Welcome to Perrier Mansion, a swanky and retro venue where you can follow American burlesque artist, model, and actress Dita Von Teese into the edifice and play slightly naughty games with her (as you might guess from Dita’s photo at right).

This decidedly R-rated Web story/game has been tweeted as the best Web production of this year. The production values are spectacular.

To enter the mansion, the user must enter his or her birthdate — presumably an attempt to keep younger voyeurs out. Dita performs a mild striptease as she walks into the mansion. (There’s no actual nudity, just a bit of exposure and lots of sensuality.) In a sort of choose-your-own-adventure (a.k.a, choose your own story) style, the user gets to a point of selecting between two rooms — The Dark Room and Roll the Dice. The Dark Room is quite remarkable; a camera graphic is superimposed on the screen, and the user sees the resulting still upon clicking this virtual camera. In Roll the Dice, the user clicks to — you guessed it — roll the dice, which tell Dita to do naughty little things like lick her lips. In the final activity, the user is instructed not to click on (“touch”) Dita. My hand was nowhere near my mouse, but a cursor on the screen clicked on Dita, who threw Perrier on me. Ultimately, I was unceremoniously asked to leave the Perrier Mansion for clicking on her. I have to wonder if some users get to stay, and if so, how.

The production is gorgeous, sumptuous, and engaging. But … target audience? I looked at some articles and blog entries about the piece and found that many people were bewildered by it. One anonymous commenter said “upscale, classy and sober image. Should appeal to a broad 20s and up male target audience.” I asked my PhD-in-marketing husband his thoughts. We thought the gamer aspect might be at odds with the retro look of the piece in terms of the age group Perrier is targeting. Perhaps the retro look is meant to align with the fact that Dita is a latter-day burlesque star.

I was surprised not to find more commentary in the blogosphere about this provocative production. You can read more about Perrier Mansion here, here, and here (for a compilation of links about the piece).

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Came across a couple of additional postings that relate to the upcoming Social Story: How To Tell Your Story Through Social Media Conference (Aug. 24 in Denver).

Anthony Townsend is annoyed that “There aren’t any stories” on venues like Twitter and Facebook. “Some conversations become really good stories,” he writes, “but unless you follow them in real-time you’re S.O.L. They dissipate and hang there in the cloud like a cool blue mist of vaporized bank notes.” Further:

… since there’s no way to link updates or layer metadata to create a narrative structure, you have to manually sort through timelines and excavate that structure like a cyberspatial Sherlock Holmes.

I know many who would disagree that no stories exist on social-media venues, but most would probably agree that social-media stories are fragmented and, as Townsend points out, useless unless followed in real time. Folks would also probably agree that the perfect social-media venue for supporting storytelling has yet to emerge.

When it does, Townsend suggests, it will become the Next Big Thing:

My forecast is — social networks and the real-time web are either a) going to morph into storytelling media that provide tools to construct narrative on top of the update stream, or b) are going to stop growing as people seek out a different set of tools that are better for communication and storytelling than social networks, which do a mediocre job at both.

(Part 2 of Townsend’s post discusses some venues that are moving in predicted directions — gaming and location-based apps.)

While we’re waiting for the perfect social-media storytelling mashup, Ian McGonnigal has offered a list of tips to apply to social-media storytelling He wrote a few months ago about “how critical storytelling is to successful brand engagement on the social web as well as at face-to-face events.” You can read more details of each tip in his posting:

1. Have a purpose.
2. Clearly articulate the theme.
3. Keep it simple.
4. Ensure your story has a structure and a well-defined plot.
5. Use the right tools to tell your story.
6. Engage your audience.
7. Choose the right protagonist.
8. Defeat the antagonist.
9. Communicate like a human being.
10. Be Authentic.

As I’m running this storied-brand-in-social-media series in conjunction with the upcoming Social Story conference, here’s the second in a series of videos about the conference from Sean Buvala. You can see the first in the series here:

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve written more than once about Bernadette Martin’s book, Storytelling about Your Brand Online & Offline: A Compelling Guide to Discovering Your Story. The book was “forthcoming” in those posts (and also had a slightly different title), but now it’s here, published in both hard-copy and ebook formats, and I’m mentioning it in conjunction with the Social Story Conference coming up later this month.

Much has been written about personal branding in recent years, but Bernadette’s book adds some nuances I haven’t seen before. For one, it’s the first branding book I know of to overtly connect personal branding with storytelling. (Well, my own book, Tell Me About Yourself, does that, but just in one chapter whereas the theme is pervasive in Bernadette’s book). The book is also the first I know of to explicitly break down offline and online personal-brand storytelling. Product brand storytelling; corporate, NGO, and non-profit storytelling; and corporate leadership storytelling also get a meaty mention along with personal brand storytelling.

