A Story that Once Again Proves Life is Better than Fiction

Now here’s a headline that causes one to pause:

Swedish Man Caught Trying to Split Atoms in Kitchen

My idea of a kitchen adventure involves experimenting with Dijon mustard in tuna or trying out the new omelet pan I got for Father’s Day.

A laggard in physics, I can say with a straight face that I’ve never considered exploring the wacky world of charged electrons.

If you’re interesting in watching an understated Australian TV news report on the ambitious Nordic lad, a click here will take you to the video.

Media Squeeze and Watermelon Explosion – Described by the NY Times Presents an Opportunity for PR

If you missed it last week — perhaps studying the latest numbers from the Department of Labor? — BuzzFeed proved what everyone has always believed in theory. If you stretch enough rubber bands across a watermelon, it will eventually succumb to the pressure in one glorious Kodak moment.

The New York Times used the BuzzFeed “fruiticide” as a symbol for what’s transpiring in the news business:

“Traditional journalists everywhere saw themselves as the seeds, flying out of the frame. How do we compete with that? And if that’s the future of news and information, what’s next for our democracy? President Kardashian?”

While the NYT piece doesn’t exactly break new ground with the premise “big changes are coming fast in the way major news institutions present journalism,” its behind-the-curtain look at the business of journalism does deliver a couple of fresh insights.

First, the quest for ratings in the form of clicks dominates. Of course, the equation “more views = more revenue” has been around for years. Instead, it’s the intensity to garner clicks and sophistication in real-time analytics that now have journalists turning to their dashboards like a dopamine drip.

“This is the biggest and least talked about development in traditional print media as it converts to digital: It now has ratings, just as television does.”

Or the Olympics.

Also, the news and information business has fragmented into two categories, lightweight stuff like the BuzzFeed science project and long-form journalism often on serious topics like ISIS’ brutality. It turns out that both perform well with online readers.

What about the stories that fit between these two extremes?

While the NYT makes the point that “it’s incumbent upon news organizations to do a better job with them — make them shorter and more distinctive, with data and striking visual presentation,” this still constitutes a huge opportunity for PR and what I term corporate media (“corporate publishing” sounds like something out of the Eisenhower era and “brand journalism” connotes paid media), particularly for B2B companies.

Regardless of industry, a B2B company’s target audience values information that can be put to use in their day-to-day jobs. This means insights, analysis and even news yet to be widely reported. The mass media properties ranging from The New York Times to BuzzFeed aren’t going to chase these stories because their potential on the click-o-meter doesn’t reach seven digits. And the publishing houses behind vertical trade publications increasingly devote their precious resources to non-media products for revenue.

That’s the void waiting for corporate media.

To debate the long-term viability of corporate blogging misses the point. The audience doesn’t care about the delivery mechanism. Again, they just want “useful information” in a form that makes for easy reading. The tougher to find this “useful information” elsewhere, the more value the audience attaches to it.

Which leads me to one final point.

Whether you’re selling tractors or enterprise computing, the storytelling behind the content remains a critical success factor. Ironically, some of the best role models for industrial-grade storytelling in business communications can be found in the sponsored content in The Atlantic and The New York Times. Take the narrative from IBM which connects the esoteric concept of big data with something understood by everyone, the weather.

Imagery in the form of illustration and a clever headline pull the reader into the story. More than the requisite facts and figures, the story teases out anecdotes like the following for an entertainment bent:

“Consider the café owner who is trying to decide at which point in the season to shift the café’s promotion strategy from lattes to iced coffees. The owner, of course, knows that as summer approaches, more people will want to drink iced coffee. But he probably doesn’t know exactly when to pull the trigger, and so he guesses and hopes he’s right.”

Examples like the IBM-sponsored content on big data show the way for corporate media.

Given a choice between dull or entertaining, you can guess where people go. Why would information in business be any different?

Just don’t try to blow up a watermelon.

Revisiting the Martin Luther King, Jr. “I Have a Dream” Speech

The holiday celebrating the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. prompted me to dust off the “I Have Dream” speech.

It’s a revealing exercise to read the text of the speech rather than watch and listen to the speech.

