 By Brianna Valleskey
When people ask you to tell them about yourself, what do you say? Do you recite your resume? Talk about your current role and organization, then maybe add a tidbit or two about your personal life? There’s nothing wrong with sharing these facts. You’re being asked, after all. But rattling off a list of bullets is the same as merely listing off the features of your product: It whips! It chops! It mixes! It grinds! You are presenting disparate pieces of information without tying them together in a way that leads your listener(s) to a specific conclusion. You are only telling people who you are. You should be showing them. If the idea of your “personal brand” feels like an abstract concept, you’re not alone. My number one recommendation is to always have a few stories in your back pocket to shape your personal brand. Listening to a story engages more cognitive functions than hearing facts and stats, including emotional reactions, mental imagery, beliefs, and even evaluations, according to a 2000 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The most effective way to sell yourself is to tell a story about yourself. Getting Started with Stories Maybe you've never thought about your story. Maybe you write a blog post here, a LinkedIn update there. But when you are on the spot, in real time, are you able to recite an elevator story about yourself? (Similar to an “elevator pitch,” an elevator story should be concise enough to tell on an elevator ride.) This is not about abandoning the idea of a personal brand. But rather, to shape your personal brand with the right stories about yourself to the right people, at the right time. Stories of times that you found 'out-of-the-box' solutions, times that you’ve failed (and what you learned), or times you've overcome challenges that changed your perspective. But if you want to grab and hold people’s attention, if you want to thoughtfully promote yourself without coming off as showy, if you want to dazzle and amaze the people around you, you can use Kindra Smith’s storytelling framework from “Stories that Stick.” In the book, she shares the four vital story types every business should have: Founder Story, Value Story, Purpose Story, and Customer Story. The first three are vital stories that I think your personal brand should also have, which is what I'll cover below. Are you ready to master your story? Keep reading. 3 Types of Stories You Can Tell About Yourself 1. Founder Story: Who you are? Even in a job setting, humans like to hear about humans. They crave for an understanding of your humanity (who you are), and how that relates to the work that you do—all in 120 seconds or less. This is why you need your Founder Story. “It’s a story that generates faith beyond numbers, answers questions without effort, and fills in any missing pieces of the puzzle about where the founder has been, where the founder is going, and why this founder is worth betting on,” Kindra writes. Storytelling was my first love. As a child, I would rollerblade to all the neighborhood parks just to lay in the grass and write. I spent summers devouring books, journaling, scribbling poetry, writing novels, filming videos, giving tours of our house; anything I could do that involved using language to create bridges between people. After spending four years on a journalism degree (which everyone in the industry said was a waste of time), multiple internships, and an editor-in-chief role on the university newspaper, I got my first job out of college on Craigslist. I created content for a financial media startup. Then I hosted an internet radio show and booked guests who regularly appeared on CNBC. I’ve managed content marketing in the SaaS space, freelanced as a copywriter, moved across the country for a job to a city where I didn’t know a single person, and eventually found my sweet spot in storytelling and strategic communications for high-growth companies. I am on Earth to help people tell transformative stories. That is the foundation (soil) and driving force (sunlight) of my career. And with my Founder Story, I bring together these disparate pieces of information to weave a tale about where I’ve been, where I'm going, and why I’m worth betting on. To craft your own Founder Story, start with what connects who you are to what you do: Do you love talking to people? Working with your hands? Being outside? Solving problems? Creating spreadsheets? Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
