My daughter Andie, age 5, ends her day with the same request: “Dad, tell me a story.” By this point I’ve pretty much emptied my vault of all the stories from my youth. She doesn’t realize that at five, she’s become the default family historian and human Wikipedia. She can access and repeat verbatim, in rich detail, any one of the dozens of stories that she has heard.

How about you? Heard any good stories lately? Chances are you have, and for good reason. They work. Good storytelling is fast becoming the new secret weapon of top communicators — for everything from sales presentations to delivering bad news in the board room.

From man’s earliest cave days, humans have used narrative to teach and communicate. It turns out our brains are still wired to receive narrative stories – not statistics. It’s only been in the last few decades that corporate leaders have replaced our instinct for good storytelling with bullet points, pitch decks and key messages. The stripped-down formats may be easier to digitize. But what we have gained in speed, we have lost in impact. Bullets kill. Stories inspire.

In the new book Made to Stick, (which I think should have been named the Sticking Point), author Chip Heath tells a story about an experiment he conducted with some of his students at Stanford.

After dividing the students into groups, he had them listen to rounds of one-minute speeches on, let’s say, crime stats in the US. Nearly all the speakers used statistics and bullet points as their primary content. However, one speaker told stories. After a 10-minute distraction (he actually showed a vintage clip from Monty Python), they were asked to pull out a sheet of paper and write down, for each speaker they heard, every single idea they remembered. Many drew a complete blank – unable to remember a single concept. Except from one speaker. You guessed it — the storyteller. A whopping 65 percent remember the stories – almost verbatim! Only 5 percent remember any statistics from the others.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H6DSoqZz_s

Grandparents and Steven Spielberg have known this for years. Spielberg actually used a simple cartoon story at a critical point in his Jurassic Park movie to make sure audiences would understand the premise that a drop of prehistoric DNA could be preserved intact in a drop of amber goo. He tested several devices with audiences. A simple story worked best.

Good storytelling is a natural human art form. It requires the fundamental elements of good narrative – a setting, strong character development, rising and falling action, a climax and a resolution. In fact, research shows the richer the detail, the better the recall and impact. How is it you can still remember a 20-minute story told to you at age eight by your Pop Pop, but can’t remember the content on slide six of your own board presentation? It’s easy. Narrative.

Think of storytelling as a way to use voice, tone, imagery and gestures to help the audience create a mental movie — with them in it. When they can see themselves in the movie, they internalize the content and make it their own. Isn’t that every salesperson’s or CEO’s ultimate wish?

Strategic storytelling is the best method of connecting with your audience and continues to be a crucial component of any corporate communications plan. After all, “You remember 1/3 of what you read, 1/2 of what people tell you, but 100 percent of what you feel,” said Bill Swanson, CEO of aerospace contractor Raytheon (RTN), Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Management.

So the next time you have a big presentation, put down the PowerPoint and conjure up a strong strategic story. My audience of one almost never goes to sleep until after “The End.”

With the lines of marketing ever blurring, it is getting more and more difficult to apply a label that fully captures the extent of our work here at Braithwaite Communications (though “public relations” comes to mind).

So you can imagine the challenge of explaining this to a classroom of 6^th Grade students at Young Scholars Charter School in North Philadelphia. Such was the task of two of us who presented at the Young Scholars Career Day yesterday.

Now the 6^th Graders at Young Scholars are exceptionally bright, but describing our career in a digestible manner is no small feat. So here’s how we did it:

• Started our discussion with four well-known brands that do very little, if any, advertising: Beanie Babies, Bath & Body Works, Starbucks, and YouTube. (Marketing being the “something else” these companies do).
• Related their PR work to the work we’ve done for Young Scholars. See: Weather Wednesdays and The Culture of ‘Stomp’.
• Conducted an in-class student brainstorm on new ways to improve Young Scholars Charter School’s visibility.

You’re probably wondering how we did.

To conclude the presentation we handed out the “Agency Aptitude Test” we have all prospective employees complete. And having seen hundreds of responses from “professionals” throughout the years, these kids may just capture the essence of our profession better than we do.

Check out a few of the students’ responses:

In 10 words or less, what is Marketing?

• “Fun way to express a product.”
• “Helping people get in the papers and helping schools, too.”
• “[Marketers] come up with ideas and sometimes advertise them or brainstorm.”
• “Marketing is not just worrying about work but fun too.”
  

Describe the difference between Advertising and Public Relations

• “PR helps little businesses. Advertisements make big companies bigger.”
• “PR is something that can help your reputation.”
• “PR is when you get things in the newspaper.”
• “[PR] is like making sure that people think your company is good.”

Now, I can’t predict whether or not these students will now be saying, “When I grow up I want to be in Marketing and Public Relations!”

But I do think we may have opened their minds to a new career possibility – one that thrives on creativity, forward thinking, and risk-taking. What’s more, they’ve in turn given us a simpler, clearer understanding of our own profession.

LIFE – the magazine, that is – is over. The last issue of the 71-year-old magazine, which had its heyday as a glossy magazine from 1936 to 1972, will appear as the slimmed-down newspaper insert we know it as now on April 20^th. The brand will continue online as a free library of the magazine’s famous photographs.

