story

Deborah Weinstein: My Most Excellent Entrepreneurial Adventure

Last November I was asked by my dear friend Guy Gal to be a Keynote Speaker at The Biz Media’s Global Entrepreneurial Week Meet up. It was a distinct pleasure and unique opportunity to talk about my journey from feisty CBC reporter to PR maven. Our entrepreneurial spirit is still alive at Strategic Objectives, and I was excited to share my story with my fellow digital marketers. The crowd was warm and eager, the refreshments delightful. Here’s the video from of my speechification. I hope you enjoy my story as much as I enjoyed telling it.

A big thank you to @GuyGal and The Biz Media for hosting me and our @SO_PR social crew.

Deb Weinstein

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Extend your influence by extending trust: a social story

A stranger walks into your store and tells you about his problem. After asking him a few questions to help you understand the problem, you hand him a brand new pair of shoes and tell him to try them for couple weeks. “If they work,” you say, “just come back and pay for them. If they don’t, we’ll try a different pair.” Typical? Probably not.

That’s exactly what Jeff Milliman, the 1980 NCAA cross country champion, did in 1998 for Olivier Blanchard. Olivier wrote about his experience with Jeff in a 2005 blog post called That Bond of Trust. I caught up with Jeff today at his new home at Go Run, a part of Go Tri Sports, in downtown Greenville, South Carolina.


Social Story: Tell me about Olivier. A story of trust. from Trey Pennington on Vimeo.

Please note a few really cool things about this social story:

  • Jeff just did what he always does: listens to people and then applies his knowledge to try to help solve their problems.
  • Jeff is willing to take a risk in order to fulfill his passion.
  • Jeff did the unexpected and went the extra mile and SEVEN YEARS LATER the object of his generosity, Olivier Blanchard, wrote about it. (How many shoe salesmen have people writing glowing stories about them seven years after the sale, or seven hours?)
  • Jeff’s act of generosity and Olivier’s act of gratitude enabled an long lost friend to reconnect with Jeff after nearly 20 years apart.

That means you never can tell when the harvest of your generosity will come.

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Cut through the marketing clutter with storytelling


“Oh come on!” the upscale fashion retailer said. He thrust his pointed finger toward to the daily newspaper spread out next to his cash register. “Look here, here, and here,” he continued as he pointed to three different ads by three different “big box” clothing retailers or discounters. “How many ads do I have to buy to get noticed? There’s just so much clutter,” he said while he smashed the paper into a tight crumpled ball and crammed it into the trashcan.

The Problem

The retailer’s problem is the same problem facing businesses of every size. Nate Elliott, analyst for the vaunted research firm Forrester, recently turned his research prowess towards the problem. In his blog post announcing his current research project, he asked, “How can marketers overcome social clutter?” He asked readers, “Do you feel it’s getting harder or easier for marketers to get a message to users through social media?” Readers responded with an overwhelming, “harder!”

The Villain

First, let’s define this villain called Clutter. Who is this black-hatted character bringing companies large and small to their knees?

To air traffic controllers and others who read radars, clutter is “a term for unwanted echoes…[that] can cause serious performance issues…” That’s a definition marketers can visualize, too. You’ll hear communications professionals talk about the “signal to noise ratio.” Everything that’s not signal, is noise—unwanted echoes, clutter.

The Faux Solution

Many marketers attempt to overcome Clutter by buying more ad space or airtime, sending out more direct mail pieces, making more cold calls, posting more tweets or updates. Instead of killing Clutter, they feed the sneaky villain.

The Hero

Squaring off against Clutter is our white-hatted Storyteller. The Storyteller is effective not just because of what he does, but also because of who he is. Through three key relationships he’s empowered to act effectively, slicing through Clutter and delivering wanted signal.

  1. The storyteller’s relationship to the story: The Storyteller believes The Story is a gift that’s been given to him and a gift that increases in value as it is given away.
  2. The storyteller’s relationship to himself: The Storyteller is focused on The Story and minimizes self in order to present the story free of personal interference.
  3. The storyteller’s relationship to the audience: The Storyteller focuses on the audience and their experience of The Story. He is committed to communicating The Story to enable the audience to not only live The Story for themselves but also to co-create its meaning.

The mindset, or heart, of the Storyteller prepares him to take action to cut through Clutter.

Essential Elements
First, you need to know your own core story. Your core story is a narrative example of:

  • who you are and what you stand for
  • who the big, hairy monster is (the villain)
  • what results customers achieve because of you

Second, you need to know your prospects’ core story. Their core story includes:

  • what they want to accomplish (what results do they want in the end?)
  • what gets in their way
  • how they feel when they’re thwarted
  • how they feel when they’re victorious

That means listening and paying attention to your prospects and customers is more important than ever. If you don’t know their stories, you won’t be able to share a story with them that cuts through Clutter.

Stories cut through clutter because, stories

  • connect with people emotionally
  • help us make sense of facts (facts, statements, declarations, and even offers overwhelm us; stories give us a framework to make sense of it all)
  • aid memory
  • aid word-of-mouth (we tend to remember in story; we tend to share in story)

Sharing your story

Adopting the mind of a storyteller, understanding your own core story, and understanding your customers’ core story are the first steps toward conquering Clutter and connecting with your marketplace. These foundational steps will take you far down the path of effective communication and engagement with the people in your marketplace.

Trey Pennington

Beyond Connections, to Building Relationships

It is news to no one that when it comes to marketing, relationships trump everything.

A challenge in the pursuit of this asset is to recognize the difference between connections and relationships. (Or, for that matter, the difference between followers or fans and relationships.)

At the risk of oversimplifying, establishing connections is relatively easy. Building and nurturing relationships is not.

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Giving away a magician’s secrets

Steve Cohen makes more than a million dollars a year doing magic tricks.

I will now tell you the secrets of this magic:

1. He sells to a very specific group of people, people who are both willing to hear what he has to say and able to pay what he wants to charge them.

2. He tells a story to this group, a story that matches their worldview. He doesn’t try to teach non-customers a lesson or persuade them that they are wrong or don’t know enough about his art. Instead, he makes it easy for his happy customers to bring his art to others.

3. He intentionally creates an experience that is remarkable and likely to spread. “What did you do last night?” is a great question when it’s asked of someone you entertained the night before, particularly if you can give the audience an answer they can give. That’s how the word spreads.

4. He’s extremely generous in who he works with, how promiscuous he is about sharing and in his attitude.

5. He’s very good at his craft. Don’t overlook this one.

I guess it comes down to this: if you’re having trouble persuading people to buy what you sell, perhaps you should sell something else. Failing that, perhaps you could talk about what you sell in a different way.

Important clarification: I’m not telling you to sell out or to pander or to dumb down your art. Great marketers lead people, stretching the boundaries and bringing new messages to people who want to hear them. The core of my argument is that someone’s worldview, how they feel about risk or other factors, is beyond your ability to change in the short run. Sell people something they’re interesting in buying. If you can’t leverage the worldview they already have, you are essentially invisible. Which is a whole other sort of magic, one that’s not so profitable.