The 3Ps of Storytelling for Employer Brand

4. Branded Strategies Presentation for Non Profit Talent Summit >< 6/23/2016 5 Loads of Experience I’ve been working in marketing since I was 18. Over a decade of experience in the HR/Recruitment space. Now I lead Branded Strategies, a boutique agency. The Niceties It’s Not About Me, But... I get to work with some pretty cool brands while delivering award-winning work and help they need. Most Importantly... I love my career. Seriously. The work I do allows me travel the world and work to advance our discipline.

5. >< 6/23/2016 6 Providing Light bulb Moments Here’s a few of the brands I’ve had the good fortune of getting to know and help grow. Branded Strategies Presentation for Non Profit Talent Summit

6. >< 6/23/2016 7 Why Do We Tell Stories? • Stories are Recognizable Patterns • Stories Helped Keep Us Alive • Stories Helped Us Understand Each Other • Stories Can Inform People’s Emotional Lives • Stories Can Provide Us Meaning Branded Strategies Presentation for Non Profit Talent Summit

7. >< 6/23/2016 8 Did you know the beginning of all compelling stories actually start the same? It All Starts With...… Branded Strategies Presentation for Non Profit Talent Summit

8. >< 6/23/2016 9 A Good Story Makes You Think Our goal as a storyteller is to make our audience sing for their supper without realizing that that they’re actually doing work or thinking as part of their engagement with our story. With a Great Story, You Won’t Realize You’re Doing It Branded Strategies Presentation for Non Profit Talent Summit

9. 6/23/2016 10Can you find the “3 Ps” in this

10. With Different Career Impact Yet Have a Shared Purpose. 6/23/2016 11 Storyline Development: Impact Each Job Is Different Branded Strategies Presentation for Nonprofit Talent Summit

11. >< 6/23/2016 12 Character Development • TRUTH: A good story requires well developed characters. • Learn the acrostic: CHARACTER Branded Strategies Presentation for Nonprofit Talent Summit

12. Owen’s Realizing His Dream… …...In an Unexpected Way 6/23/2016 13 Character Development: Owen Get to Know Owen Branded Strategies Presentation for Nonprofit Talent Summit ><

13. Life is Never Static Change Has Power “Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty.” William Archer >< 6/23/2016 14 Change is Needed. Without Change, Stories Die Branded Strategies Presentation for Nonprofit Talent Summit

14. 6/23/2016 156/23/2016 156/23/2016 15 Deloitte’s “Year One Wisdom” Lyndsey’s Story

15. >< 6/23/2016 16 “Secret Sauce” Recipe EVOKING SENSE OF WONDER When its tapped, the affirmation of being alive hits you in your core & drives you to pass it on. THEME There needs to be a “Grand Design” that provides a constant for the audience. CAPTURE A TRUTH Use what you know, within your conditional reality you’re experiencing. Express the values you feel & live. • Guidelines • Roadmap01 • Honest • Affirms belief 02 • Relatable • Real03 Branded Strategies Presentation for Nonprofit Talent Summit

16. 6/23/2016 176/23/2016 176/23/2016 17 GE’s “Childlike Imagination” Branded Strategies Presentation for SRSC

17. >< 6/23/2016 18 You don’t get a “pass” for lousy storytelling (or worse, none at all) because you don’t have a big brand or a big budget. Final Truth: You Can Do This. Branded Strategies Presentation for Nonprofit Talent Summit

18. >< 6/23/2016 19 Thank You PHONE: 214. 585. 2474 EMAIL: cm@brandedstrategies.com WEB: www.brandedstrategies.com SOCIAL: TheOneCrystal Branded Strategies Presentation for Nonprofit Talent Summit

