You think writers are the only ones concerned with telling a story? Listen to this.
Earlier this month three of six agency owners and recruiters interviewed by blogger Arik C. Hanson said the ability to tell a story was the leading trait they want to see in PR professionals. They believe storytelling reflects the facility to identify themes and execute a strategy. Yet when many of their peers screen applicants, they ask for experience that exactly matches the job they’re offering. They’re focused on the product, not the process, like the ability to build social networks, negotiate for information or get along with others.
For those in marketing communications, here’s the wake-up call: financial planners have discovered the power of story. In a column for MarketWatch, MIT’s AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin said the traditional model of financial planning won’t work in these unsettling times. Neither will an appeal to reason through a recitation of statistics. He believes advisers who tell stories that elicit emotion and inspire people to act will achieve greater success–for their clients and themselves.
“We’ve got to be good storytellers to get that emotion, to make us relevant, responsive and realistic for what the consumer needs today to plan for tomorrow.”
Let’s hope the people who hire are willing to make that investment.
Beauty pays. That’s the conclusion of Daniel Hamermesh, economics professor at the University of Texas in Austin, who measured the economic benefits of looking good.
His conclusions:
Attractive people are likely to earn about 3% to 4% more than a person with below-average appearance.
Better-looking people tend to sell more products or attract more new customers.
White-collar criminals are more successful if they are better-looking.
For us mortals, is plastic surgery the answer? Hamermesh says research doesn’t support that conclusion. “Surgery pays back less than $1 for every $1 spent. But it might make you feel better.”
Rotary is this close to helping world health organizations eradicate polio.
In 1985 there were 350,000 cases of the crippling disease in 125 countries. Today, thanks to the efforts of Rotarians, the World Health Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and others, the number of endemic countries has been reduced to four: Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan. Still, if people don’t act, more than 10 million children will be paralyzed in the next 40 years.
After 20 years of work, Rotary International is making a final push to eradicate the disease. It is asking the world community to help raise $555 million to directly support immunization campaigns in developing countries. “As long as polio threatens even one child anywhere in the world, children everywhere remain at risk,” Rotary states on its website. “The stakes are that high.”
Today’s guest post is from Amanda Kaiser, one of the fresh young minds on the marketing scene. Amanda has worked with some of the heavyweights in the consumer sector and brings a lot of practical knowledge to the trade. Here’s a sample.
This summer I vacationed with my family in Cape May, N.J. If you’ve never been to Cape May think up-scale, cute, sea-side village with very interesting Victorian architecture. At the end of the day we’d take long walks that always led us past a small inn that was being renovated. Maybe renovated is not the correct term – semi demolished would be more accurate. The historic-inn-renovation company placed its beautiful sign out in front of the property like many construction companies do. But at that time the place couldn’t have looked worse – landscaping had been trampled, paint scraped, windows and doors were missing; it was gutted and looking very sad.
Unwittingly the renovation company was probably sending exactly the opposite message to prospective customers than they intended. Instead of saying “Please hire us, we do fantastic work” the overall feel was more like “Want to go through renovation hell? Call us!” Installing their sign just as things were starting to look really nice could have been far more productive.
Many marketing tactics run on auto-pilot so it’s worth regularly revisiting the things you always do and make sure they say what you need them to say, look how you need them to look, happen at the right time and appeal to your prospective customers.
Amanda Kaiser is the creator of The Smooth Path, a blog of simple marketing ideas for small business owners. She is the director of marketing for a non-profit association and has worked for some of the most well-known brands in the United States. When she’s not doing all-things-marketing she’s traveling, hiking, camping and baking with her husband and son.
Writing that flows is often based on a solid structure.
Take the piece “Why impulse spending can be a good thing” by Katherine Rosman, who writes the Checks & Balances column about finance and marriage for the Wall Street Journal. The article is designed to read like a short story with comments, unfolding through scenes with increasing drama. We want to determine what happens between Rosman and her husband Joe, who in their struggles to mesh their opposites-attract financial styles have become persons of interest.
The article is structured in three parts. The first details a recent event, the second one that took place a while ago, the third the night the two met. All involve charity auctions. All create an orderly march backward in time, from a seemingly frivolous exchange to a defining moment. Each segment seems ordinary yet together they build toward a quiet but profound insight you’d see in the work of Anne Tyler or Anna Quindlen.
The parts consist of anecdotes, all of which bring to life the article’s theme—that contrary to popular wisdom occasional impulse spending can provide rewards to even the most budget-minded couples. Those mini stories also illustrate a greater wisdom: we can argue about spending but what we really value is not the behavior but the relationship. The real prize isn’t the money, it’s the person.
When I worked as a writing coach for a newspaper owned by the publisher of the Wall Street Journal I studied briefly with the great Roy Peter Clark. Now vice president of the Poynter Institute, Clark taught us to use the tools of fiction writers while rigorously adhering to the facts. Structuring a story that way is more than playing dress-up. It’s a process to present and order events with all of the immediacy and emotional resonance of direct experience.
