.com invites people who share names with celebrities to share their stories.


• Moissanite jewel is running a contest that invites entrants to share their stories of their most important Milestone Moment (such as first date with future husband, holding a first baby, a first big promotion) and win a pendant. The site also offers Milestone Moment example stories.


• Headline for an ad promoting the Dr. Phil show: "The stories you care about as they happen."


• A site for London's Royal Festival Hall collects memories of the hall.
  


• Apple credits its FinalCutPro software for "empowering the storyteller," in this case photographer Lauren Greenfield who used Final Cut Pro to produce Thin, about young women in a treatment center for eating disorders.

  

• Apple's own story inspires Mitchell Harper of the software company Inspire, who writes about the importance of the corporate story in a blog posting.
• Business Week offers a podcast, "Sell It with a Story: Stories that Build Connections with Customers," in which Doug Stevenson, president of Story Theater International, offers Savvy Selling columnist and podcast host Michelle Nichols his strategies on using storytelling to make more sales.
• Gerry Lantz talks about Brand Stories that Work, including the Dove Real Beauty campaign.
• In a 9-minute video, Shell Oil tells a warm, human story of how the snake oil drill, said to be relatively environmentally friendly, was invented by an engineer watching his son drink a milkshake through a bendy straw.

• Thomas R. Clifford blogs about Harnessing the Power of Remarkable Corporate Video Stories to Ignite Conversations and Spark Action at Bringing Brands to Life.

  

• In What's Your story? Storytelling to Move Markets, Audiences, People, and Brands, authors Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker describe stories as the "most powerful, most underutilized tool for competitive advantage." You can read more about the book in a two-part article by George Anderson about the book in the journal, Retail Wire (free subscription required): Part 1: Telling Stories for Profit and Part 2: Telling Stories for Profit.

  

• Steve Denning offers insight on why narrative ads work better.