Editor's Notes

A guy dials home from work. A strange woman answers. The guy asks, “Who is this?” “This is the maid,” answered the woman. “We don’t have a maid.” says the guy. “I was just hired by the lady of the house this morning.” “Well, this is her husband.” he says. “Is she there?” “Ummm… she’s upstairs in the bedroom with someone I figured was her husband.” So of course at this point the guy is FUMING. He says to the maid, “Listen, would you like to make 50 thousand dollars?” “Sure,” she says, “What would I have to do?” “Get the shotgun out of the hall closet, go upstairs and shoot that unfaithful witch and the jerk she’s with.” The maid puts down the phone. The guy hears footsteps, followed by a couple of gunshots. The maid comes back and asks what to do with the bodies. “Throw them in the pool!” he says. “What pool?” The maid hears a sharp intake a breath and then… “Uh…. Is this 555-4821?” Filmmaker Andrew Stanton said, “Storytelling is joke telling. It’s knowing that every sentence, from the first to the last, is leading to a singular goal… and ideally confirming some truth that deepens our understandings of who we are as human beings.” We all LOVE stories, stories affirm who we are and we all want affirmation that our lives have meaning. So today we’re going to talk about the POWER of storytelling and discover the three more “Ps” we need when crafting compelling stories for our employer brands and talent attraction program.
Look, I know some of you are here expecting to focus on the 3 Ps – that’s not what we’re going to talk about. It will get covered, but it’s not the focus, so I’m going to give you that up front so we can talk about what we really need to focus on: how to make a great story. Here they are: Purpose, People, Potential You’ll see this woven into our talk today – how we, as storytellers, start to embed persuasive hooks from the opening of the story and relay purpose through the meaning of work and ambitions of the people within it. My hope is to take you from looking at a job as a transactional req and realize behind every role in your company, there’s a meaningful story arc that can be shared with your audience: your candidates and employees.
In putting this presentation together, I was reminded how much I LOATHE the “about me” slide. Part of it is because it feels really presumptuous… after all, many of you don’t know me and haven’t really had a chance to get invested enough to CARE “about me.” The about me slide lacks a story, so let me change it up a bit and tell you mine: When I was 17, I was hired as a marketing manager for ISIS/Wyndham Hotels. They didn’t realize how old I wasn’t, so after finding out I wasn’t 18 and therefore wasn’t covered by insurance policy, they made me go home until my 18th birthday. I spent the time reading up on database marketing, hospitality marketing and fell in love with what would ultimately become the backbone of my career: marketing. After that experience and a couple other insignificant roles, I formed a small marketing company focused on real estate, improving brand awareness, sales and traffic. [Tell Divorce Story and how I got into recruiting] I noticed early on that recruitment lacked a lot of the structure marketing could provide that would really help candidates be able to better see & weigh opportunities and companies attract future employees they NEEDED to make their business work. I was doing employer branding before it was even really called that in any kind of a wide-spread manner and now, over a decade later, here I am. I created Branded Strategies in 20..12? 2013? With Carrie Corbin. The team at Branded Strategies works with mid-market to enterprise agencies on building out better employer branding, recruitment marketing & with HR technology providers on marketing strategy and customer positioning.
Who here remembers the Public Access show Mr Rodgers? Well, he carried with him in his wallet a quote from a social worker that said, “There isn’t anyone you couldn’t learn to love once you learned your story.” Stanton says that translates to the highest rule of storytelling: “Make Me Care.” Emotionally, Intellectually, Visually – we need to care. We design stories to make our audiences care to be able to impart messages that matter. Humans have been telling stories for thousands of years, sharing them orally even before the invention of writing. In one way or another, much of people’s lives are spent telling stories—often about other people. In her paper “Gossip in Evolutionary Perspective,” evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar foundstories’ direct relevance to humans: Social topics—especially gossip—account for 65 percent of all human conversations in public places. Stories can be a way for humans to feel that we have control over the world. They allow people to see patterns where there is chaos, meaning where there is randomness. Humans are inclined to see narratives where there are none because it can afford meaning to our lives—a form of existential problem-solving. Stories are recognizable patterns, and in those patterns we find meaning. We use stories to make sense of our world and to share that understanding with others. They are the signal within the noise. In 1944 study conducted by Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel at Smith College, 34 college students were shown a short film in which two triangles and a circle moved across the screen and a rectangle remained stationary on one side of the screen. When asked what they saw, 33 of the 34 students anthropomorphized