You don't have to have your "dream job" to be able to answer these questions. Many people never have the luxury of finding a dream job. Instead, we can search for a job that involves at least some of the things we like. And if we understand the things we like, we can tell a story about where we’ve been, where we’re going, and why we’re worth betting on. 2. Value Story: What do you do? When someone asks what you do, try to not rely on quoting a grocery list of responsibilities, abilities, and task-tivities. That's just more telling; more feature led-selling. “People don’t buy the thing. They buy what the thing will do for them,” Kindra writes. “That story is a value story.” Your skills, your expertise, your experience: these are “things.” Can you describe what you do without simple listing responsibilities? Can you incorporate real world examples and create a case study of yourself? One month into the COVID-19 pandemic, my company estimated that a notable number of sales opportunities were stuck in our pipeline. Our would-be buyers had frozen their budgets. They (understandably) were afraid. So we searched for stories that would make them brave. When we interviewed these buyers, they told us that only solutions demonstrating agility throughout the crisis and ROI could give them the confidence to invest. Our sales reps reported similar findings. So we went to work. We asked our customers to share how they’d pivoted using our solution, in whatever format they wanted: a case study, best practices blog post, testimonial, webinar spotlight, product review, and so on. We documented how we, ourselves, were using or planning to use the solution. Metrics and ROI measurements were injected as often as possible, but the main goal was to set the market narrative of how to keep business moving despite the uncertainty. These stories were promoted internally and strategically disseminated across our go-to-market activities. We saw hundreds of stage progressions and close date changes, while influencing millions in pipeline and hundreds of thousands in revenue, within a few months. I use storytelling to achieve business outcomes. I tell a Value Story about what I've done to help people understand what I can do for them—to paint a picture of their potential future. These questions will help you think about your Value Story:
You do not need a pandemic-level event to describe your value. Does the work you do make your boss’ life better? What about your teammates? Was your proudest moment a time when you had to be resourceful? Go with that. There is no perfect story—only the perfect time to tell one. 3. Purpose Story: Why do you do what you do? I work because I have rent, bills, healthcare costs, and a compulsive book-buying habit to pay for. But I do the specific type of work that I do because it aligns with things I believe. And sometimes I want to convince others to believe those things, too. This is where a Purpose Story comes in handy. “All purpose stories start with this essential question: What point do I want to make?” Kindra writes. “Said another way: What do I want my audience to think, feel, know, or do as a result of hearing this story?” I believe stories can be transformative. Growing up, my mother was depressed and suicidal. She took me out for Chinese food once before telling me that she wanted to die because she thought I'd be happy. I was a child, so I believed her story. And it changed me. This one story unequivocally informed me that I was responsible for my mother's life. Naturally, looking after her evolved into a blueprint of caretaking and co-dependency that defined my approach to relationships for twenty years. My therapist first identified this lack of boundaries during our sessions on work/life balance (a tricky subject for another blog). When I couldn't stop working 12-hour days, we examined the stories I was telling myself that kept me prisoner to this schedule. We followed the thread of each narrative. They all led back to her. With that knowledge (and many, many sessions), I used this narrative therapy to tell myself a new story: ones where my mother was a victim of the cycle of abuse, just like me; where I could forgive her and replace that old pain with something new. I believed my story. And it changed me. This is an intense example of a Purpose Story—a story that has profoundly remade me that I use to show people that they, too, know stories can be transformative. Here are some questions that can help you think about a Purpose Story that works for you:
Your Purpose Story does not have to be so personal, and it absolutely should not be forcefully emotional. But it should feel true enough to you that others will feel the weight of its truth. How to Tell Your Story "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." - Maya Angelou Time is our most precious resource. You only get one "first time" to show people who you are. Don't waste it. Start thinking about your Founder Story with the questions above. Write your answers down and then see if you’re able to put them together with 200 words or less. Include specific moments and details that help people relate. Stories are meant to bridge the gaps between us, after all. Blog about these stories or share your story on LinkedIn—this will help you practice how you tell them so that you can nail it in applications, job interviews, networking events, and everywhere else. Also, practice! Practice reciting the stories out loud. Reading what you’ve written allows you to hear the words and pick up on any gaps, inconsistencies, or awkward sentences. If you’re brave enough, rehearse in the mirror and see what your face and your body are doing while you’re telling these stories. Pull your tone, body language, and the actual words coming out of your mouth together so that you feel comfortable telling your stories. Your comfort will make others comfortable. And trust me: You are brave enough. You can master your own story and make magic in your world. I believe in you. Now, go write your story! Go!
