In the NYT, "‘Snow Fall’ at 10." I can clearly remember when this immersive multimedia piece came out — discussing it with my agency colleagues, trying to figure out how we could get clients on board.
In the NYT, "‘Snow Fall’ at 10." I can clearly remember when this immersive multimedia piece came out — discussing it with my agency colleagues, trying to figure out how we could get clients on board.
Everything is brand now, and everything is storytelling now…. People want to know more about these things [that a company is doing]… There’s more interest about the story behind things than ever. And brands have the means to be able to connect that to audiences directly, both in their consumer business and with their storytelling.
— Sam Grawe, speaking to Jarrett Fuller on Fuller’s Scratching the Surface podcast about the convergence of editorial and brand work. Grawe, the former EIC of Dwell and Global Brand and Editorial Director at Herman Miller, is the Chief Brand & Marketing Officer at The Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity. Cool gigs. Good conversation.
From this interesting interview at The Content Strategist:
GE is one of the brands out there that’s done content really well. Do you think that’s because the topics are inherently interesting, or is it an internal attitude that allows the content to shine? What do you think?
What GE does is interesting – that helps. But the culture inside the company is becoming hugely focused on storytelling. We have a CMO and CCO who have pushed us to focus on creating strong content and finding interesting ways to tell our story. Another colleague and I have been traveling around the company and holding writing workshops for our communicators. We teach storytelling – how do you put together an interesting narrative, like something you would read in a newspaper or a magazine. Now you have a chance to write the story yourself, so do it right.
What’s success look like?
The ultimate goal is to retire the press release. It’s a great holder for facts, but you’d never want to read one. We want to tell stories.
As I’ve mentioned in client presentations and conversations more than a few times, GE’s been doing a great job with storytelling in recent years (GE Reports, GE on Tumblr, Txchnologist, and more).
I wrote this post for the TOKY blog.
Today I published the second in a new series on the TOKY Blog — notable highlights from what the firm’s been reading, watching, and talking about.
At BuzzFeed, Rob Fishman on the widening out of this once-distinct role.
The Independent profiles Jeremy Langmead, the former editor of Wallpaper* and Esquire.
For a little over two years, Langmead has been editor-in-chief of Mr Porter, the men’s fashion division of Net-a-Porter. It now produces a weekly online magazine, The Journal, in addition to a 40-page print edition called The Mr Porter Post (soon to grow to 80 pages), an electronic missive that goes out three times a week, an annual paperback and an iPad app called The Tux (featuring an interactive guide to knotting a bow tie).
As to whether this is “journalism,” a question this article (and this one) poses, I think it’s clearly not. It’s not independent. What it can be, though, is compelling and creative, thoughtfully structured and well-edited. It’s not “brand journalism,” as some people put it. It’s content with a strong editorial sensibility.
I wrote this post — about content trends in 2012 — for the TOKY blog.
In the New York Times Magazine, an in-depth look at Jon Rimmerman’s $30-million-a-year wine-selling business. It’s a tale of “vivid stories” being told through “idiosyncratic e-mails.” Wine + content strategy = article made for me.
At the TOKY Blog, I offer five key take-aways from attending the National Museum Publishing Seminar last June.
Really like this post:
Iteration in public is a principle of nearly all good product design; you release a version, then see how people use it, then revise and release again. With tangible products (hardware, furniture, appliances, etc.), that release cycle is long, just as with books. But when the product is weightless, the time between one release and the next can be reduced from months or years to days or even hours. The faster the release cycle, the more opportunities for revision—and, often, the better the product itself.
Writing has (so far) not generally benefited from this kind of process; but now that the text has been fully liberated from the tyranny of the printing press, we are presented with an opportunity: to deploy texts, instead of merely publishing them.
From this NYT look at the evolving Buzzfeed:
As the consumer Web has matured, readers have become minipublishers, using social media platforms to share information they think will entertain and enlighten their friends. No longer is it just about so-called sticky content that keeps readers around, or even clicky content that causes them to hit a link; it’s also about serving up content that is spreadable.
Hit the right note, and your readers become like bees, stopping by your site to grab links and heading back out on the Web to pollinate other platforms. That behavior has tapped into something visceral, a kind of game in which the person finding something delicious gains social capital for sharing it.