the shapes and created a narrative: The circle was “worried,” the “little triangle” was an “innocent young thing,” the big triangle was “blinded by rage and frustration.” Only one student recorded that all he saw were geometric shapes on a screen. Storytelling was also an evolutionary mechanism designed to help keep our ancestors alive. The theory is that if I tell you a story about how to survive, you’ll be more likely to actually survive than if I just give you facts. For instance, if I were to say, “There’s an animal near that tree, so don’t go over there,” it would not be as effective as if I were to tell you, “My cousin was eaten by a malicious, scary creature that lurks around that tree, so don’t go over there.” A narrative works off of both data and emotions, which is significantly more effective in engaging a listener than data alone. In fact, Jennifer Aaker, a professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says that people remember information when it is weaved into narratives “up to 22 times more than facts alone.” Stories can also inform people’s emotional lives. Storytelling, especially in novels, allows people to peek into someone’s conscience to see how other people think. This can affirm our own beliefs and perceptions, but more often, it challenges them. Psychology researcher Dan Johnson recently published a study that found reading fiction significantly increased empathy towards others, especially people the readers initially perceived as “outsiders” (e.g. foreigners, people of a different race, skin color, or religion). Interestingly, the more absorbed in the story the readers were, the more empathetic they behaved in real life. The reality is value humans place on narrative is made clear in the high esteem given to storytellers. Authors, actors, directors—people who spin narratives for a living are some of the most famous people in the world. Stories are a form of escapism, one that can sometimes make us better people while entertaining, but there seems to be something more at play. Perhaps the real reason we tell stories again and again (and endlessly praise great storytellers such as Stanton) is because humans WANT to be part of a shared history. Humans have been telling the same stories for millennia. Author Christopher Booker claims there are only seven basic plots, which are repeated over and over in film, in television, and in novels with just slight tweaks. There is the “overcoming the monster” plot (Beowulf, War of the Worlds); “rags to riches” (Cinderella, Jane Eyre); “the quest” (Illiad, The Lord of the Rings); “voyage and return” (Odyssey, Alice in Wonderland); “rebirth” (Sleeping Beauty, A Christmas Carol); “comedy” (ends in marriage); and “tragedy” (ends in death). Stories can be help people understand the real world and all that is around us.
The beginning of a good story fundamentally makes the audience a promise: that it will lead somewhere worth your time. There’s many ways this can be accomplished but chances are the first we were all acquainted with started out the same: “Once Upon a time…” It’s what lets you know a tale is about to be told that you should listen to and is what will help hook your interest and guide you to the end.
People are born problem-solvers. So the way to hook them into a story isn’t to give them all the information up front, but rather provide a well-organized absence of information to draw them in. You do this through employing “The Unifying Theory of 2+2” – Make the audience put things together rather than just handing it to them. Let’s look at an example.
Insert Rackspace Video: In this video, there are no words, but a lot of information has been shared as to the kind of work environment, the type of people that thrive and in the absence of words, allows the viewer to also ascertain if they should select in, or self-select OUT. (Equally important) The audience has to work to arrive at conclusions to the point of this video but yet it remains a fan favorite.
The campaign stars “Owen,” a newly-minted GE employee who works as a programmer/developer but can’t quite explain to friends or family what he and his new company actually do all day. This will be a very familiar problem to employees of digital agencies. We start to get to know Owen when he shares his “Big News.” What did you learn about him, his interests, and aspirations? Next In “Hammer,” you get to know where Owen comes from…. And where GE came from, too.. Finally, in “Zazzies” you see Owen’s substance in how he has to compare his work with GE – which is meaningful and life-impacting- to his friend who works at a competitor making emojis.
1. Communication style: How does your character talk? Does she favor certain words or phrases that make her distinct and interesting? What about the sound of her voice? Much of our personality comes through our speech, so think about the way your character is going to talk. Her style of communication should be distinctive and unique. 2. History: Where does your character come from? What events shaped his personality? What events led him to the career choices he made? You may not need to provide all this background to your audience, but it’s good to know as the storyteller. It helps give him substance in your mind as well. 3. Appearance: What does she look like? This may be the least important ingredient to make your character a person to the audience, but you should still know it in your own mind. Not every character needs to be drop-dead gorgeous, by the way. Most people aren’t. 4. Relationships: What kind of friends and family does he have? How does he relate to them? Is he very social or reclusive, or somewhere in between? People can be defined by the company they keep, so this can be a good way to define your character. 