Brand Manga: New Collaboration with Management Sushi

I've recently begun working on a project with Bernie Ritchie of Management Sushi -- to do this, we created Brand Manga. It's not online yet -- but I've written up some notes for feedback, if you've got some.

It continues to be an interesting journey.


Brand Manga

Success depends on the quality of the pitch, not the volume.

Why Brand Manga?

Your brand is a promise of a particular kind of experience for customers. Fulfilling that promise consistently and over time generates a belief in and loyalty to your company, products, and services.

Manga is a Japanese art that has gone global. It tells stories through cartoon on every imaginable subjects and represents the infinite possibilities of representing ideas, objects, and relationships through immediately accessible and engaging new worlds.

Brand Manga is a new communication strategy aimed at helping clients gain wider recognition, trust, and relationships from customers. The goal is to expand, re-energize, and unify the way a company engages with a global, wired world.

Tools are Easy: Strategy is Hard

At the conferences I've attended lately, people talk more about specific new media tools than anything else. But as Chris Brogan said at LikeMinds, "We never would consider having a conference about the telephone."

No doubt, digital Media offers extended numerous tools to expand a company's reach. However, tools are easy – and using them well requires careful planning. We can help you create an effectively unified communications strategy across media and stakeholders – in person, within your company, and with external markets.

With 24/7 networks across multiple media, it’s never been more important to create belief in the consistency and quality of experience that a business offers.

To do that, core values and talent need to come across consistently and frequently in the relationships in the world and online.

Customers develop trust and loyalty only over time, with evidence that a brand delivers the experience it promises.

You can get your message out there as much as you want -- in as many ways as you want. But it's the quality of the pitch, not the volume that counts. So before buying fancy equipment or signing up for piece-meal marketing approaches, sit down with someone like us and look at the big picture.

Tools are Easy: Storytelling is Hard

I have been considering the nature of effective storytelling lately.

I work with a range of clients who all need to tell their stories through different media. Ideally, they will be open to exploring stories across media -- from in-person communication at length to the 140-character Tweet.

The question is: how do you make the most of each medium?

In-Person Pitching

My clients need to pitch for both business and for investment. The question always becomes: how do you transform a presentation into a conversation people want to continue?

After all, business takes place after your last word is spoken - usually, after you've left the room.

Take Doug Richards' video from School for Start-Ups, for example. Doug has invited me to his event to help with the storytelling because he thinks I have a different take. He's right.

Doug talks about compelling stories for investors with dragons, bad guys, good guys, and so on. It sounds good, but how would you translate that for someone who wants to present?

What's true is that it always makes sense to engage listeners' feelings (at least) as much as their minds. One always remembers the way a communication feels -- whether it's in a meeting (competitive? generous?), on a conference call (dull? impatient?), or in writing (rude? friendly?). The same, of course, goes for those who communicate in front of a room.

But where do you go from there?

Storytelling Means More Than One Thing

Vocabulary might be a problem -- perhaps we need other words for articulating one's value proposition with a beginning, middle, and end?

When I was hired last week by an investor team to work with entrepreneurs , the programme's head interpreted my request to transform the data into a story to mean "tell me something that happened in your life."

Indeed, this can be a useful strategy. Specificity always helps listeners engage, and if done well in context, personalising abstract concepts or challenges will set your pitch apart from others.

On the other hand, the investors wouldn't want 10 teams in a row telling a specific story about the connection between their lives and projects. The format would become predictable, and people would tune out.

So What Makes a Good Story?

The secret to effective storytelling can't really be defined by any particular format. It's true that all stories usually have characters, place, conflict, and resolution. However, creating a narrative is not straightforward -- there is no formula -- if you want your audience engaged.

One strategy that can be effective is to make the story meaningful to you. It must create a feeling in YOU that feels contagious to your listeners.

Quite simply, this is empathy.

But Wait: There's (Always More)

In addition to feeling the truth of what you say, perspective and context must be a factor in the way you express yourself. Are you creating the right kind of chemistry with listeners by making your experience accessible?

If there is a secret, it is that there is no single recipe for effective communication except listening well and interpreting the needs of your listener as you go. Call it improvisation, if you like. The key is to remember that as effortless as improv can appear, no one is born knowing how to do it well.

It doesn't happen without a lot of practice.

I think that's why I enjoy my work so much. It's not training. It's learning, both for me and my clients. Every time is different.

More on other media in the next post.