Getting a client in LIFE, along with the Saturday Evening Post and TIME, was a homerun for the earliest PR people in a world where TV sets were rare, and it deserves the fond memories many people have of it. But to me, LIFE is really on the cutting edge of the new marketing world. It’s going online and it’s pared down to just old photos. As people become bombarded with information, maybe this is what they really want? Or what they will really want. And we PR people should take notice. After all, somehow LIFE will go on….

In a moved that shocks no one, MySpace.com, the social networking website purchased by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for $58 million, is expected to soon announce it’s getting in to the news business. Holy predictable media domination strategy, Batman!

MySpace.com’s news service will bring articles from Murdoch’s Fox News and News International to the world of social networking. The goal is to keep users on MySpace.com longer and therefore keep advertisers happier. Neat idea, but the question is – will it work?

Yes, it’s true that the traditional top-down media environment – i.e., what they tell us is important is important – is changing thanks to sites like Digg.com and del.icio.us.com. But do the kids, teens and young adults that frequent MySpace.com really spend all that much time reading the news? PerezHilton.com is one thing, but Fox News is something else. And will a website controlled by Murdoch truly reflect the interest of users or give preference to News Corp.’s outlets? Or will media integrity and objectivity suffer the consequences?

Media relations is what we do, so these are big questions for us. In a world where word of mouth marketing is becoming the gold standard, and social networks are a key distribution source, what is a PR pro to do when one corporation puts the largest and most powerful of those sites in a choke hold?

This month, the Braithwaite Book Club discussed Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind. In a world dominated by left-brain thinkers relying on facts, numbers and the indefatigable (some might say boring) input and output of data, the book offers a refreshing point of view on the rise of right-brain directed thinkers. (I never thought I’d be able to use my favorite comedian, Steve Martin, in this blog, but it fits nicely– we’re talking about two sides of the brain here! What’s more apropos than a shot of Steve in The Man With Two Brains?)

A Whole New Mind was particularly relevant for an agency like us – whose clients’ industries run the gamut from financial advising and business consulting to retail and real estate. Because our clients’ industries are so varied, it’s essential we call on both sides of our brains to effectively impact their diversified needs. Pink’s lighthearted yet deeply enlightening novel suggests that we’re shifting from a Knowledge Economy to a Conceptual Economy – one that proves that the most successful catalysts for change in call on both the left and right sides of the brain for the best ideas and answers.

Pink guides us through the six essential faculties (or senses, as he calls them) right-brain thinkers toy with – Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning…which might be lofty concepts for left-brainers to grasp were it not for the post-chapter portfolios he includes to bring these concepts to life.

Our monthly Book Club meeting was quite explosive in reaction to Pink’s “high touch” and “high concept” ideas. The “high concept” theme draws on a person’s ability to see patterns and rare opportunities, to foster art and emotion and to connect “seemingly unrelated ideas” into something unique and insightful. People apt for “high touch” are those who continually reach for and find purpose and meaning in their own lives and the lives they interact with.

When we were talking about the six senses, I couldn’t help but think of my experiences at Commerce Bank. I know I’ve blogged on them before, but I can’t help but notice they have created an atmosphere that epitomizes the six elements of right and left-brain fusion.

• Each of the Commerce employees’ desks is comfortably laid out in the open – a design meant to invite and soothe customers.
• At Commerce, they’re articulating their story in their actions on a daily basis– one that suggests they’re there to please customers, create a friendly interaction and make customers feel at home.
• They have been able to symphonize – they can identify the relationship of seemingly unrelated pieces. And they know that it isn’t just about money for customers. They know their customers trust Commerce with their future, their family and their efforts.
• They respond with an empathetic solution – to be a friend, advisor and problem-solver for their customers. They know giving your kids a lollypop or your dog a biscuit will make your day a little bit easier.
• They’ve found a way to incorporate play into their setting – inviting customers to use their “Penny Arcade” free of charge. It’s a way for Commerce Customers to play and feel a sense of caretaking from their bank.
• Most of all, Commerce has found a way to provide meaning to their customer’s banking experience. Customers know Commerce isn’t just about money – it is a place of meaning where their voices are heard, their concerns are addressed and they feel safe with Commerce’s handling of their money. The fusion of the six senses at Commerce creates a memorable experience.

Whether it’s his memorable visit to a laughter club in Bombay, the suggestion to visit a story-telling festival, or the mention of Philadelphia’s very own right-brain radical Jefferson Medical College’s JPSE (Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy), Pink challenges us to think beyond the traditional.

As a communications agency, the way we play, how we articulate our clients’ stories, where we find meaning and how we can empathize with ourselves and each other – each plays a prominent role in how we’ve succeeded. I know Braithwaite’s not your typical PR firm. We do Marketing Boot Camps and Articulation Obstacles Courses and Medulla Brainstorming Sessions (one day I’ll explain). But we challenge ourselves to be “high concept” thinkers, and if Pink’s A Whole New Mind is right, it’s going to put us on the leading edge of the Conceptual Economy. It can be scary out front, but it sure is fun.