Reinvention Summit 2 is history, but I’m continuing to recap, synthesize, and expand on its 20 excellent sessions.

A post by Lou Hoffman in his blog, Storytelling Techniques for Effective Business Communications, made an interesting juxtaposition with the Reinvention Summit 2 session presented by Casey Hibbard. (Interestingly, both Lou and and Casey have been part of my Q&A series.)

Lou contends that a typical customer case study follows a standard formula:

1. Here’s the problem
2. It was a horrible
3. Fortunately, ACME Technology came to the rescue
4. Snapshot of the product(s) from ACME
5. It was easy to install
6. Here’s how we did it
7. Quantify the benefits
8. We’re thrilled

He was attracted to this video, describing customer Suncorp’s experience with vendor Net App, for its fresh approach. He liked the emotional dimension of describing how Net App enabled Suncorp’s IT department to become a “launchpad” (as opposed to more typical corporate-speak jargon). He liked that Net App was barely mentioned in the piece, and the focus stayed on Suncorp. He admired the production values — “fresh camera angles,” “energetic pace,” and simple audio. He liked that the video is just 101 seconds. Overall, Lou was impressed by the emotional impact of the story told, including the imagery of IT professionals flying kites.

Casey Hibbard would call the Suncorps/Net App vignette a “success story” rather than “case study.” In her book, Stories that Sell, she makes this distinction:

… a success story is an overview of the customer’s experience with your products, services, or company. Case studies, usually two or more pages, go into more specifics about one or more customers, providing greater detail about certain aspects of a customer’s experience.

She notes, however, that “most organizations call their customer stories case studies, success stories, customer profiles, or a number of other names, without regard to these specific definitions.”

Would Casey say the piece fits into her six characteristics for a compelling customer story (graphic at top, right) — right customer, right time, right questions, right focus, right results, and right quotes? Probably since the story is, in fact, as Lou notes, compelling.

As for its structure compared to what Lou presents as the standard formula, Casey observes that googling “customer success story” or “customer case study” often reveals stories with “a traditional flow with classic subheads: ‘Company’ or ‘Background,’ ‘Challenge,’ ‘Solution,’ and ‘Results.’” (Note that she seems to be talking primarily about stories in print rather than video.) The standard formats, as Lou points out, just don’t draw people in because they’re so overdone. Casey writes:

… because it’s so common, this format may not be as engaging for readers as other approaches, especially for audiences who frequently read customer stories as they evaluate products or services. Just like a direct mail piece or a Web site, a customer story should be designed in a way that stands apart and draws in readers.

Instead, Casey offers other formats, such as a journalistic feature story, a Q&A, a story-within-a-story, the expected-results story, and the customer-focused story (which seems to fit the Suncorp/Net App story).

The lesson here — from both Lou and Casey — is that you can go far beyond standard customer-story/case-study structures and formats to create an emotional connection with your audience and draw people to your message.

More from and about Casey:

• Handout, “25 Ways to Build Trust (and Sales!) With Customer Success Stories”
• Compelling Cases site
• Site for her book, Stories that Sell

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Sean Buvala has just published a nifty multi-media training kit on writing “about me” pages, bios, and the like. I plan to review it in greater depth, but I wanted to mention it today because Sean has a special deal going on the kit.

The kit is just $7 if you buy it TODAY, May 2, but, if when you visit the site the price has risen above that special launch price, use discount code “newslettermay” (no quotes) to still get your copy at just $7! (Coupon code expires May 7, 2012).

Here’s how Sean describes it:

Sean Buvala’s new multi-media training kit to help you build your business and connect with your clients, customers and audience by creating a great About Me. Create a story-infused personal bio for any situation. Get your copy today! Downloadable manual, audio and videos help you learn.

Learn more here and also in this blog post.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Reinvention Summit 2 is history, but I’m continuing to recap, synthesize, and expand on its 20 excellent sessions.

If you ever have a chance to see Rohit Bhargava deliver a presentation, do it. He uses image-heavy/text-light slides, projects an easygoing, entertaining presentation style, and has brilliant things to say. I had the pleasure during the recent Reinvention Summit 2.

Rohit also kicked off his talked with at least three fascinating stories from history. I can neither do them justice nor convey as well as Rohit did their relationship to his message, but the point is that stories wonderfully enhance a presentation.

Here’s a very nutshell overview of Rohit’s message. You can also get a sense of it from a Storify piece put together by Tyler Hurst.

