For any hard-pressed comms person in the public or third sector who just needs a bit of inspiration, handy learning or fascinating facts (there really is a New Fave Fact section). Campaign and creative inspiration you can steal. Storytelling and comms tips and insight to pass off as your own.
How to be more Disney
Finding the single human truthJohn Lewis have done it with their Christmas ad. So have Disney (see below). Nike do it all the time. Finding the emotional detonator in their ads that send electric shocks up and down our spine. They find a universal point of connection that we can all understand and interpret. A single human truth. It's about finding the Why - people don't buy into what you do or sell, they buy into why you do it. So how do we pinpoint the Why to give our comms and campaigns that emotional connection? Over to Toyota. They created a problem-solving diagnostic called the 5 Whys to understand the root cause of problems. Ask the question of Why up to five times and you drill through to the truth. And it's great for unravelling campaign briefs, to find the emotional core to a message - and to find a way beyond raising awareness (as the example below shows). USE THIS: content and campaign ideasNo, it's hardly original or surprising to talk about Disney as great storytellers but the simplicity of this story is what makes it so spine-tingling (yep, there it is). We talked about natural timelines in this newsletter a few weeks back and this is a classic of the genre - someone's life unfolded in Disney content (with a lovely circular pay-off too). (Get this type of creative and content inspiration first on the Creative Catch of the Day WhatsApp channel.) USE THIS: content and campaign ideas (Part 2) Late contender for internal comms of the year from Magna Housing in Dorset, who turned a drive to reinforce their values into a whodunnit style mystery. It comes complete with an evidence file of phone calls, media headlines and emails. Brilliant idea.
Cash in on the Xmas spirit for content! Goodwill to all comms teams and all that - the pre-Christmas period is the time to take advantage of the festive spirit and get people sharing stories, as explained in the latest tip from the Story Board. Are people put off by AI creative? Apparently not Consumers can't really tell if ads are AI generated and still have a strong emotional reaction to them. But a kicker too: people still spotted AI's deficiencies in areas like storytelling and characterisation. UnAwards shortlists announced (and one for Turn The Page!) The full shortlist for the 10th annual UnAwards is out. If you made the cut from nearly 600 entries, congratulations - that's a huge achievement 👏 And big grins at Turn The Page Towers as we sneaked onto the shortlist for Best Work By An Agency, for the inclusive recruitment campaign we ran with Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service 😃.
Stories v narrative: not the same We spend a decent amount of time talking about the difference between narrative and stories when I do team training sessions, so was delighted to see this headline in the wild. Don't say January...OK, let say post-Christmas. If you want to sharpen up your campaign planning, storytelling or creative skills POST-CHRISTMAS, then I'm booking them in workshops and sessions now, so just hit reply shouting POST-CHRISTMAS.
Turn The Page is a story-led communications consultancy, using the power of stories to create memorable, measurable campaigns, strategies and narratives. Campaigns and comms led by stories are measurably more successful and improve engagement and trust.
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The Page Turner - creative comms and storytelling gold
For any hard-pressed comms person in the public or third sector who just needs a bit of inspiration, handy learning or fascinating facts (there really is a New Fave Fact section). Campaign and creative inspiration you can steal. Storytelling and comms tips and insight to pass off as your own.
Praise the lore - storytelling takes a new shape First I winced. By the end I was punching the air in agreement When this LinkedIn post went semi-viral last week, I was ready to jack it all in and retrain as a dentist (always fancied it for some reason). Death to Storytelling is not the sort of headline you need to see when much of your work revolves around the subject. But as with everything, times change and things evolve. Pretty Little Marketer (LinkedIn) Lore has become the new buzzword...
'Trusted voices on social media open closed doors' How's your campaign or project going? Feel like you're knocking on a brick wall? Maybe it's time to look at who's doing the knocking (not that sort, mucky mind). The Edelman Trust Barometer is a report that emerges at the start of each year to largely tell us we don't really trust politicians and billionaires - who knew? But beyond the headlines, there can be some interesting nuance and the headline above 👆 was one of the more interesting...
Did Brooklyn-gate help us see through 'authentic'? Before last week, I knew very little about Brooklyn Beckham, other than why he's called Brooklyn (which is a bit weird now I think about it). So the chances of this being a psuedo-gossip column hot take on the family feud are nil. But the whole drama surfaced a question that had been troubling me anyway: what 'authentic' really means now. This piece on the Beckhams fallout highlighted how 'authentic' has now become a comms commodity in its...