King was such a gifted orator, you get the feeling he could recite the owner’s manual for a daisy-wheel printer and the audience would be out of their seats with emotion.

Yet, when you strip the speech down to just the words, the storytelling still offers unmatched verve.

While the section framed by repeating the words “I Have a Dream” forms the guts of the speech, my favorite passage is the following metaphor:

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check – a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

Powerful stuff.

Words do make a difference.

The Op-Ed as a Platform for Storytelling

Cracking The New York Times, The Washington Post or a like target with an op-ed is not for the squeamish.

Your storytelling must be crisp, clever and ideally contrarian with a clear point of view (my high school English teacher would be pleased that I was paying attention to the alliteration lesson).

And after articulating the issue, the close must answer the question, “So what can be done?”

An op-ed titled “An Old Scourge Needs a Modern Solution” in The New York Times/IHT last year provides a good roadmap on what it takes to craft a winning op-ed.

Let’s start with the subject matter.

It’s tough to go wrong with a pirate story – just look at Johnny Depp and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise – particularly one that posits crime does pay.

Storytelling techniques bring the problem to life:

How do scruffy vagabonds as young as 16 overpower freighters and defy patrolling warships? And how, even when captured, do these modern pirates get away with their crimes?

Often, the author or the internal review process muddies the clarity of an op-ed by trying to cram too much information into the frame.

The author of the NYT op-ed, Peter Chalk at Rand Corporation, was kind enough to explain how he decided what content made the final cut:

I thought the most relevant (and interesting) information for the reader would be to explain how pirates get away with what they are doing. To many, the fact that this sort of thing goes on at all is a mystery. I just wanted to highlight that engaging in crime at sea is not that difficult and reflects the general unregulated and amorphous nature of the high seas.

At the 10K-foot level, here’s how Peter’s op-ed flowed:

Illustrate the pirate problem
Support the problem with contrarian anecdote
Deeper look at prosecuting pirates
Piracy pays
Ship owners play the odds
Call for actions to solve the problem

Drilling down another level, this op-ed showcases the right content.

It tackled a broad topic with national or global relevance, packaging it as a problem.

The piece hangs off a compelling hook; i.e., piracy goes back hundreds of years but needs to be addressed by modern society (“crime pays” should not be a mantra anywhere in the world).

All is explained with vivid language and a close that articulates a specific call for action.

In fact, the closing paragraph shows how active language and understatement make for a more entertaining read:

Piracy is a crime at sea, but it starts on land. To thwart the Somali piracy career path, the world community should put funds toward protecting local fishing grounds and building a national coast guard capability in Somalia. Then its young pirates might take a different course.

Good stuff.

BTW, it’s worth pointing out that the piracy op-ed makes no mention of Rand Corp.

That’s key.

Op-eds address issues, not companies.

Five Lessons in Counterpunching with Words from Warren Buffett

Staying true to form during the last presidential debate, Donald Trump inferred that all smart business people find loopholes to avoid paying federal taxes, including Warren Buffett.

I tried to come up with a plausible explanation for why Trump thought his comment on Buffett would go unchallenged. Then, the obvious hit me. He doesn’t care. It’s his words against Warren’s words. Trump’s thinking has the quality of Jim Carrey in “Dumb and Dumber” — “So you’re telling me there’s a chance.”

As Time Magazine pointed out, “There is simply too much information for the public to accurately metabolize, which means that distortions — and outright falsehoods — are almost inevitable.” Magnifying the problem, “Mainstream journalists are no longer trusted as gatekeepers to verify the stories that are true and kill the rumors that are false.”

Enter Warren himself.

He crafted the following response.

Some Tax Facts for Donald Trump

Answering a question last night about this $916 million income tax loss carryforward in 1995, Donald Trump stated that “Warren Buffett took a massive deduction.” Mr. Trump says he knows more about taxes than any other human. He has not seen my income tax returns. But I am happy to give him the facts.

My 2015 return shows adjusted gross income of $11,563,931. My deductions totaled $5,477,694, of which allowable charitable contributions were $3,469,179. All but $36,037 of the remainder was for state income taxes.