I have mixed feelings about Bernadette’s use of Reach Personal Brand Process. Founded by William Arruda, who wrote the forward to this book, the Reach process was one of the first to guide folks in discovering their personal brand. Well-respected and widely used, the process is even attached to a certification that enables practitioners to become Reach Personal Brand Strategists. Given that many professionals have advanced their own ideas for processes to develop one’s personal brand, Bernadette was wise, I think, not to reinvent the wheel; however, the Reach process doesn’t work well for me personally.

I’m always on the lookout for story prompts, especially those that help an individual get at his or her personal story, so I love Bernadette’s 35 Storytelling Inspiring Questions and wish there were even more. Emotional intelligence (EQ) stories, personal social responsibility (PSR) stories, and story-building around assessment results are novel and fascinating inclusions.

Bernadette offers a highly useful VISIBILITY BRANDING STORYTELLING TOOL (VBST) that helps users select 5-7 key stories, develop these in more detail and structure them, choosing the ones that will resonate most with the user’s target (often an employer). She recommends the well-known Situation—>Action—>Result (SAR), Problem—>Action—>Result (PAR), Challenge—>Action—>Result (CAR) formulas — but adds Key Attributes and Testimonials to them.

The book’s online chapter offers elements I haven’t seen in personal-banding or storytelling works: Storytelling on Google, Video Storytelling, and Storytelling in 3D Virtual Worlds and provides samples of storied online portfolios.

The offline chapter echoes the job-interview and networking themes of Tell Me About Yourself, while adding a helpful section on icebreaker stories. That chapter also introduced me to a new term, “verbal graffiti,” “the term used for fillers, non-words, modifiers, condescenders, verbal tics … basically anything that can dilute the message of your storytelling” — and Bernadette tells readers how to eliminate them. (She recommends Toastmasters, an organization I plan to get involved in soon.)

The book’s chapter on branded bios is important because it provides the foundation for effective online profiles. Lots of meaty info in this chapter, which may just be the most powerful one in the book.

The book is also nicely peppered with interviews with experts.

Here’s the book’s table of contents:

Part I The Power of Storytelling
Introduction
Mind Map
Neuro Research and Storytelling
Storytelling about the “Brand Called You”
Product Brand Storytelling
Corporate, NGO and Non-Profit Storytelling
Corporate Leadership Storytelling
Personal Brand Storytelling
The Reach Personal Brand Process
A Personal Story

Part II The “Art” of Storytelling and Extracting the Stories
The “Art” of Storytelling
Storytelling Inspiring Questions
Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Stories
Leadership Storytelling
Personal Social Responsibility (PSR) Stories
Story Building around Assessment Results
The 360°Reach Assessment
References
The Visibility Branding Storytelling Tool (VBST)

Part III 2.0 Storytelling — Communicating Your Story Online
Storytelling 2.0 or Digital Storytelling
Storytelling on Google
Video Storytelling
Storytelling in 3D Virtual Worlds
Case Stories: Online Portfolio Examples

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

After at least two recent vacuum-cleaner failures, we decided to get a Dyson machine. We were impressed with its features, innovative design, and advertising.

When the Dyson arrived, it immediately endeared itself to me by including the little booklet pictured here. I already knew a bit about Dyson’s story from its ads, but the story booklet reinforced and enhanced my knowledge.

It also helped cement my new loyalty to this brand. Who wouldn’t love the story (which you can also read online) about a guy who comes up with a revolutionary new idea for vacuum-cleaner technology while at a sawmill? Or the underdog aspect of this same guy unsuccessfully trying to sell the idea to vacuum manufacturers who rebuffed Dyson’s bagless design because they made so much money from selling vacuum-cleaner bags? The Japanese loved the design, though, and the royalties from sales of the G-Force model sold there enabled James Dyson to manufacture a machine under his own name.

Another underdog triumph was Dyson’s insistence on a see-through collection bin for the dirt the machine sucked up. Everyone told him a clear bin was a bad idea, but Dyson persisted, and heck yeah, I find it enormously satisfying to see how much dirt this machine sucks up.

One aspect of the story that’s in the booklet but apparently not online is that Dyson in 1999 won — after a lengthy court battle — a patent infringement suit against Hoover Europe.

Finally, you gotta love the part of the story in which Dyson gives back through the James Dyson Foundation, which “runs workshops across the globe where young people solve engineering challenges in a practical, hands-on way.”

