The Laws of Story-First Marketing with Jessica Gioglio

Speaker A: Welcome to Content Disrupted. Bold takes on brand marketing. I'm, um, your host, Dan Baptiste, and together we'll explore what it takes to excel in brand marketing at one of the most exciting and disruptive times in industry history. Welcome to Content Disrupted. Joining us today is Jessica Julio, keynote speaker, seasoned marketer, and co author of the Laws of Brand Storytelling. Jessica has spent her career focused on helping brands drive meaningful connections with people, which is incredibly relevant in our current environment. Today we'll break down Jessica's approach, learn about and apply her rules, and figure out how to deliver stories to audiences that drive real, meaningful business impact. I can't wait to dive in with you, Jessica. Welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me today. It's such an honor to be here. And we've got two Bostonians in the house. Although I'm in London, you're in Boston, but it's great to be back talking and reminiscing a little bit. Before the show started, I feel like

Speaker A: we could spend an entire episode unpacking how they accept you as a Bostonian in London and maybe did you carry your attitude? I don't know, but I guess we also have business to accomplish it.

Speaker B: You know what, it's something you never lose and it's always something you wear with pride no matter where you are in the world.

Speaker A: Yes, well, as a storyteller, I'm sure you get plenty of those and how you've moved over there to London. But if I follow your career path, Jessica, ah, really interesting. You were working inside of some very well known brands. Comcast, State Street, TripAdvisor, Dunkin, and then you hopped over to Sprinklr and then from there you decided to write your book. And so for me, I'm, um, I'm looking at saying kind of what prompted that? Like what prompted you to write the book? Was it a pattern of realization inside of individual brands and then you saw it from a more macro standpoint at Sprinkler, or was it something else?

Speaker B: Sure. So, actually, so we've written two books and the first book we wrote was called the Power of Visual Storytelling for Social Media. And we wrote that back when I was at Duncan. So I think that was 2014.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: And it's still a book that's doing really well today, specifically in the UX design community. But basically what the backstory is, I had met my co author Ekaterina Walter at a conference in Chicago and she was running B2B social media for intel and I was running B2C social media for a little known Boston company called Duncan.

Speaker A: Never heard of them.

Speaker B: And, uh, she came running up to me after our talk saying we need to have lunch because we look at social media in the same way, despite you being very consumer focused and me being very B2B focused. So we started the first book and the kind of the passion for storytelling based on being practitioners. Right. Like lessons we learned from these incredible companies as well as companies we had previously worked at that and great interviews that we did. And then a couple years down the line, we were still getting great feedback from the book, but also getting feedback saying we want more in the area of storytelling, strategy and narrative and how we think beyond social media to kind of craft great stories across many touch points of our business. And not necessarily just thinking about it from a marketing perspective, but how could human resources use storytelling or product or sales? So that's really what sparked the idea to go deeper and introduce a book called the Laws of Brand Storytelling and go more into that strategy and kind of narrative piece of it.

Speaker A: Awesome offshoot question here. As a visual social media expert, what did you think of the donut spider from Dunkin Donuts? Did that make its way?

Speaker B: Yeah, I loved it. I wish I could tell you I've like stayed in touch with the team and I'm getting all the secret insights on what's going on, but I haven't. But I saw that pop into my Instagram and I thought it was hilarious because it taps that trend of unhinged marketing. And I was just looking at it with like all the teaser stuff because you think about there's so many different ways and formulas on how to tell a great story. And one of them is like, you're kind of teasing and getting people to think like, what's going on here? It really hooked me in. I wanted to see kind of what journey they were taking us on. And I think the fans agreed, which to me, like back when I was at Dunkin, our mantra was we don't own our social channels, our fans do. And how we think about our content, our storytelling, like the contests and the engaging activities we do. Everything layers back to like, what's going to be a good experience for the fans. So I think the Duncan social team nailed it in terms of what's going to be a good experience for the fans. But they also did it in a really a way that surprised them because there's a lot of stuff you can do every day that's fun and engaging. But this took it to a whole new level.

Speaker A: Yeah, unhinged um, is a good adjective for that, for sure.

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, unhinged is a whole trend in marketing right now. And storytelling. Right. If you think about, like, Wendy's, I think, was, like, the early pioneer of it with their, like, savage, sarcastic Twitter strategy. And then now you see it a lot with dual lingo as well, on, uh, TikTok. Yeah.

Speaker A: Now, as you were thinking about building the framework in the book, how did your experiences shape the laws that you created? Was it out of frustration, or was it more like observing trends? Because I think a lot of times sometimes we'll write books in service of ourselves where we're like, oh, this is so frustrating. Like, how do we do this thing better? And then when I do that, how do I share it with the world? Or was it more? You mentioned a lot of demand for some of these principles that you're hearing externally.