The total charitable contributions I made during the year were $2,858,057,970 of which more than $2.85 billion were not taken as deductions and never will be. Tax law properly limits charitable deductions.

My federal income tax for the year was $1,845,557. Returns for previous years are of a similar nature in respect to contributions, deductions and tax rates.

I have paid federal income tax every year since 1944, when I was 13. (Though, being a slow starter, I owed only $7 in tax that year.) I have copies of all 72 of my returns and none used a carryforward.

Finally, I have been audited by the IRS multiple times and am currently being audited. I have no problem in releasing my tax information while under audit. Neither would Mr. Trump — at least he would have no legal problem.

The Buffett treatise offers five lessons that can be applied to business communications when counterpunching a competitor:

Don’t Get Mad:
Nothing good ever comes from acting on “Hell hath no fury like a billionaire scorned.” Buffet’s clinical language — “Some Tax Facts for Donald Trump” (Is that the perfect headline or what?) — is particularly effective in playing off Trump’s shoot-from-the-thigh behavior. He sets the tone at the outset: “Mr. Trump says he knows more about taxes than any other human. He has not seen my income tax returns. But I am happy to give him the facts.”
Focus:
It’s easy to use this “wrong” as a springboard to exploit every sign of weakness in a competitor. This isn’t the time for a cathartic experience. While Buffett might be repulsed by Trump’s beliefs on the economy, healthcare and hair restoration, he focuses on the topic at hand.
Minimize Use of Adjectives and Adverbs:
Again, this relates to Buffett’s academic-like response. It comes across as more persuasive. If anything, boastful adjectives can cause an audience to turn up its baloney detector.
The Details Matter:
Why doesn’t Buffett round off the numbers? The level of detail in the numbers delivers realness to his point of view.
Storytelling Brings Out Humanity:
More than pepper us with numbers and facts, Buffett shares the back story that he’s been paying taxes since he was 13 when he coughed up a grand total of $7 in 1944. The levity allows Buffett, one of the wealthiest individuals on the planet, to come across as one of us.

Buffett doesn’t tell us Trump is wrong.

He shows us Trump is wrong.

As noted in previous posts, if Buffett were willing to take a pay cut, he’d be terrific in a business communications role. For more on Warren, master storyteller, check out “Warren Buffett’s Storytelling Transforms Shareholders Letter into Branding Event” and “Executives Struggle with One of the Most Effective Storytelling Techniques.”

How Did the City of Chattanooga Land a New York Times Feature?

If you’re like me, you picked up last Tuesday’s New York Times and thought WTH? (OK, maybe it wasn’t “what the heck,” but you get the drift.)

How did feel-good storytelling on the City of Chattanooga end up above the fold in The New York Times?

The New York Times Business Section Article

I’m sure officials from numerous cities who have invested zillions of dollars in Internet infrastructure read the headline, “A City Wired for Growth” and immediately wondered why the NYT didn’t choose them. It’s not every day that you see a city of roughly 172,000 people lauded by The New York Times for business practices.

I’m guessing that Chattanooga’s version of an economic development team pitched the story. It’s also possible that the journalist, Edward Wyatt, who’s based in Washington, D.C., and covers Internet policy, overhead some FCC suits lamenting the fact that other cities haven’t followed in Chattanooga’s boots and proactively pursued the angle.

Regardless, reverse-engineering the storytelling reveals all the assets you would expect in a NYT feature:

Great nickname: “Gig City” is right up there with “Snoop Dog and “Dr. J”
Contrarian dimension: Advanced technologies conjure images of Austin, Silicon Valley and Seattle, not a place with a view of the Appalachian Mountains
Contrast Vignette A: 33 seconds to download a two-hour high-def movie in Gig City versus 25 minutes for the average city
Contrast Vignette B: Named America’s most-polluted city in 1969 versus clean air, new waterfront and downright artsy
Contrast Vignette C: When Internet service at 100 megs per second is available, on average only 0.12 percent subscribe versus 33 percent of Chattanooga households and businesses subscribe to such a service
Quantifying the How: Federal grant of $111 million allowed the city to accelerate construction of a planned fiber-topic network
Game-changing example: Quickcue moved here in 2011, snagged $3M in investment and sold for a bundle to OpenTable
Requisite failure: Chattanooga dumped millions into a citywide Wi-Fi network that isn’t used
Quote that rhymes: “This is a small city that I had never heard of. It beat Seattle, New York, San Francisco in building the Gig. People here are thinking big.” ~ Toni Gemayel who moved his startup from Tampa

That’s how the City of Chattanooga pushed the big boys aside for a day and landed a chunk of real estate in the New York Times.

