Overview: Content Creation & Marketing

Bezos and his team ... removed PowerPoint ... Instead, they distribute six-page narrative-based memos, that all attendees read in silence at the start of each meeting... "Reports should be distributed, presentations should be presented." ... if a report primarily conveys information, then stories produce an experience... facts and stories can be …

What if “persuadability” isn’t the right metric to look at? ... Information warfare expert Molly McKew, who specializes in U.S.–Russia relations... "There aren’t good tools to evaluate the impact of shadow campaigns... Information and psychological operations ... are not just about information, but about changing behavior... of more than 36,000 …

reactive storytelling... quickly, nimbly, be part of the cultural conversation in a meaningful way... When you don’t have budget to put behind your campaigns, real-time or reactive storytelling is a really powerful tool to intercept consumers where they are and get them to believe in you...

Storytelling and EU projects - some guidelines I wrote for the 2017 “EU in my Region” blogging competition, which I’m managing for the EC’s DG REGIO.

We have ideas for sponsored Codas, that are of interest to specific groups.

Brexit, as experienced by a British-Australian comms guy in Brussels.

“Four years later, this Tweet probably best illustrates, in a single image, the mistaken assumption underlying the failed UK Remain campaign…” - a post-Brexit update of my January 2012 post on BlogActiv, over on Medium.

But what we are building with artificial reality is an internet of experiences... although every one of these environments was fake, the experiences I had in them were genuine... you gain authentic experiences, as authentic as in real life. People remember VR experiences not as a memory of something they saw but as something that happened to them.…

The 12-person unit, called the social stories team, includes a variety of roles: writers, animators, graphics professionals, and producers, who create and package content for Instagram, Vine, Tumblr and Snapchat Discover.

While the platform has long been a bastion of visual storytelling, it has also been historically lax with its limitations on gratuitous writing and hashtagging. That all changed today... An epidemic of hashtag fatigue is coming... The first step was de-prioritizing the hashtag in discovery feeds. The next step is burying it in yours... To e…

the Instagram experience, with its constant flow of images and text boxes, presented an alternative story geometry that demanded from me new things. Shorter stories... a deeper consideration of photographs and the rich, nuanced ways that words and pictures work together. ... a powerful, unexpected, and mostly underutilized storytelling tool...…

Storytelling at its finest... should evoke a visceral reaction in its audience. There's something to be said about inviting that audience to participate in a story ...the options for how to do so are infinite... Here, we explore some great examples of interactive and crowd-sourced storytelling at its finest. - Crowd-sourced storytelling: How…

"People bond. Barriers dissolve. Connections are made. Trust increases. Knowledge is transmitted. Wisdom is shared ... a deep sense of interdependence is felt... If you are part of an organization, no matter what it's shape or size, it's time for some meaning making ... by creating engaging opportunities for everyone, from mail room to board ro…

Great "best of times, worst of times" piece on storytelling. Not just worth a read, it's worth learning the formula. An example: "Our access to knowledge and stories has never been greater, and it’s growing every day.... "21 things only a 90s kid can appreciate” will probably get 50 times more traffic than a post about climate change or political…

"many marketers have a problem getting out of the corporate-agenda mentality. Especially when it comes to producing content that will resonate with their audience and be shared by their audience. Storyboarding is a fantastic way to get to storytelling... storyboarding is likely to unveil epiphanies that lead to your storytelling... allows you t…

"This interactive project lets you step into the shoes of the president of Azerbaijan and assess how the decisions you make influence your popularity in the country" - President for a day, via https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/online-storytelling-ideas-from-hackastory-hackathon/s2/a564037

"To zero-in on exactly what you want to say, what you want someone to take away and what you want someone to do is critical but just the beginning ... you then need to distill everything into something snackable, engaging and shareable, the amount of work and thoughtfulness intensifies. Essentially, to visually communicate through byte-sized nar…

"Scheduling Technology Leaves Low-Income Parents With Hours of Chaos" Within 24 hours of this article's publication, Starbucks changed their scheduling policy. - Working Anything but 9 to 5 - NYTimes.com

"Uprising: Winner of the 2013 AAAS Kavli award for online science journalism." - The Environmental Scandal That's Happening Right Beneath Your Feet - The Matter Archive - Medium

"Here is the science around storytelling and how we can use it to make better decisions every day:"

"Here is the science around storytelling and how we can use it to make better decisions every day" - The Science of Storytelling: Why Telling a Story is the Most Powerful Way to Activate Our Brains

"an interactive mission, with all other elements of the campaign designed to direct people to experience it.... a range of media including TV, online rich video takeovers and a 30-second You Tube trailer." That doesn't scratch the surface of what I reckon is probably the best thing I've seen online all year. A must see.

"recent scientific work is putting a much finer point on just how stories change our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors... to motivate a desire to help others, a story must first ... develop tension during the narrative... it is likely that attentive viewers/listeners will come to share the emotions of the characters in it and continue mimicking t…

"Corporations are tempted to take over journalism with increasingly better contents. ... dangers and hopes for new revenue streams." Interesting figures on the decline in journalists and the rise of PR specialists, cause by 2 trends: "while the journalistic staffing is shrinking dramatically ... the public relation crowd is rising in a spectacul…

While possibly a bit naive regarding Facebook's motivation for crucifying organic reach, some good points here: "- Talking doesn’t equal connecting: It seems that many brands take their audience for granted. Liking a page doesn’t always imply interest. ... - Paid reach won’t substitute for great storytelling: While paid reach might get more visib…

"The empowered consumer will bypass or ignore communications that aren’t relevant and don’t add value ... brands that want to be invited into the conversation will have to say something that’s worthy of their audience’s time and attention... there are some guiding principles behind great brand storytelling. Call them the 10 Commandments of Conten…

"The idea here is that when you use storytelling tricks to get your point across, people are going to be more responsive. This is true in everything from PowerPoint conversations to business deals. "