Live-Blogging at MISE2010!

A little background on Peter, he is the creative storyteller at Plain Joe Studios.

Before even starting, he had us all stand up and rearrange the chairs into a circle, definitely a way to keep us all engaged. He started by asking:

“What is the story that is walking away with your people?”

With your brochures, mailers, signage, etc… If you notice, Starbucks and Disneyland are very intentional about their story. When you walk into their organization, they are sharing a specific story that they have created.

Public Relations has evolved into social media. Everyone has become their own PR person. A brand isn’t about color or fonts; it’s about emotion. As represented in the comic, everyone want’s to be the guy in the bottom right corner. The question you have to ask yourself, are you representing your message accurately? Are you saying what you want to be told?

Peter spent a few minutes sharing the clip Social Media Revolution. If you haven’t seen the clip, it’s full of fascinating statistics about how quickly the web has gained traction.

Stories are finding us today via our friends and networks. And as most of us have experienced, the web has progressed immensely. An interesting side note Peter mentioned was that YouTube is the second largest search engine on the internet. It’s not always about SEO on Google. Its begs to ask the question, is your story being told on YouTube?

The phases that we have gone through to where we are with coffee have impacted how we consume it. A handful of coffee began simply as a commodity. Next came Folgers (products), during the industrial revolution. Then came 7-Eleven, which catered to the quick fix (service). Starbucks then came in and created the world in which we go to drink coffee (experience). Notice how much premium has been added in each of these stages. Last on the progression is transformations.

Writing Epic Stories

• From informational to Experiential: a Sunday in church should be an experience.
• From passivity to Participatory: engage people while they’re sitting in the room.
• From absorption to Immersion: be a part of the experience.
• From individualism to Connectedness: allow people to express and reflect.

Create an environment where people are excited to tell your story. The goal isn’t to take someone else’s story; the goal is to discover and tell your own story.

You don’t have to spend a lot of money to write your story, you just have to be intentional about it.