How to motivate behaviour change
A version of this blog first appeared in the pages of B2B Marketing, posted online here. This is the first in a regular, quarterly series linking psychology and marketing, flying under the banner of I’m Still Thinking. Thanks for the platform, which I’m sharing with two other marketing psychs. Details to follow. — Marketing communications […]
How your words shape what people think about you
Words are powerful things, and it’s in your gift to use them to shape what others think about you. More than that. It’s your responsibility to do so. This is true of companies, of brands and of organisations, every bit as much as it’s true of people. Because what are these institutions if not collectives […]
About “About Us” pages
About Us pages. They’re often the first place people look when they start to consider your organisation seriously. Here are some tips to make them that bit more meaningful. What should you say? You: Like it or not, we are all creatures of emotion and intuition. Too often, businesses only try and absorb people on a […]
Why good writing matters
Founder & MD of Insight Agents, Sam Knowles, pens a personal paean to Steve Pinker, Harvard psychology professor, one of the most accessible serious scientists to have crossed over into the mainstream without compromising his academic integrity. In the process, readers lucky enough still to take their summer vacation get a top tip for holiday […]
Which party deserves my vote?
It’s the afternoon after the night before. Paxman attacked Cameron on policy, Miliband on personality (that “Are you alright, Ed?” jibe on camera was beneath Paxo, though Ed’s riposte “Yeah, are you, Jeremy?” gave it the contempt it deserved). And Kay Burley? The Twitterverse has said enough about her partiality. But are we any clearer […]
Strive for conscious competence in every sentence you craft
Fresh threat of Newspeak as General Election verbiage piles up Simple, clear words are attractive. The obfuscatory lexicon is to be avoided at all costs. Which sentence do you prefer? My trade is that of the corporate storyteller, helping companies and brands to find their why; to express what it is that makes them […]
Impactful corporate storytelling demands singular stories, not schizophrenia
Remember when you were a kid? Something had gone wrong. You were involved, and someone was going to be angry. A teacher, a parent or a sibling. But you weren’t seen, and to minimise repercussions you crafted a version of the truth that had an air of plausibility to it that would also get you […]
The geek shall inherit
Few companies have done more over the past 20 years – and frankly ever – to turn Big Data into insights that inspire evidence-based action than dunnhumby. Before they helped Tesco create its Clubcard and methodically predict customer shopping behaviour, Sainsbury’s was the UK’s biggest supermarket. Within a few years, the insights developed by dunnhumby […]
How to be a better brand storyteller: the five golden rules
This week is the Society for Storytelling’s 15th annual National Storytelling Week. Events to mark this promotion of the oral tradition of storytelling take place in schools, museums, bookshops and pubs across the country. If I get my way, the 16th will take place in boardrooms, too. Storytelling is much in vogue in business. Marketing […]
When storytelling goes bad – a guest blog for PRmoment
(This blog originally appeared on 17 November 2014 as guest blog on PRmoment. Thanks for the platform, Ben!). On this coming Thursday, PRmoment is hosting an event on storytelling: “The role of public relations as a content provider”. And quite right, too. Storytelling is a craft whose time has come. Again. Stories rock. Storytelling is […]