It’s good to see other non-fiction writers have adopted the storyteller’s technique. Using those tools, Rosman ratchets up the conflict between spouses with a deceptive calm that shows rather than tells about their relationship. The story flows without effort. Even the ending feels natural, a surprising valentine to financial and emotional conservatives everywhere.
How do you market a traditional brand to an emerging audience? By hiring the people who can build relationships with many cultures. That’s what one of my clients has done with some success. For a look behind the scenes at dealerships that know how to reach new audiences, tag along with one sales rep near LA in this article on my SlideShare site.
In the last five years elective cosmetic procedures among patients age 65 and older have rise by 29% while procedures among the overall population fell 17%, according to the Wall Street Journal. Nonsurgical techniques, like Botox injections, accounted for most of that work–88% of cosmetic procedures performed on patients age 65 and older last year.
Why? Competition with younger workers for scarce jobs could contribute to the trend. So could the rebellious belief among boomers that we’ll live as long and as well as we want to, and we might as well look the part.
As the economy stumbles through recovery and more people worry about meeting basic expenses, here’s something you may not hear much about: The IRS says you can contribute an extra $500 to your 401(k).
Contributions to the tax-deferred retirement plans will rise from $16,500 to $17,000 next year as the IRS adjusts those amounts to reflect increases in the cost of living. This is the first increase in the rate since 2009.
Participants who reach the age of 50 before the end of 2012 can withhold an additional $5,500 from their paychecks for a total contribution of $22,500. The catch-up amount has remained the same since 2009.
The AP reports that in 2009 some 33 percent of workers ages 21-64 used 401(k) plans.
The IRS also announced new dollar amounts for a variety of tax provisions that affect 2012 returns filed in 2013:
The value of each personal and dependent exemption is $3,800, up $100 from 2011.
The new standard deduction is $11,900 for married couples filing a joint return, up $300; $5,950 for singles and married individuals filing separately, up $150, and $8,700 for heads of household, up $200. The IRS says nearly two out of three taxpayers take the standard deduction.
Tax-bracket thresholds increase for each filing status. For a married couple filing a joint return, the taxable-income threshold separating the 15-percent bracket from the 25-percent bracket is $70,700, up from $69,000 in 2011.
The question now is whether participants worried about jobs and inflation will have the cash to fund their futures.
Two contemporary American authors recommend themselves for their use of the English language, mystery writer Will Thomas and poet Barbara Hamby. They have little in common. Their subject matter and style don’t match. Yet each handles the language with vigor and grace without sacrificing the forward motion often missing in literary works.
In the five novels in which he chronicles the adventures of Cyrus Barker and his assistant Thomas Llewelyn, Thomas writes at a studied rate that matches the pace of the Victorian England he portrays. As narrator, Llewelyn describes action with a sharp ferocity, which is to be expected in mysteries and thrillers. It’s in the descriptions and transitions that the author shines, passages that in lesser hands would read as filler, or asides.
Here Llewelyn describes Irish beauty Maire O’Casey in Thomas’s second book in the series, To Kingdom Come: “With her hair pulled back loosely, she looked fresh out of one of the paintings by the fellow Renoir, who obviously had a passion for redheads. A jolt of electricity ran down my spine as if I were a tree trunk split in half.”
Poet Barbara Hamby abandons quiet passion for the full-throated kind. Here’s the beginning of her tour de force, “Mambo Cadillac,” from her book All-Night Lingo Tango:
Drive me to the edge in your Mambo Cadillac,
turn left at the graveyard and gas that baby, the black
night ringing with its holy roller scream. I’ll clock
you on the highway at three a.m., brother, amen, smack
the road as hard as we can, because I’m gonna crack
the world in two, make a hoodoo soup with chicken necks,
a gumbo with plutonium roux, a little snack
before the dirt-and-jalapeño stew that will shuck
the skin right off your slinky hips, Mr. I’m-not-stuck
in-a-middle-class-prison-with-someone-I-hate sack
of blues.
Remind you of the early short stories of T.C. Boyle? You can hear Garrison Keillor read “Mambo Cadillac” on The Writers Almanac and Hamby’s own reading for the Southeast Review in Tallahassee, available from the iTunes store.
If you like a little kick to your writing, you’ll want to ride with these two.
The shovel blade bites into the earth, black with rain and rot. It tangles with roots and rocks. The sun slants across the rising mound of dirt. Mosquitoes hover like angels of death.
We wrap Jenna in her favorite towels that feature a smiling sun, a baseball team’s logo, a lobster at the beach. Lifting her from the carpet she seems heavy and stiff. I trudge up the hill, slipping in the mud. We bury her in a shallow grave, in this bowl-shaped depression at the edge of the woods, under the oak and pine, her head toward the east to meet the rising sun. Gently we cover her with topsoil, plant two trees at either end of the grave and cover the surface with mulch.
I use a stone I unearthed to mark the spot. The rock is about a foot-and-a-half long. It points skyward like a crooked finger. She went this way, it says.