Four mistakes that marketers tend to make when attempting to integrate story into their branding, Rohit says, are:

• Storify everything. The brands say they are telling us their story (very commonly on “About” pages), but what they offer isn’t really a story. The example Rohit gives is the Our Story page for Purdy State Bank, which isn’t so much a story as a dry recitation of dates and events in the bank’s history.
• Focus on testimonials. In particular, Rohit emphasizes brands — like BlackBerry — that try to collect stories from customers but set up barriers for the customer, such as BlackBerry’s lengthy and restrictive form.
• Use corporate lingo. Rohit’s example here is United Airlines’s ad headline: “We’re improving the quality of our onboard product …” Why not just say something like, “We’re making our planes more comfortable to be aboard”? Rohit also cites a disconnect in that he found the bathrooms out of order on a recent United flight. Not such an improved onboard product.
• Create an “impossible” experience. Case in point: A page on the Herman Miller site (pictured above) in which it’s actually impossible to mouseover the vertical pieces and glean any meaningful message.

Happily, Rohit offers many examples of brands who do storytelling well, keeping in mind the basic story flow and five story archetypes pictured. Just a couple of his case studies:

Lynda Resnick’s marketing of replica’s of Jacqueline Kennedy’s fake reals. You can read the backstory here, but the gist is that Resnick bought the Franklin Mint, rescued it from disarray, bought Jackie Kennedy’s fake pearls (originally purchased for $35) at a Sotheby’s auction for $211,000, and then made $26 million selling reproductions of the pearls through the Franklin Mint. Resnick wrote:

If there is one venture that captured the essence of what was best about our business at the Mint, I think it would have to be the story of Jackie Kennedy’s pearls. Nothing I’ve ever done is more illustrative of the search for intrinsic value than that.

Intrinsic value, of course, was the story behind the pearls.

The whimsical marketing of the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel in Amsterdam. This ad copy from the hotels home page is the tip of the iceberg in how the hotel markets its story of mediocrity:

The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel has been proudly disappointing travellers for forty years. Boasting levels of comfort comparable to a minimum-security prison, the Hans Brinker also offers some plumbing and an intermittently open canteen serving a wide range of dishes based on runny eggs.

Other Hans Brinker Budget Hotel, Amsterdam services and amenities include:

A basement bar with limited light and no fresh air.

A concrete courtyard where you can relax and enjoy whatever sunshine is able to pass the high buildings on either side on the extremely infrequent days when it’s actually sunny.

An elevator that almost never breaks down between floors.

A bar serving slightly watered down beer.

Amusing witticisms and speculations about former guests’ sexual preferences scrawled on most surfaces.

The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel, Amsterdam Luxury Ambassadorial Suite (featuring the Hans Brinker’s one and only bath-tub).

Doors that lock.

Where does this one fit in among the archetypes below? I’m thinking it’s more of an underdog story.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Have we returned to the oral tradition of story?

Jonah Sachs thinks so.

In his new (June) book, Winning the Story Wars, and his session at Reinvention Summit 2, Jonah conveyed the belief that “the oral tradition which dominated human experience for all but the last few hundred years is returning with a vengeance.”

To those who ask, “With multimedia texts and IMs and Facebook Status Updates aren’t we relying on oral communication far less than ever?”, Jonah replies yes; that why he calls the emerging milieu the Digitoral Era.

As you can see on the slide at left, the immediate antecedent to the Digitoral Era is the Broadcast Era, in which “information begins life in the mind of its creator but quickly makes the jump into a machine that relatively few people have access to — letterpresses, radio transmitters, TV cameras.” In the Broadcast tradition, information “becomes clearly owned by the individuals who created and published it,” and “audiences don’t interpret it, mash it up and retell it. They never take ownership of it themselves. They consume it …”

In the oral tradition, though, “ideas also begin in the mind of a creator, but” … they “must replicate themselves, passing from the mind of one listener to the next.”

When the oral tradition meets the current digital landscape, “ideas today are never fixed; they’re owned and modified by everyone.”

Implications abound for marketers who want to seize the power of the Digitoral Era, a return to true myth-making. Jonah prescribes a particular story structure in which story is a container for how the world works, and the moral of the story hides the core values of storyteller. Stories embody perfection, truth, wholeness, simplicity, uniqueness, and justice. They provide meaning. Heroes and mentors play significant roles.

Indeed…

The stories that will succeed in the Digitoral Era will be held to the same survival-of­‐the­‐fittest standards all oral tradition stories have faced. They will be bruised and battered in transmission so their core message must be powerful, resonant and resilient. Stories that will prevail in the Story Wars won’t just entertain — they will matter.

I wish I could see the table of contents for Winning the Story Wars — the publisher does not seem to have provided “Look Inside” content to Amazon — so I could see more of Jonah’s suggestions for how to craft “stories that prevail.” But here are a few more resources about the Digitorial Era, including a slideshow that looks like an earlier version of why the author presented at Reinvention Summit 2.

