FACE TIME - Success Stories Communicate “What Went Right”.

Hey, have your heard the one about the Trojan horse, that over-sized gift left by the ancient Greeks with 30 armed soldiers hidden inside?

Humans have been sharing success stories since the dawn of civilization, and the best ones often result from teamwork. They have been used strategically to inspire audiences around great leadership, loyalty, bravery, and innovative thinking.

The ingredients of a modern corporate success story often combine the best character traits of your brand (leadership, integrity, customer focus, for example) and show how these traits help a team of people reach a difficult goal.


Launching the new product, landing the big order, or completing the merger, are certainly success stories worth sharing inside your organization. Stories like these present opportunities to communicate the value of innovative thinking, teamwork, and collaboration, and to recognize the working groups who operate behind the front lines of your organization.

There are also a myriad of other stories that can be shared publicly and strategically to build your brand (and business reputation) in the minds of the consumer. Fixing a customer problem, donating to a charity, or cleaning up a stream, are stories that speak volumes about your corporate values and community commitment.

Success Stories are like flight simulators, they help your audience “feel” future success.

Thanks to the Internet, the distribution opportunities for a well-crafted story are almost limitless, and the cost per “eyeball” drops dramatically when you appeal to larger audiences. Videos can be creative, impactful and engaging, and highly customizable. They can range from a 30 or 60-second television spot, a light-hearted animation, or an inspiring mini-documentary. The form the story will take (and the budget to produce it) depends on your audience and how you want to touch them.

FACE TIME - Customer Stories: Put a face on your best customers.

A recent study found that 80% of consumers believe that business is too concerned about profit and not enough about responsibilities to customers, workers, and the environment. Mix in the ability for everyday citizens to Google your company’s corporate responsibility or employment equity record, and a growing distrust of traditional marketing practices and you have a customer demographic that is hard to win over.

Brand relationships are just like personal relationships, if your character is shallow or inauthentic, your friends won’t stick around. These days, truth is the key to consumer brand loyalty.

So, how do you market truth to the masses? If price point is the key differentiator between you and your competitors, then low price guarantees and Saturday morning sales flyers may do the trick. If the freshness of your coffee and donuts will drive customer traffic to your door, mouth-watering photography and free samples may be a good marketing approach.

But in the world of hospitality, healthcare, education, and financial services, customer relationships are based much more on trust. Marketing promises made about caring staff and great customer service ring hollow until consumers experience it first hand – or hear it from a trusted source.

And that’s where customer testimonials come in. If you introduce someone that your audience can identify with, and share an authentic story about a great experience they had with company, you lay the foundation for a closer (and more profitable) relationship with your prospects.

The goal of a customer story is to leverage common ground and engage people in an emotional and relevant way. The story you choose to share will vary depending on your target demographic and your strategic objectives. If you want to appeal to a certain market segment, (female boomers, for example) you will feature a woman from that segment and share a story about her experiences with your company that her peers identify with.

Customer stories are like business referrals from friends and family. They provide personal insight and context that current and prospective customers will appreciate. When you combine model employees and loyal customers in the same story, you get the best of both worlds.

Watch for my article on Success Stories, coming soon!

FACE TIME - How employee and customer stories build trust, sell products, and grow revenues.

Our world is a sea of complex work environments - where business lines, employees, and even customers, have interwoven, non-linear relationships. Our country’s biggest brands depend on a globally distributed workforce, comprised of multi-cultural and cross-disciplinary employees with differing experiences and points of view.

Building a successful, profitable company in today’s economy means tackling a multi-variable equation - you cannot rely on a simple, cause-and-effect sequence of events to produce the results you are looking for. Everyone in your organization needs to work collaboratively toward a clearly articulated vision.

So, how do you communicate that vision? How do you build trust and enthusiasm with your target audience? How do you create an emotional connection to your brand, your products, and your services?

Why not let model employees and loyal customers do it for you?

Employee Stories: A little recognition can go a long way.


Research in the UK has shown that dairy cows with names (Buttercup, Betsy, Daisy, etc.) produce more milk for their owners than their anonymous counterparts. Interestingly, the same holds true for employees whose contributions are recognized by their supervisors and peers.

Recognition is one of the key ingredients of employee engagement. It should come as no surprise that employee engagement is a critical to your bottom line. But how would a two-minute Facebook video about an enthusiastic new advisor from Winnipeg make you more profitable?

By profiling model employees, you are not just recognizing and rewarding great behaviour; you are making a powerful statement about your corporate values and principles, your definition of leadership, your best practices, and most importantly, your brand. The practice sparks a chain reaction, or ripple effect, that aligns and connects people across your organization to common themes.

Employee stories bring life to your brand

So, what makes a model employee? The answer to that will be different for every organization. One thing is certain; model employees are not hard to spot. Just about every working group or department can identify at least one model employee.

Formally recognizing these brand ambassadors, exploring their work ethic, and sharing their perspectives across the company will resonate positively and loudly with your stakeholder groups – from employees to senior management, from new recruits to customers. Your audience will connect to these employees (and ultimately to your brand) in a relevant, emotional way.

Employee stories are highly effective communication tools that can be featured on your corporate intranet, your careers website, or used in your executive town hall meetings, sales conferences, and road shows. When employee stories weave in concepts like teamwork, workforce diversity, corporate responsibility, and regional focus, their power multiplies exponentially.

Look for my next article on customer stories, coming soon.

Turf the Teleprompter: Improving Executive Communication

It doesn't take much to turn a charismatic and engaging executive into a boring, wooden robot. All you need is a overwritten script, a stifling over-lit executive boardroom, a video camera and a teleprompter.   

