Beware the Curse of Knowledge
This is the third in a series of blogs to mark National Storytelling Week 2017, focused on the words companies and brands use to tell their stories. When you learn about a subject, you know more than most people. It’s impossible to unlearn what you’ve learned (though it is, of course, possible to forget). The […]
Keep it simple
This is the second in a series of blogs to mark National Storytelling Week 2017, focused on the words companies and brands use to tell their stories. When physicist Richard Feynman was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, he was asked if he could explain in just three minutes why he’d won the prize. In […]
Why companies need to get their story straight
Digital and social media have transformed communications. This is especially true for corporations and brands. Companies can no longer dictate what’s said about their products and services. Today, many more voices matter. Anyone with a social media profile and a WiFi connection can influence what people think about organisations. We’ve moved from unshakeable, unquestioned brand […]
Nice!
It’s said that English is an easy language to learn. Despite the oddities of pronunciation – cough, bough, enough – modern English is largely non-inflected; it doesn’t force lots of awkward endings and agreements on the building blocks of language. Verbs, nouns and adjectives. I’ve no idea whether English is easier to learn than other, more […]
Why storytelling matters to business more than ever
The maxim ‘content is king’ has been so overused by the marketing and communications community since it was coined 20 years back that it has attained cliché status. Everyone parrots it, it’s accepted as a truism, and as such it doesn’t trigger urgency or action in those who say or hear it. Like a children’s playground […]
Why brands need to #standforsomething
Purpose is the new vision, mission, CSR and employee engagement strategy all rolled into one. Companies and brands that define and articulate their purpose – their why – are more successful than those that don’t. Who says so? Jim Stengel, the former CMO of P&G no less. Brands like Apple, with its products designed to […]
Three steps to better brand storytelling
All this week at Insight Agents, we’ve been marking the sixteenth annual National Storytelling Week with a series of blogs that highlight what gets in the way of impactful brand storytelling. We commissioned our friends at Sussex University’s Innovation Centre to ask those in charge of storytelling at some of the Britain’s biggest retailers what […]
Why brands need to be authentic in their storytelling
To celebrate National Storytelling Week, corporate and brand storytellers Insight Agents commissioned Sussex University’s Innovation Centre to interview senior marketers in the UK retail sector to talk to us about the challenges they face in telling their brand’s stories. In this week-long series of blogs, we’ve been exploring the major themes from this research, as […]
Why brands need to avoid jargon in their storytelling
To celebrate National Storytelling Week, corporate and brand storytellers Insight Agents commissioned Sussex University’s Innovation Centre to interview senior figures in the UK retail sector to tell us the challenges they face in telling their brand stories. Today Sam Knowles, our Founder & MD, takes a personal look at jargon – and argues that brands […]
Why brands need to be consistent in their storytelling
To celebrate National Storytelling Week, corporate and brand storytellers Insight Agents commissioned Sussex University’s Innovation Centre to interview senior marketers in the UK retail sector to talk to us about the challenges they face in telling their brand’s stories. In this week-long series of blogs, we’re exploring the major themes to emerge from the research, […]