Speaker B: Yeah, I would say a mix of both, because, I mean, you and I were talking about this before we started the interview. It's. We're in the trenches. I, um, was in house at these amazing brands, sometimes hitting walls. Whether it's like, trying to get a great idea sold in or maybe just creatively, we're just. We keep going in circles, and we're not quite there yet. But then also the proactive side of learning. Okay. When something really hits, how do we almost have a postmortem and dissect what made it work? Well, and I think that's where Ekaterina and I really like. We brainstorm, we riff off each other, because we started just almost having, like, whiteboarding sessions virtually, because we live on at the time, lived on opposite coasts. And that's where we really started to come up with how do we want to frame this book? And we really thought laws was an interesting way because laws are a bit punchy and sassy. Right. Like, you want to follow the laws, but then there's also, like, laying down the law. And we thought it would be an interesting way to engage people and then also write the book in stories around each law to kind of show where the inspiration came from. We thought it was an interesting learning concept that would grab people's attention. But then we also wanted to back it up with data and stories and examples, even frameworks with some of them to hit those points home.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think laws in general make something repeatable. Right. Whereas I love the idea of taking a step back and what worked and what didn't, and all a lot of times you say, well, we were there in the moment, but that's not repeatable. Right. But laws start to say, okay, if you do these things consistently. And then of course, if you have some massive creative spark, you can take it to the next level, but at least you'll have a baseline to follow on an ongoing basis.

Speaker B: Exactly. And I think as well, when you look at laws, they're not like laws where, like, if you cross the street and jaywalk, you're going to get fined for it. If you go through each of the laws, you'll see they're very adaptable to kind of take and translate to your business. There's a bit of flexibility within each of the laws for, like, how you can make that work within kind of your business, the kind of stories that you think your company wants to tell and your customer base.

Speaker A: And speaking of your approach, there's obviously a lot of books on, um, storytelling, specifically in the brand and business space. So it's a massive topic. What is the lane or angle that makes this book and this approach special and unique from whatever else is out there?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think one of the things that makes it really special is just how many stories we have crammed into the book. Because I think when you think about the psychology of what makes a story memorable and resonating, part of it is we learn from stories like when we sit down and connect as humans stories, they are two times more memorable than facts and figures alone, but they also spark empathy in us. And that's what makes them more memorable. But it also is what makes us learn from them. Because essentially, like, there's this process called neural coupling that, like, when you're listening to an interesting story, you're kind of taking that and you're adapting that to your own kind of personal use case and what you relate to. So that's why I think storytelling is such a powerful, like, educational tool. So again, I think that's what makes the book different. We have B2B, B2C. Such a range that everyone who reads the book will gravitate to certain stories in there that really unlocks something for them and then take them on a really interesting learning journey.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think you hit on something really important or a couple things that are really important. So one is empathy, and the other is this concept of neural coupling. And I think, as you mentioned, the person consuming the story has to really kind of visualize themselves in those shoes. But the person creating that story, it forces empathy. And it starts to say, like, why does this matter? And how do I get creative? But most importantly, how do I put myself in the Audience shoes, which as a brand is such an important exercise, often overlooked, especially when we're all under pressure and we're like, oh, we gotta like get this thing out the door or push sales or move this campaign. Do we take a step back and say, yes, but like, how are people interacting with this and why does it matter? So have you seen any tools or approaches to unlock that within brands? And I guess you mentioned you're chock full of stories in that book. Do you have any favorites that illustrate this?

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think, well, starting with the first part of your question, people can always think inside business units. Like, stories are fluffy, right? It's this fluffy thing. It's a creative thing. But then as we mentioned, there's so much from a neuroscience perspective as to why we as humans are hardwired to, to favor storytelling. So I always like to go back and educate them on some of those data points as to if this is core to human behavior, then if we want to actually structure a story that's going to resonate, like say we have pressure to drive sales or we have a new product launch and we have certain KPIs key performance indicators around that. I'm sure you hear that word all the time. That's where I always go back to, okay, well, who is the target audience that we're trying to reach with this? What are some of the consumer insights that we can leverage? That there's a famous line that says great storytellers play to their audience. So I always go back to like one of the biggest mistake companies make when they're trying to do storytelling or even like they're saying, oh, this didn't work, is they're kind of thinking about it from their perspective and the messages they want to push out to the world. Whereas if you actually stay grounded in the consumer insights and the consumer behavior of who, who you're trying to reach, even down to where do these people spend time online? Because when we think about why great campaigns really work, it's still kind of like that right person, right message, right time, right channel, kind of, which is like back to the early principles of marketing, right? So that's where I always think about if we can stay grounded in those things. And then I think one of my favorite examples of company and storytelling is rei. And I think an example of like that right message, right story, right time. And this is an example people have probably heard of, but it's the REI's opt out side where, uh, they really took an insight that was core to their kind of why as a business. So when we think about great storytelling for a business, I always like to think about macro versus micro stories. So macro stories are your why as a company. So REI's why is around opting outside, getting people to enjoy the great outdoors. And the reason why that campaign hit is that insight of, uh was so aligned with their customer base. People who shop at REI are looking for like hiking, camping, kayaking, all the outdoorsy equipment, and it's kind of that like one stop shop for that. But what I thought was great is they took the insight of Black Friday, which is the height of consumerism, and flipped it on its head and said, well, instead of encouraging people to shop at our stores and get a great discount, why don't we just close our stores, give all of our employees the day off, and tell everyone to go outside? And that's why it struck such a powerful chord, because they took a stance, but it was grounded in consumer insights. And then why the story itself worked is because it was so inspirational. And they also tailored it to different channels that really resonated with their consumers. So at first it's an inspirational video and it's a social media driven campaign. But then if you look at REI over the years, even going through to the pandemic, you go on their website and you can find hiking trails, you can find in. They do so much in great content on their blog that's very steeped in SEO to bring people to the site who are looking for certain tips on living an outdoorsy life. They have incredible podcasts that really dig deep into different niche issues that an outdoor enthusiast might be interested in. Even one where like hikers were caught, like where wildfires were closing in and how they got out of the situation safely. So not just thinking about like, hey, go outside. It's thinking about that lifestyle and that culture. And then even when the pandemic happened, they repurposed that story because in the beginning of the pandemic, we weren't thinking about going outside with people. They did things like challenges, like the tiniest mild challenge in your living room or your backyard. So things like that. Or repurposing your tent for camping into an outdoor cinema or an indoor cinema if it's freezing cold in your living room. So I really love how they took that kind of story and they repurposed it over time. And that's why I think. And there's actually, I don't have them top of mind, but if you want them, I can send you after there's some great sales Metrics on why this also helped their business as well.