The Dyson machine’s excellent performance makes me loyal to this brand. But its story makes me fiercely loyal.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A slide presentation (embedded at the bottom of this entry) that Lou Hoffman of The Hoffman Agency created has been generated huge buzz for a couple of weeks now, so chances are you’ve seen it. It’s about the power of storytelling in business, and Hoffman says he prepared it “after evangelizing SlideShare as an ideal platform for storytelling.”

From both SlideShare, where Hoffman published the slide deck, and his blog Ishmael’s Corner, Hoffman’s description of the presentation:

As product news continues to be commoditized, it becomes increasingly important for communication professionals to build feature stories. This slide deck examines the type of content that makes for compelling storytelling. … Taking a mix of pop culture, levity, science, and our experiences nudging clients out of the corporate-speak box, we’ve created the following as a primer for storytelling in business.

Before creating the power-of-storytelling presentation, Hoffman crafted a slideshow to tell the story of his agency.

There is no question that both of these decks are superb. Still, I have yet to see a slideshow about storytelling that truly tells a story. Hoffman offers some hints of story in it but neither deck is really a story in itself (in my opinion).

I also love the comment from Karen Chace under Hoffman’s introduction of the power-of storytelling slideshow. Chace is a professional storyteller, who in her comment tells the story of being asked to tell a company’s story for its 75th anniversary. After describing her preparation and delivery of the story, Chace writes:

What happened that night was magic. The room fell silent, the guests leaned forward, listening…not because of my skills but because it was their story, both the good and the bad, the triumphs and the challenges.

On her own site Chace offers a PDF that further details the story of telling this anniversary business story.

I wonder if someone could develop a slide deck on the power of storytelling that incorporates a story like Chace’s. As powerful as Hoffman’s presentation is, I can’t help thinking it would hit home even more if it were more of a story.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A fitting followup to my recent Q&A with David Willows is another conversation with Willows — by blogger Lorrie Jackson. This one focuses on the recently released book Willows co-edited, Effective Marketing, Communications and Development in International Schools. As Jackson notes:

One of the threads that unites each contribution to the book is an emphasis on telling the story of a school. But while storytelling itself is timeless, the tools which we use to tell these tales have evolved. Take for example the web. For Willows, the digital world opens doorways into new ways to share our story. As he notes, “No longer limited to printed words on a page, we have access to rich and varied media that provide new dimensions to the stories we are seeking to tell. This opens up for us huge new opportunities. However, there are also new challenges; such as the importance of ensuring that the stories we tell remain coherent across a variety of media platforms.”

“Rich and varied media” evokes another effort that helps tell a school’s story — the Witness to History project at Georgetown University, described as

a state-of-the-art video oral history project to record and celebrate the stories of Georgetown alumni who have been history makers and witnesses to history. The goal of the project is to create a historically valuable product — a rich collection of alumni stories that further tells the story of Georgetown and the impact graduates are making around the globe.

This idea of telling a school’s story through its people is a little more subtle than many school marketing efforts. It also strikes me as an approach that many organizations — not just schools — could use. [Thanks to Terrence Gargiulo for alerting me to Witness to History.]

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Zack’s story, is a recent ad campaign from Tampax that is accompanied by a website, blog and Twitterfeed in the voice of 16-year-old-Zack, who supposedly wakes up with a vagina one day.

The campaign has received some criticism from feminists for gender stereotyping. Miriam on Feministing writes: “The series also over-emphasizes the differences between men and women — all of sudden because of a vagina he sees the world totally differently.”

I don’t disagree, but I’m a lot more interested in the storytelling aspects of the campaign.

You can read more about it here and here.

What do you think? Does the storytelling succeed? Is this an example of storytelling providing an entry point for awkward topics?

[Thanks to Liz Sumner for making me aware of the campaign.]

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Right on the heels of my latest gnashing of teeth over personal branding are two developments on the subject.

The first is a highly retweeted blog post on Web Worker Daily by Georgina Laidlaw on using storytelling techniques in personal branding. In what is expected to be a three-part series on this topic, Laidlaw begins with characterization. Agreeing at least in part with Gareth Jones who says that brands are static but people are not, Laidlaw diverges from Jones’s assertion that people, therefore, cannot be branded.