How Does a B2B Customer Story Crack The Wall Street Journal?

Virtually every national and global company desires coverage in the business media. For B2B players, this quest presents an additional hurdle in shaping a story that the average Joe will understand, much less care about.

For those who toil in the B2B arena, the pursuit of business media is not a job for squeamish. Often, the activity starts with educating the client that product announcements — “The Opaque security suite protects enterprise and government customers once and for all” (from an actual news release) — won’t open doors at business publications like The Wall Street Journal.

With this in mind, it’s instructive to reverse-engineer a story from a B2B company that did land in the business media, a SAP customer story in The Wall Street Journal.

How did SAP pitch and package the story in a way that caused the journalist (and her bosses) to green light the piece?

First, they targeted The Wall Street Journal’s CIO channel, a natural for this type of enterprise customer story. Zeroing in on a specific section in a media property increases the probability for success. And they pitched a journalist, Kim Nash, who has over 20 years of experience covering enterprise computing for trade publications such as Computerworld and CIO Magazine and knows her way around transaction processing.

Next, they offered the Smithfield customer story as an exclusive. By exclusive, I mean only the Journal would gain access to Smithfield’s global CIO for an interview.

Before going further, it’s worth acknowledging that high-profile names help in selling this type of story. SAP, the vendor, and Smithfield as the customer are both multi-billion dollar companies. Still, these lessons apply even if you’re an enterprise startup. It’s just going to take a little more guile — and luck — in pushing the story up the hill.

Even with the clout that comes from big brands, SAP pitched a narrative that plays at the industry level: As CIOs increasingly favor cloud computing over constructing new data centers, here’s a CIO moving all applications to the cloud.

Drilling down to the next level, the story quantifies the move:

Saves 20 percent in IT costs
So far, has moved about 30 percent of its systems to the cloud
Aims to cut the number of applications by 40 percent

The hard numbers make a difference though I was surprised that Smithfield didn’t divulge its IT savings with a bottom line number. It must have convinced the Journal that its total IT spend shouldn’t be in the public domain for competitive reasons.

And the story offers the type of details that bring texture to the storytelling like:

“The company processed 30.5 million hogs at nine U.S. plants in 2015. Nathan’s Famous hot dogs, Armour smoked sausage and other packaged meats are put together at 33 plants across the U.S. Its breeding facilities are also run separately.”

And my personal favorite that uses the classic before-and-after storytelling technique:

For example, a processing plant that sends pig parts to a packaging plant currently accounts for the transaction as a sales order. With an integrated ERP system, the transaction would be handled as an intra-company shipment through a shared transportation system. This is more efficient and costs less.

The choice of words do come into play. While it’s the journalist who’s crafting the story, I still give SAP credit for offering the right pool of content to draw from. There’s something about the phrase “pig parts” in an enterprise software case study that jars the reader in a way that an equivalent phrase like “sections of the animal” doesn’t.

Of course, the vignettes of the overarching narrative all relate back to the core pitch — cloud computing delivers benefits over the traditional data center.

Taking these elements together, you’ve got a fighting chance to gain the ear of a business publication.

Though it doesn’t relate to the actual pitch, you’ll notice that the Journal story includes SAP competitors Microsoft and IBM. Obviously, I don’t know how the SAP executives reacted to seeing their competitors piggy back (couldn’t resist) on their case study and gain a mention in The Wall Street Journal for free. But this is the price of admission when pitching the business media with the journalist striving to frame a vendor story — in this case Smithfield moving to the cloud thanks to SAP — with an industry context.