The Producer Behind “Story Of Stuff” On How Marketers Can Build Real Connections

Winning the Story Wars with Freaks, Cheats, and Familiars

Jonah also shares some resonant quotes when he presents and in his book:

• Just ask yourself what information has survived intact from cultures steeped in oral traditions. The answer, of course, is stories.
• Worthwhile ideas that have been deftly encoded in compelling stories have survived with their meaning intact.
• Stories rule the tangled bank of the oral tradition and great stories, well­-told will rule the wilds of the media marketplace now emerging.

Finally, because I am fascinated with how people define “story” and have collected a number of definitions through my Q&A series, here is Jonah’s:

… stories are a particular type of human communication designed to persuade an audience of a storyteller’s worldview. The storyteller does this by placing characters, real or fictional, onto a stage and showing what happens to these characters over a period of time. Each character pursues some type of goal in accordance with his or her values, facing difficulty along the way and either succeeds or fails according to the storyteller’s view of how the world works.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve told you the last Reinvention Summit was amazing.

I’ve shared with you this year’s jaw-dropping lineup from the storytelling firmament.

I’ve mentioned the deals — that buying a ticket is like getting half price because you actually get two tickets for the price of one. If you have an enterprise of your own to promote, you could give your extra ticket away in a contest, as Casey Hibbard did. The other deal is that you can pay for your ticket in two installments — and still get the 2-for-1 deal.

And, finally, I’ve noted that you get all kinds of awesome extras with your ticket.

If you’re not yet convinced that Reinvention Summit 2 is a worthwhile investment in yourself and your business, a set of free bite-size presentations from 7 storytelling experts that are part of next week’s Reinvention Summit just might. “It’s like speed-dating for storytelling ideas and insights,” says summit founder Michael Margolis.

Find this menu of summit appetizers here:

• Oren Klaff on How to Pitch Anything — 4:57 MIN
• Rohit Bharghava on How to Reinvent Marketing — 16:37 MIN
• Bo Eason on Your Personal Story Power — 7:09 MIN
• Jonah Sachs on Social Change Storytelling — 18:41 MIN
• Marie Forleo on How to Reinvent Yourself — 2:33 MIN
• Robert Tercek on how to reclaim the Power of Personal Narrative — 16:38 MIN
• Michael Margolis on how to Tell your Story Online – 5:45 MIN

Just a few days left; Reinvention Summit 2 starts Monday, April 16. Invest in yourself today.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Reinvention Summit 2012 starts a week from today!

One thing I haven’t touched on in all my promotions of the event is all the amazing, enduring stuff you get to enhance your professional and personal development:

• Twenty 60-minute sessions with leading storytelling experts – including live, interactive calls, plus Q&A time. Live sessions are Mon-Fri, 12-2pm ET (NYC time) and 4-6pm ET (NYC time).
• Unlimited access to recordings of all sessions (listen online or download the mp3 file to your iPod or audio player)
• Action worksheets with exercises designed to reinforce lessons from each session
• Access to private online community to connect and engage with other participants
• Exclusive Bonus Session with Michael Margolis, Dean of Story University
• Lifelong storytelling practices that will transform your message and grow your business
• Opportunity to become connected to a global storytelling tribe
• PDF transcripts for each of the 20 sessions

…Everything will be available (audio, slides, and PDFs) to you online and as a download right on your computer, and you can make your own copies of anything you need!

Trust me, this is great content that you will get use out of for a long time to come.

Time’s growing short. I really hope to see you there!

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Did you know that if you buy a ticket to this month’s content-packed Reinvention Summit 2012, it’s essentially half price because you also get a ticket for a friend?

Did you also know that you can pay for the summit in two easy installments — and still get the 2-for-1 deal?

Based on the 2010 Summit, I can promise you won’t regret your investment in this brain-feeding, idea-breeding, bond-building, eye-opening, business-boosting, spirit-lifting, and possibly life-changing virtual event. All without even getting out of your pajamas. (I know you wouldn’t stay in your PJs all day during the summit … but you could.)

The Summit is less than two weeks away. You’re gonna wanna get in on this one!

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Dana Leavy presents an interesting perspective on career storytelling in What’s Your Story, Morning Glory? Building the Story Behind Your Personal Brand.

She suggests both knowing the bigger narrative behind your brand, as well as the smaller stories that inspire it.

Here, Leavy connects empathy vs. sympathy to telling those smaller stories:

… it’s important that you be able to relate on both an intellectual and emotional level to what I do in a way that makes you essentially want to hire me. … That connection comes from telling the smaller stories behind your brand that your audience can relate to, place themselves in and empathize with. Don’t confuse this with sympathy — you’re not going to want to hire me simply because you feel bad for me and want to help me be successful (though I’d love it). Anyone can feel sympathetic to a cause, but empathy is about relating to that cause or message in a way that makes you want to engage with the person or persons who are delivering it. This is why I hate when job seekers go into interviews and spew out things like “I would REALLY love to work with your company…” They don’t care, because sympathy has zero to do with the hiring process. But illustrating your ability to effectively work through challenges, embrace change, and grow as a professional … now that has WOW factor.