“You’re the key character in your story,” Laidlaw notes, and as such, you select “crucial defining information about their characters and focuses on communicating that clearly, in a way that suits the character” and hence, build your brand. Among the choices for information you might select about your character, Laidlaw says, are:

• the channels you use
• the language you use
• your profile data
• the photos you publish of yourself and others
• your interests, pastimes, and the topics you focus on, including links and other content you promote
• your frequency and depth of public engagement with others
• the places you like to visit or meet others

In answer to the question, “How do you know what will best illustrate your character to your contacts?”, Laidlaw states that “the answer will depend on your character! I usually only communicate about things that I feel very strongly about — topics I’m passionate about — which in itself reflects my character to some degree.”

The second development is a new (free) product from Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist network, the “social resume.” This product strikes me as a cross between a LinkedIn Profile and a social-media resume. Intended for Gen Y workers, Brazen Careerist resumes do not focus on the “story” metaphor; “story” is never mentioned. Instead, “ideas” is the top buzzword, followed by “conversation.” (John Zappe quotes Trunk: “The recruiting industry is shifting from search ninjas to those who understand conversations.”)

Still, the Brazen Careerist social resume provides opportunities for storytelling in its “About Me” section, and some of the social resumes I looked at by community members offer stories in that space, such as the one for Brazen Community Manager Ryan Paugh (thumbnail of resume pictured here).

But, ugh, the way Brazen Careerist solicits information for the Experience portion of users’ social resumes is anathema to storytelling; the form asks for a “job description.” I can guarantee that no storytelling will be forthcoming from job descriptions. Brazen should be asking for accomplishments, achievements, initiatives, results, and the like.

Here’s where I see a terrific mashup: Brazen Careerist social-resume users could use Georgina Laidlaw’s personal-branding storytelling techniques for their social resumes.

I keep bringing up new twists on resumes not because they are explicitly storytelling resume but because each new “resume replacement” or “resume reinvention” (as Zappe calls them) suggests that hiring decision-makers are not getting what they need from traditional resumes. With Zappe using phrases like “better portrait” and “living, breathing profile,” I know there is a place for storytelling in these new incarnations.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’m still feeling curmudgeonly about the concept of personal branding, and when I read skeptical views about personal branding like one called “I am Not a Brand. I am Me,” by Gareth Jones, my curmudgeonliness is reinforced.

One of Jones’s arguments against the personal-branding concept contrasts typical brands with humans:

Brands are largely static. Brands don’t rationalise their actions. Brands don’t change their behaviour or opinion after life changing events or after reflecting on some new piece of evidence. Brands don’t offer humility in the face of arrogance. Brands don’t eat humble pie when they got it wrong and then share that experience over social media.

Even though part of me wants to agree with Jones’s conclusion that “the whole notion of a personal brand is a bit of a nonsense and serves only to create another bit of jargon around which some ‘instant guru’ … can build a consulting proposition that preys on the insecurities of others,” I started to wonder if brands really are static.

Given my belief that brands must have stories and the best brands are the best because they have great stories (like the Moleskin notebook for example), can brands really be static? Stories suggest an ongoing plot.

I find it amusing and ironic that personal-branding gurus assert that one’s personal brand must be authentic, but the very thing that personal-branding naysayers rail against is a lack of authenticity, or as Jones writes, a watered-down authenticity:

And then there is the question of authenticity. Brands are strong, stand for something and carve out their definitive position in their relevant consumer space. They don’t try and water down their personality or message on the basis someone might not buy them if they don’t.

Jones’s final argument is that his online identity does not comprise a brand:

I am the sum of a number of profiles, opinions and conversation online, nothing more. These do not constitute a brand. Yes, I should definitely keep out any potentially offensive content. But water down my online and offline personality or manipulate it to present myself as something other than who I really am? Most definitely not.

Well, of course, Jones’s “profiles, opinions and conversation online” do constitute a brand because, in part, they help tell his story; it’s just not a brand or story that he has consciously crafted and manipulated. He has not concerned himself with whether or not anyone will buy his brand.

And there’s the issue — whether we want to put our brands and stories out there as they are or whether we feel we must watch what we say and massage our stories so as to make them more palatable to the rest of the world. Much depends on whether we have something to sell — ourselves as employees or purveyors of products or services.

And the other question is whether we can truly be authentic — be ourselves — if we seek to present our storied-branded-selves to the world.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Michael Margolis recently published a list of “20 questions that can support you in your story positioning.” Although a few of the questions are best suited for entrepreneurs seeking clients, the list as a whole is great for job-seekers, too. Michael writes: If you go about answering these questions for yourself, you’ll begin to stake out a bigger story really worth telling.”

PERSONAL MOTIVATIONS

• What motivates you?
• What has shaped and defined you?
• What is your point of view?
• What do you care about?
• Why trust and believe you?

AUDIENCE EMPATHY