5. Ambition: Just as this is the central letter of the acrostic, so too this concept is absolutely central to your character and plot. What is her passion in life? What goal is she trying to accomplish through your story? What is her unrecognized, internal need and how will she meet it? 6. Character defect: Everyone has some personality trait that irritates his friends or family. Is he too self-centered? Too competitive? Too lazy? Too compliant? Too demanding of others? Don’t go overboard on this. After all, you want your reader to like the character. But he’ll feel more real if he has some flaw. This is usually connected to his unrecognized need (see Ambition) and often gets resolved through his character arch. 7. Thoughts: What kind of internal dialogue does your character have? How does she think through her problems and dilemmas? Is her internal voice the same as her external? If not, does this create internal conflict for her? In real life we don’t have the benefit of knowing someone’s innermost thoughts, but a novel allows us to do just that, so use it to your advantage. 8. Everyman-ness: How relatable is your character? While James Bond is fun to watch on screen, most of us aren’t uber-trained special agent-assassins so it’s a little hard to relate to him on a personal level. On the other hand, Kurt Russell’s character in the movie Breakdown was far more ordinary and relatable, creating a more visceral experience. Be careful not to make your character too elite or he may be too difficult to live vicariously through. And that, after all, is the key to suspense. 9. Restrictions: More than a personality flaw, what physical or mental weakness must your character overcome through her arch? After all, even Superman had Kryptonite. This helps humanize your character, making her more sympathetic and relatable. The goal is to make your readers feel something for your character. The more they care about them, the more emotion they’ll invest in your story.
The campaign stars “Owen,” a newly-minted GE employee who works as a programmer/developer but can’t quite explain to friends or family what he and his new company actually do all day. This will be a very familiar problem to employees of digital agencies. We start to get to know Owen when he shares his “Big News.” What did you learn about him, his interests, and aspirations? Next In “Hammer,” you get to know where Owen comes from…. And where GE came from, too.. Finally, in “Zazzies” you see Owen’s substance in how he has to compare his work with GE – which is meaningful and life-impacting- to his friend who works at a competitor making emojis.
When you’re telling a story, have you constructed anticipation? In the short-term, we need to make sure our audience’s attention is captivated so they want to know what happens next. In the long-term, it’s important we continue to keep them hooked so they want to know how the story concludes and our message RESONATES with them even after they leave the screen (or even get off the phone). How do We do that? We construct believable, honest conflicts. We share truth that creates doubt or uncertainty as to what the outcome might be. Remember Owen? It was easy watching those short clips, to wonder whether or not he’d be able to get his friends and family to see how COOL and PURPOSEFUL his new job really is. It would be easy to be concerned if his new job would lose some of its luster for Owen but beneath that is the tension associated with wondering if the people involved will really understand that GE has made this BIG shift from a manufacturing company to a technology company that plays a crucial role in helping the machines that make our lives easier communicate with one another and determining how our infrastructure operates.
Wonder: Don’t shoot for “virility,” shoot for wonder. That will compel the audience to share with others in a way that resonates far beyond transient hype or funny memes. In our industry, look to Maria’s Story, created by Ernst & Young. Now lets see that put into action
True you may not be able to make big-budget commercials or hire famous advertising firms like BBDO to make your employer brand videos. Guess what? You don’t have to in order to make something that resonates with people. Here’s a few ideas and tools to help: Xtensio is great at helping you create candidate personas and establishing character development. Zoomforth is great for helping you get employee generated content and making easy, on-brand landing pages. *Shameless plug: Use consultants or boutique firms to help you create a storytelling / brand strategy for talent attraction that will play across all mediums. We’re a creative bunch that focuses on this stuff day in and day out – and letting you in on a little secret? We LOVE geeking out on this stuff with you. GE made an awesome animated film with a little girl talking about what her Mom does… but you don’t really need animation. Ask your employees to share pics and quotes of how they see what their Mom/Dad does through their eyes and what that work means. Nothing’s original: before GE did it, construction road crews did a campaign with employees kids asking to help keep their Mom/Dad safe at work by driving safely.

The 3Ps of Storytelling for Employer Brand

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Editor's Notes