I don’t see it as often as I used to, but job-seekers still do sometimes fall into the trap of “what your organization can do for me” vs. “what I can do for your organization.” I see it most often with younger, inexperienced job-seekers. In fact, in the prospective-intern videos on the Intern Sushi site that I wrote about last week, a common theme was “I want to work for your organization so I can gain experience.” That “what your organization can do for me” mentality is a little more forgivable in internship-seekers since gaining experience is, after all, what internships are all about. I’d still prefer to hire an intern who tells me what he or she can do for my organization.

But empathy is a significant reason that storytelling works in the job search, as I wrote in Tell Me About Yourself:

Stories establish an emotional connection between storyteller and listener and inspire the listener’s investment in the storyteller’s success. When stories convey moving content and are told with feeling, the listener feels an emotional bond with the storyteller. Often the listener can empathize or relate the story to an aspect of his or her own life. That bond instantly enables the listener to invest emotionally in your success.

The Information Age and the era of knowledge workers may seem cutting edge, but in his popular book, A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink asserts that society has moved beyond that mindset and into the Conceptual Age in which we are “creators and empathizers,” “pattern recognizers,” and “meaning makers.” Story is an important tool in this age because it enables us to “encapsulate, contextualize, and emotionalize.” Pink refers to story as “context enriched by emotion” and tells us that “story is high touch because stories almost always pack an emotional punch.” Gerry Lantz of Stories That Work, a firm that uses stories in branding, compares stories to information, noting that stories are accessible, involving, evocative, meaningful, and a product of the creative right brain, while information is processed through the rational left brain through analysis, interpretation, evaluation, and planning. Both information and stories are necessary.

Leavy goes on to suggest that job-seekers and careerists have no choice but to craft their stories …

Obviously you’re not going to walk into an interview and start telling your life story. But you can create a compelling story around your career that shapes your personal brand by really conveying the message of why you’re a valuable asset to a company.

Thus your story can both shape and support your personal career brand. In Tell Me About Yourself, I talk about the story behind your branding statement and offer some examples you can read about here.

Leavy concludes with a nice list of elements to keep in mind with creating a story to shape your brand:

• Talk about what drove or inspired you to become involved in your field. Did you have any mentors, or people that you looked up to, or perhaps an event that really inspired you to do this type of work? What was it that really pushed you over the edge and inspired you to take action?
• What do you think are the most beneficial tools, skills and resources that you picked up along the way?
• What challenges did you encounter along the way, and more importantly, how did you work through those challenges to grow and learn?
• How have you used the lessons you’ve learned by tackling those challenges to get you to this point of knowing you’d like to work for this company, or be in this role?
• What aspects of your professional journey do you consider particularly unique and why?
• How will your past experiences make you successful in this particular role, and contribute to the goals of the organization?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I want to give you an idea about just how incredibly content-rich we can expect next month’s Reinvention Summit to be.

During the 2010 Summit, I covered on this blog just 6 of many sessions offered. But as you can see from the links below, I learned so much, was inundated with so many ideas, and got so energized that I cannot even begin to describe the value the event imparted.

The April 16-20 event is described as An Online Conference for Storytelling in the Digital Age, but it’s about so much more than storytelling. Interested in self-actualization? Your authentic identity? Branding yourself and your business? Being on the cutting edge of social messaging? If you want all that and so much more, this conference is for you.

This virtual conference features some heavy-hitters — Robert McKee, Rohit Barghava, Jeff Gomez, Jim Signorelli, and more. I’m already planning which sessions I want to be sure to “attend” and cover.

One of the very best parts unfolds spontaneously during the event — conversation among the attendees, who form an amazing bond, and whose wisdom, generosity, and sharing extends the value of every session.

I encourage you to check out my posts from the 2010 Summit just to bask in the richness of the event and get an idea of what you can expect:

• Social Movements as Participatory Storytelling with Andy Goodman and Lily McCombs
• 5 points from the inimitable Annette Simmons
• Jason Seiden and Julie Ann Turner on living your story and following your story arc instead of a career path.
• Nancy Duarte’s brilliant and mind-blowing story structure for presentations.
• Angela Maiers tells how to fix education through story.
• Summit founder Michael Margolis charges the tribe members with setting their reinvention intention in the closing session.

If you decide you’d like a piece of this action, register now, because early-bird pricing ($197 vs. $297) goes away after Saturday, the 31st.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.