Why Storytelling Is The Ultimate Weapon. In business, storytelling is all the rage.
Without a compelling story, we are told, our product, idea, or personal brand, is dead on arrival. In his book, Tell to Win, Peter Guber joins writers like Annette Simmons and Stephen Denning in evangelizing for the power of story in human affairs generally, and business in particular. Guber argues that humans simply aren’t moved to action by “data dumps,” dense PowerPoint slides, or spreadsheets packed with figures. People are moved by emotion. The best way to emotionally connect other people to our agenda begins with “Once upon a time…” Plausible enough.
Attention to detail — Goliath Sportswear. Goliath Sportswear - Morgenland. Premium Inc attention to detail LINK: International Clothing Company Premium Inc came to us with one of their brands and a simple question.
How do we tell the story of this fantastic brand and what should it look like? The brand was Goliath and the brand essence quite remarkable. Beginning in 1925 Goliath had used the same factory to make shoes for both professional use and leisure. Premium Inc now needed to define the brand more clearly, implement a new design identity and continue the story telling of the Goliath legacy for the European consumers of the 21st century. Working closely with a dedicated client we identified a core within the Goliath brand; a respect for genuine craftsmanship, doing things with passion and not compromising on quality. We started too look for great genuine work that we appreciated ourselves.
We gave them our time and a possibility to tell their story; What drives them, what rewards are there for their hard work. Introducing Chrome for Android Beta. Ericsson Creates 36 UIs In 30 Locations, To Teach About The Internet's Infrastructure. There’s work that makes you jealous, and work that inspires you, and sometimes both at the same time.
This simple-yet-over-the-top corporate promo, by Swedish creative agency House of Radon, falls into that third category. The brief they got from Ericsson would make even an actuary’s eyes glaze over: "Show how a multi-purpose, multi-technology network node enables operators to meet their three priorities in relation to data traffic explosion: differentiation, control and monetization. " Radon’s solution? Go big: They designed three dozen touchscreen UI concepts to visualize Ericsson’s message and filmed them in 30 different locations in just three days. The result: This video is a great example of the changing nature of what advertising clients like Ericsson need, and how agencies like House of Radon deliver it. And the key to "making sense," as Charles and Ray Eames understood and House of Radon clearly does too, is in that second word: sense. [Watch House of Radon’s promo for Ericsson] The Rise Of The Explainer Video.
Editor’s note: Rico Andrade a former executive producer at Transvideo Studios and Picturelab.
Follow him on Twitter @andrade_rico. Two years ago, Jason Kincaid wrote a short but influential post titled “The Underutilized Power Of The Video Demo To Explain What The Hell You Actually Do.” 3 Tips For Selling A Geeky Idea To Everyone. When I’m not writing for Fast Company or elsewhere, I make films that help organizations and companies make sense of interesting ideas.
One of my frequent partners is National Public Radio, and a while ago they asked me to help them get the word out about their Android app. Their interesting idea was this: Because the app was open-source, anyone could help design and develop it--and not just hackers, but everyday listeners, too. My brief: Come up with a way to film "open-source app development" in a way that was appealing to geeks but not so technical that it scared off regular people, too. Quite a design challenge. Here’s the solution I came up with, which just won an AIGA 50 award in Washington, D.C It’s always hard to make technical subjects seem understandable, which is why animated "explainer videos" are such a hot thing these days. 1. When something makes sense, we don’t say we "understand" it. 2. What is building an open-source app like? Need To Solve A Tough Business Problem? Look Beyond The MBA's. This year marks the third anniversary of the Rotman Design Challenge.
It started out as a commendable experiment by the school’s Business Design Club to expose MBAs at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management to the value of design methods in business problem solving. This year, the competition drew teams from a few other MBA schools and some of the best design schools in North America. As a final-round judge, I had a front-row seat to the five best solutions to the competition’s challenge: To help TD Bank foster lifelong customer relationships with students and recent graduates while encouraging healthy financial behaviors. Both this year and last--the two years that Rotman invited other schools to participate--business school students were slaughtered by the design school students. Of the 12 Rotman teams this year, not one of them made the final round.