I raise this final point because nothing is more discouraging than navigating the business media labyrinth to the finish line for a win only to have your executives infuriated that competitors also appeared in the story.

Omnicom and Publicis Finding It Tough to Stay on Message

The couple looked so happy after the big day.

Now as the “sausage making” behind the Omnicom/Publicis merger makes its way to public view, you might want to close your eyes.

It’s not pretty.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that “battles over power and position” threaten to torpedo the merger. Sounds like the elements of a Shakespearean tragedy minus everyone dying at the end.

In my Big-Gulp analysis last year, I questioned how the transaction would benefit current and prospective clients. Now we learn from the Journal that the companies are fighting over who will be – this is rich – the acquirer and who will be the acquiree.

I can imagine the dialogue between the heads of Publicis and Omnicom, Maurice Levy and John Wren going something like this:

Levy: Even though we are absolutely a merger of equals, we still must designate an acquirer and acquiree for accounting purposes.

Wren: That’s bullshit. Excuse my French.

Levy: Actually, that’s an American word. In French, we would use the word “conneries” to express such a point of view.

Wren: You know what I mean

Levy: Actually I don’t. Because during negotiations you called this issue– hold on and let me pull out my notes so I can be precise. Right. You called this a “minor and inconsequential detail.”

Wren: C’mon Maurice.

Levy: Don’t you “C’mon me.” Since it’s minor and inconsequential, what is the harm in Publicis being the acquirer?

Wren: Because the public will then perceive that we’re not a merger of equals and that Omnicom is subservient to Publicis.

Levy: John, we have 130,000 of the smartest communicators in the world. Certainly, we can pull together a small team of say, 80 people to ensure the “merger of equals” message doesn’t get lost in what we both agree is nothing more than a technicality.

Wren: Hmmm.

Levy: Let’s turn this into a team-building exercise. We’ll take 40 staffers each from Publicis and Omnicom. Think about it. We have a task force of equals figuring out how to communicate a merger of equals. The symmetry is beautiful.

Wren: But who will be in charge of the task force?

Levy: We’ll have co-leaders, again showing the world that …

Fellas, did you consider that this “little” detail might need closure before signing off?

And I guess the investment bankers didn’t want to force the issue for fear of losing their tidy piece of change for the transaction.

To understand the mentality at Publicis, check out the Wikipedia page for “Publicis Omnicom Group” which went live on July 28, 2013, the day the merger was announced (obviously, didn’t get the memo that Wikipedia frowns on commercial use). In the organization’s capsule that I’ve captured below, skip to the “key people” section.

One doesn’t need a PhD in behavioral psychology to notice Publicis lands two people on the key-people list compared to Omnicom’s one. I smell trouble.

Given that this issue has lingered for eight months, we can assume whoever does becomes the acquirer will have coughed up some concessions to melt the stalemate.

A few comments on the recent media coverage:

WPP CEO Martin Sorrell knows how to pile on in this case with a pithy sound bite: “You have one talking Chinese and the other Japanese.”
Nothing good ever comes from a CEO saying “there is no Plan B.”
It irks me that journalists continue to call Omnicom and Publicis “advertising firms.” If you compared service revenue for advertising and communications (PR+) from the two companies stripping away paid media, that massive revenue gap disappears.

Looking to the future, there must be at least one media training module between Publicis and Omnicom to get both entities on the same page.

We’ll see.

“Drama” Before The New York Times Launched its Website Again Proves Life is Better Than Fiction

Earlier this year The New York Times celebrated the 20-year anniversary of its website.

Prior to the launch, the paper’s online reach depended on that “pioneer of online media,” AOL.

Friend, colleague and periodic co-trainer for our storytelling workshops, Peter Lewis, wrote the introduction story. But before taking a look at his words from Jan. 22, 1996, Pete was good enough to reminisce about some of the “drama” that led up to the big day.