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 The best marketing teams know when to throw punches and when to roll with them. By Brianna Valleskey
Our marketing agility has been tested as of late. COVID-19 stripped away core components of business strategies across the globe, forcing us to face the weight of unprecedented change; a new world where business travel and in-person events are replaced by remote work and budget cuts (for both us and our customers). Our strategies were hit with an asteroid. Overnight, our ecosystems changed. Most of the mass extinction events on earth have been due in some way or another to global warming—with as much as 75% of all life on earth disappearing in a single episode. In a changing environment, you either collapse or adapt. Nothing is as costly as inaction. Adaptation vs. the Fear of Change In nature, adaptation is the process of a species becoming fit to live successfully in its current environment. Nature is very budget-conscious; it can’t afford to simply let life in an ecosystem die out when things change. Biological forces are always working to maximize the return on nature’s investments in living things, so adaptation is a natural reaction to an evolving ecosystem. Marketing agility means successfully adapting to new (and continuously evolving) environments. It’s the ability to adjust your marketing programs quickly and easily based on often unforeseen circumstances related to your company, your customers, or something else in your ecosystem. This isn’t a foreign concept to marketers. We’re constantly making changes based on different criteria like timeframe, data, or engagement. But in this case, I’m talking about dealing with seismic shifts: tectonic plates moving inches at a time below the surface that form a richter-breaking earthquake. Having the marketing agility to maneuver massive change not only rescues you in dire situations, but it helps you execute more effectively on day-to-day changes. Fear of the unknown is very real. When something unprecedented happens, no one wants to just throw away a go-to-market approach that has worked for 24 months straight without another surefire plan in place. But we must come face-to-face with that fear in times like these, when our families, our companies, and our customers depend on us. We must be brave enough to stop for a moment and take stock of the current situation in order to determine the best course of action moving forward—whether or not that means abandoning programs we spent 18 months trying to build. You never have to throw anything away, of course, as long as it continues to drive measurable results. But keep a close eye on it, and at the same time proactively research your new environment and test some new things based on what you learn. Utilize adaptive storytelling. On Relevance Stories build our identity. They help us understand the world, and they shape the way we see it. In business, we tell stories with our brand design and messaging, through our events and experiences, via the content and communications we share, in the sales and customer conversations we have, and so much more. We’re telling stories constantly to help people understand why our product or service is relevant to them. What we say in those stories must be relevant to our audience—not ourselves. The messages you bring to the market must answer the question of why you’re reaching out to that audience (whether on a one-to-one or one-to-many basis) and why they should care. Otherwise, you’re a stranger with a sales pitch or a glazed-over digital ad. If a brand is the sum of all interactions someone has with your company, then your collective go-to-market message is the conversation you’re having with your audience. Are you talking about you or about them? Hopefully, your core narrative and messaging framework are, indeed, relevant to your audience. You solve a challenge, satiate a desire, or provide something else valuable enough for people to invest. And that value is something that’s relevant to each and every individual in your audience. It's what ties them all together in a common thread. “Personalization” is for building relationships with individuals. Relevance is for building relationships with the masses. PSA: Call Your Customer Relevance ensures that the way you communicate your value speaks to what matters most to your audience today. Your core message might resonate with your audience on an overall basis, but if it’s not among the, say, three-to-five top things they are thinking about prioritizing within the next week/month/year then they’ll scroll right past you. In the attention economy—where scarcity exists not in the amount of space we can use to get in front of our buyers, but in the length that we can hold someone’s interest—being relevant means staying close to our buyers and customers. We hold someone’s attention by bringing valuable information as a resource, answering their questions, and helping them make informed decisions. But the world changes quickly. What mattered to many of us two months ago isn’t even a blip on the radar