Most executive communications are paved with the best intentions.  The problem is that the content is so often filled with corporate blah blah, that viewers simply tune out.  A formal videotaped address can be intimidating for even the most confident executive,  so why put everyone (including the audience) through the pain in the first place?  

I discovered a long time ago that if you want to get the best performance from your executive you need to ignite their passion.   And, if you want to get the highest level of engagement from your audience, that passion has to shine through.    

Next time you're considering an executive communique via video - consider a fresh new approach: 

Make it personal and authentic.

Record a candid, informal and unrehearsed conversation with the executive who is most passionate about the topic.  Make sure he or she uses plenty of "I" and "we" statements  free of corporate speak.   Let body language speak volumes about their passion and commitment to the issue.  

Make it real and relevant.

Make sure that the executive places everything into real-life context.  Ensure there is a connection between high-level business strategy and the everyday activities of your customers and front-line employees.  Resist the temptation to communicate earnings data, economic indicators, and statistics - these can be made readily available using other communication methods. 

Make a brand and culture connection.

If possible, map the topic back to the values and principles of your corporate brand.  Address the "what's in it for me" questions that will inevitably arise from your viewing audience and show that company executives are real people too.

Weave it all together using the power of story.

The best way to communicate a concept is to interject tangible examples of it occurring inside your organization.  Consider stories that not only recognizes internal teams, but maps precisely to your business objectives.  Finding those stories are easier than you think and your employee engagement will rise sharply as a result.

My experience is that a well planned informal "fireside chat" with a high-level executive takes no more time than the teleprompted speech to the masses.  You'll need to invest some quality time in weaving the conversation together in the edit suite to ensure the communication meets your objectives.  

The result will be an engaging 2 or 3 minute video that captures the passion of your leadership team, the successes of your employees, and the spirit of your organization.  And of course you'll be able to use the video for a lot more than the teleprompter version.

MADE TO STICK: Why some ideas survive and others die.

Making It Stick is well worth the read, but one of the take-aways for me was their 6 principles of stickiness.  As Dan and Chip Heath pored over hundreds of sticky ideas, they saw, over and over, the same six principles at work.

SIMPLICITY

To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize. 

UNEXPECTEDNESS
We can use surprise — an emotion whose function is to increase alertness and cause focus — to grab people's attention. But surprise doesn't last. For our idea to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity. 

CONCRETENESS
Naturally sticky ideas are full of concrete images — ice-filled bathtubs, apples with razors — because our brains are wired to remember concrete data. In proverbs, abstract truths are often encoded in concrete language: "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush." 

CREDIBILITY
Sticky ideas have to carry their own credentials. We need ways to help people test our ideas for themselves — a "try before you buy" philosophy for the world of ideas. 

EMOTION
How do we get people to care about our ideas? We make them feel something. We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions. 

STORY
How do we get people to act on our ideas? We tell stories. Research shows that mentally rehearsing a situation helps us perform better when we encounter that situation in the physical environment. Similarly, hearing stories acts as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.

To summarize, here's their checklist for communicating a sticky concept:  a Simple Unexpected Concrete Credentialed Emotional Story. 

Sadly, for those who try to develop an idea like this, there is a villain. The villain is a natural psychological tendency that consistently confounds our ability to create ideas using these principles. 

It's called the Curse of Knowledge. 

Rally your audience simply and cleverly.

I was on Dan and Chip Heath's Fast Company Blog not long ago and ran across a link to a cleverly executed microsite called GirlEffect.

www.girleffect.org

The site seeks to rally audiences around complex, interwoven global development issues and suggests the solution to the world's woes has been in front of us all along.  The site invites visitors to get involved in a wide range of development initiatives that will truly make a difference in third world and developing countries. 

The online video that launches the site, and the additional resources available on the site are insightful and cleverly executed.  GirlEffect.org proves once again that impact shall triumph over completeness every time.

 

Reuse and recycle: The shelf life power of a great story.

I'm amazed how much large organizations spend on "single" or "limited use" videos that are played at a conference or a town hall and then tossed into the archive.  It's not unreasonable for a large corporation to spend tens of thousands on a "big opener" - video that really doesn't have any real value outside of the event.

I'm a big fan of working with my clients to develop creative approaches and themes that will not only stand the test of time, but leverage a multitude of distribution opportunities beyond the initial premiere.  

For example, have you been to a conference themed around teamwork lately?  Have you seen the fast paced video clip with the sponsoring executive extolling the virtues of working together?   Did you read the words "collaboration",  "stronger together", and "team" pulsing to the beat of a popular music track as you stare at a seemingly endless collage of photos of a politically correct mixture of employees hugging and high-fiving.   Oh wait, was that Fred from accounting in that picture?

Now, really.  Does that really inspire teamwork?  

I've found that you'll earn way more brownie points from your audience if you go out in advance and capture tangible examples of teamwork already occurring in your organization.

By theming your event around these "front-line successes" you not only demonstrate that it's achievable, but you recognize the people who are already doing it.   You will be amazed at the rise in employee engagement when you start profiling company success stories based on teamwork.

In developing a strategic, story-based approach, you can explore in greater detail the techniques and best practices being applied, personal perspectives from those "in the trenches", and inspire your audiences to take ownership and do the same.  You can edit the stories into engaging 120-second success stories for your company Intranet, or dissect the content and use the components as training resources.

Whether you roll it all into a punchy 90-second video, or spread your long-form teamwork stories throughout the organization, its up to you.   One thing is for sure, the teamwork stories you produce today will have value to your organization for months and years to come.