Rewinding the tape to 1985, Pete was an editor at The New York Times reporting into Abe Rosenthal who convened a small task force and asked participants to imagine “The New York Times in the Year 2000.” Pete’s portrayal of the NYT on a computer screen didn’t quite elicit the response he hoped for. “As I remember it Abe and Arthur Gelb, the managing editor, listened for about 30 seconds before impatiently waving me off. Gelb asked, ‘How do we know that this Internet isn’t just a fad, like CB radio?’”

Around nine years later, Pete persuaded Bill Stockton, then the business editor, to make him the paper’s full-time “foreign correspondent in cyberspace.”

His argument went like this —

“There were some 35 million people using the Internet, more than the population of Poland, and, after all, we maintained a foreign correspondent in Poland.”

You have to admit. It’s a persuasive argument once you get past the question, can there really be a correspondent in cyberspace?

Continuing with our narrative, John Markoff then broke the story about Marc Andreessen and the Mosaic browser, and the land rush for Web domains was on.

Love the lead:

“Think of it as a map to the buried treasures of the Information Age.”

It turns out that John personally registered the nyt.com domain. Pete asked one of the execs (who will remain nameless to protect the guilty) for approval to spend $35 to register nytimes.com. After being told, “No one here has any interest in the Internet,” and being the enterprising sort, he registered it himself.

It wasn’t until more than a year later that Pete got a call from that same exec asking him to transfer ownership of nytimes.com to the paper. He willingly did, only asking that they reimburse him for the 35 bucks.

Shortly after, the paper anointed him to write “The New York Times on the Web” story which I’ll cover on Wednesday.

BTW, Pete still waiting for the 35 bucks.

Business Storytelling Lessons from the Budweiser “Puppy Love” Ad

A good percent of the U.S. population has watched the Budweiser “puppy love” ad that ran during the Super Bowl. At last count, YouTube views were about to crack the 50,000,000 mark.

I believe that qualifies as a viral video.

What exactly in the video caused so many people to watch and share?

Of course, it’s a terrific story that touches the heart. But how did Budweiser structure the storytelling to trigger so many “you’ve got to see this” reactions?

Communication professionals can learn a ton about storytelling from their advertising brothers. When you’re shelling out $4 million and change for a single ad, it has a way of tuning one’s senses, a dynamic that typically doesn’t exist when PR crafts a pitch or writes a news release.

As a result, advertising often structures their creative with the same classic story arc taught in your high school English class.

Even in the 60 seconds devoted to the “puppy love” ad, a classic story arc emerges. You can see the break down of how this plays out in the graphic below:

Budweiser puppy love ad video

In short, bad stuff happens in good storytelling (and yes, I took liberties in having the puppy channel Jimi Hendrix).

When the stranger adopts the puppy and starts driving away, we assume the puppy is headed for a dull life in the burbs away from his best friend. This creates the tension which in turn enables the “payoff” with the horse and his posse coming to the rescue.

The traditional PR mindset is to hide or diffuse or sprackle over the “bad stuff.”

Again, no bad stuff, no story.

Yes, I recognize that paid media allows advertising to control the narrative. They can dish out a crisis knowing with 100-percent certainty that a payoff and happy ending await.

Not so with PR.

Still, PR needs to push for content related to activities that didn’t go according to plan. This way, you frame the storytelling with a before and after narrative. The more distance between the two, the greater the drama. But without the “before,” the journalist or reader has no way to understand the context for the “after.”

Beyond the story arc, here are three more takeaways from the Budweiser video to guide PR-generated content:

1. Provide context

If you only see the stranger driving off with the puppy and don’t know that the puppy has tried three times to see his buddy, the horse, you figure what’s the big deal. After all, it IS a puppy adoption business.

2. Outward focus

Shouting “me, me, me” is the quickest away to turn off the audience. The company needs to be in a supporting role, not the hero.

3. Humanize the story

If your company makes software for troubleshooting computer networks, it’s going to be a stretch to bring a puppy (or a cat) into the picture. But this dimension can still brought out through the people involved.

Side Note: Al Topkins offers an excellent breakdown of the “puppy love” videography at Poynter (hat tip to Ben Whitmore at IDG).

The Backstory on This Microsite

A Story that Once Again Proves Life is Better than Fiction