anymore. And that can happen to our buyers or our customers on any scale (big or small) at any moment, whether or not we know it. We must always know how to make our core value and messaging hyper-relevant to what matters most to our audience today; this month; this quarter; this year. If we can’t speak to that, then maybe we need to rethink what we’re doing. This approach, of course, requires staying very close to your audience. Listening, conversing, interviewing your customers as much as possible. As marketers, we spend so much time reading about them and writing for them and talking about them, but we don’t often get the same amount or frequency of face time as some of our other customer-facing counterparts. This is the part where I tell you, The Marketer, to call your customer. Living, Breathing Stories Of course, many of us in the marketing discipline do already call our customers. We interview them for case studies and put them on our advisory boards and ask for product feedback. But what I’m suggesting is just a regular cadence of check-ins just to understand what’s top-of-mind for them. It’s not a sales call, but rather a way to understand how they’re thinking on a day-to-day basis, throughout different times of the year, and during unique events. What decisions are they considering and when (and why)? Thank them for taking the time to speak with you with a coffee or cocktail. (Alternatively, you could send them a handwritten note or another token of appreciation if you don’t live in the same region.) Cycle through interviews with different customers to ensure you’re getting a diversity of perspectives. Keep the questions short (don’t exhaust your interviewees) and focus on getting into their state of mind to be the best resource possible. Find out …
At the same time, be sure to establish a strong pipeline of feedback from your sales, support, and other customer-facing teams. Use the same set of questions with these internal teams and compare that research to yours. Find the patterns. Then craft a mini messaging framework that aligns with your core framework but is hyper-focused on where your audience’s head is at right now. As a situation changes or time goes on, allow that messaging framework to evolve. Even something as small as a change in certain vernacular should or a specific emphasis should be allowed to inform you’re saying to the market. Use continual research in order to make educated guesses on where to iterate. Let your stories live and breathe. “Brand journalism” is one of those murky terms that typically has to do with sharing stories about a brand to build affinity; and it usually involves some combination of public relations, content, and corporate communications. What I’m describing here is more like ... adaptive storytelling, where you know the story but you allow it to grow and adapt to the situation as necessary. This allows you to be a lighthouse to your buyers, customers, and community when they’re navigating uncertain waters; a reliable and trustworthy safe harbor. Tone-deaf messages without relevance (and in uncertain times, hyper-relevance) fall on disinterested ears. Winning brands build relationships like people do: by creating mutual value, through shared positive experiences, and being there in times of need. This piece is part 1 in a series about marketing agility. To read part 2, click here. 
By Brianna Valleskey
Why do some ads go viral? And why are others so easy to forget? I started thinking about this after Nike’s “Dream Crazy” advertisement came out a few months ago. The video features former NFL player Colin Kaepernick, whom people love or love to hate. You could argue that the video’s 27 million views are because Nike decided to feature Kaepernick in an ad, but the controversy was just a hook. A much more real story lies at the heart. If you haven't seen it, the video plays motivational music while showing people of every gender, race, religion, and economic status pursue their dreams in spite of societal standards: A child without legs in a wrestling match. A Muslim woman boxing. A homecoming queen who’s also a linebacker. An NFL player with only one hand. A professional tennis player from Compton. “If people say your dreams are crazy—if they laugh at what you think you can do—good,” says an identified narrator. “Stay that way. Because what nonbelievers fail to understand is that calling a dream crazy isn’t an insult. It’s a compliment.” Damn. That’s something I can really feel. And I’m sure I’m not the only one. Having a “crazy” dream is something I think everyone has experienced at least once in their lives. And then there was the #LikeAGirl campaign from Always, where young women and little girls explaining what it means to run “like a girl.” While the teenagers acted like damsels in distress, the girls ran their adorable little hearts out. It’s a sweet but sad reminder of how society warps the way girls see themselves as they grow up. That video has 66 million views. Two very different commercials. Same effect. So what’s the secret ingredient? Stories. They're our way of making sense of the world. “When people read a book, watch a movie or hear a story, regardless of medium or format, it is imperative that they see themselves in the story,” write SapientNitro executives Gastron Legorburu and Darren McColl in “Storyscaping.” These stories are so powerful because they tap into something that millions of people have personally experienced. The story in the ad becomes our story (and vice versa). And this has been the case for thousands of years. From Cave Paintings to Kaepernick Of course, modern marketers were not the first storytellers. Cave paintings dating as far back as 40,000 thousand years ago inform us that our ancestors felt the urge to express their experience. “Whether it’s Neanderthal elbow rubbing or social media socializing, story is central to what it means to be human,” write Legorburu and McColl. Perhaps this can, in part, explain why the same stories appear across space, time, and culture. “Every culture has a flood story about how the whole earth was flooded and things started over,” says mythologist John Bucher on an episode of Ologies. “Stories of floods predated Hebrew scripture, [from] Amazonian culture, Greek culture, Roman culture, Asian culture.” Stories are the driving force behind the history we learn, the religion we practice, the government we follow, the beliefs we hold, the people we love, and even the way we think about ourselves. Studies show that reframing your narrative can yield a more positive identity. And yes, gamification of social media platforms makes them incredibly addictive. But there’s more to it: What other medium gives people complete and utter control over how others see their story? Not to mention the ability to voraciously consume stories about others. Legorburu and McColl again: “Humans have an innate ability to take disparate events and connect them together to create meaning.” To tell stories is to be human. But why is it that the marketers at Nike and Always and other world-dominating brands can use stories to awaken our hearts and, consequently, open our wallets? This is Your Brain on Stories Long before Joseph Campbell and “The Hero’s Tale” helped George Lucas produce the most well-known space opera of all time, Aristotle taught us that every story should have a beginning, middle, and end. This three-act structure is important, mythologist John Bucher explains, because the way storytelling structure works actually mirrors the way the human brain solves a problem. 1. A goal or yearning is introduced, but conflicts and/or obstacles arise. This goes even further. “Storytelling evokes a strong neurological response,” writes Harrison Monrath in a Harvard Business Review article. He goes on to say that research from Neuroeconomist Paul Zak shows how our brains produce cortisol (the stress hormone) during tense moments in a story, while sweet/cute/etc. elements of a story can cause our brains to elicit oxytocin (a chemical that makes us feel good). What’s more? A happy ending can trigger the release of dopamine in our limbic system, making us feel hopeful and optimistic. Zak, himself, writes in another Harvard Business Review article that these findings are relevant to business settings. “For example, my experiments show that character-driven stories with emotional content result in a better understanding of the key points a speaker wishes to make and enable better recall of these points weeks later,” Zak writes. The advertisements from Nike (Dream Crazy) and Always (#LikeAGirl) are character-driven. For Nike, the character is the underdog. With Always, it’s adolescent girls. But there’s another element still that makes them so powerful. “The most successful storytellers often focus listeners’ minds on a single important idea and they take no longer than a 30-second Super Bowl spot to forge an emotional connection,” Monrath writes. This, my dear readers, is key. Stories are Shared Experiences What’s the one word, phrase, idea, or vision you want your audience to walk away with? And how will you get that across before you lose their attention? Nike doesn’t just want you to dream big. It wants you to dream crazy. And Always wants women and girls everywhere to know that “like a girl” is not an insult. Neither of these things has anything to do with the products Nike and Always sell. Yet, Always saw a higher-than-average lift in brand preference after the #LikeAGirl ad, where purchase intent grew by more than 50%. And Nike experienced a 31% increase in online sales following the release of its Dream Crazy spot. So what does this all mean? The best marketing isn't marketing at all—it's storytelling. Authentic, emotional, and character-driven stories stimulate our brains and saturate our hearts. Stories trigger the most important brand message of all: You belong. Everything else is posturing. |
AuthorFearless Thoughts are my insights on marketing, entrepreneurship, startups, business growth, creativity and whatever else comes to mind on any given day. Writing is how I make sense of the world. Archives
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