Speaker A: Yeah. And that gets at a really, really important point. You mentioned at the start that storytelling can be viewed as fluffy. Right. And I think there's a couple reasons why that is. One, because the story you're telling isn't corally tied to like your why and who you are. So it's weird, right? You're like, well, why are they bringing this to market? Is it to like capture an SEO position or drive some like social engagement? And then the other is starting to look at, I think you mentioned like macro versus micro stories. Like these micro stories that aren't in service of a macro position, which rei, uh, did really well of like orchestrating. Like, hey, this is why we exist and this is the value and this is why people come to us. Now let's make that real with lots of different interconnected stories that all ladder up to the position we're trying to create. And when you do that, your point sales start to take off because you found this truth that storytelling brings to the surface where you're saying like, okay, I care about the environment, my customers care about the environment. I care about living outdoors in really interesting and cool ways. In this case, like, what are the opposite factors of that? In some cases it's like broad based consumerism. So instead of going out and trying to explore the world in really cool ways, like, no, I want a new tv. And it's like the opposite of that, right? So starting to say like, how can we lean into this shared lifestyle and tell those sort of macro and micro stories in a much more coordinated way? Which I think is really important as you look at helping brands codify that. How do brands find their story? And are there any laws or structures that you've uncovered to sort of bring that to surface? Or is it a matter of like, hey, if you don't know your story and your why at this point, you're in trouble. Like how do we navigate that?

Speaker B: How do you actually find your story? Well, I think what we talk about in the book is you have to go like I always think, okay, if I'm doing a workshop with a company and they're like, ah, uh, we just feel like we've lost. Either it's like, say it's a startup and they're like, hey, we don't know our story, or it's a bigger company and we feel like we've lost the way. I always go back to like, let's think about the company values, let's think about the principles that we live by as a company. Because if you actually dig into those, that's where you really start to see what is it that you stand for as a business. For startups almost have this easier than larger companies in a way, because they're earlier to their founding moment, where you talk to the founder or if they're a little bit further on, who's taken over for the founder, and you think, okay, tell me the stories of the early days. Why did you create this business? Because usually there's like a gap in the market. There's something that they can drive an efficiency on, there's a better experience they can provide or a superior quality they can provide. And then that become. We start to unfold that into the stories of the business. Whereas with larger companies, sometimes you have to bring them back to that moment and remind them of that, even if you're 100 years in business. Well, let's go back and look at that under the lens of today. Like you might have. I think we mentioned I've worked for some companies that have been around, like State Street. One of the companies I worked for had been around for probably 100 years in Boston when I was working for them. So we want to go back to, okay, what's the reality of the business today? Who are we serving? What's differentiating us in the market? Because every company is in business for a reason, and you have to think about that why and that reason. And then I always go back to layering it under those kind of core company values. And I think maybe a good example to look at would be HubSpot, another great Boston company. I think HubSpot has one of the most impressive documentation of values online. So if companies are also feeling like, gosh, we've even lost our way around what our values are anymore. Going back and looking at some companies that you admire or in your industry can be a great way to level it. And then that's where you can start to figure out, okay, what's my why as a business or macro story? What. What's my purpose? And then you can start to think about those micro stories. What are those? And it doesn't even have to be crazy amounts of them. You can start with three to five is always great. If you're a huge company with lots of business units, you might have to do these exercises for each. The macro story for the business and the micro stories per business unit. But that's where I start out. And then we see kind of how it starts to unfold. We whiteboard, we Brainstorm and we start to see intuitively what feels right under the lens of the customers and who we're serving.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that that sort of founding moment is really interesting and not necessarily to like, go back in history and tell that story, but like, get at the essence of like, hey, remember when you got this thing off the ground and two stories kind of jumped to mind on companies we work with that are massive and a very long way from that founding moment. One was HP and they were founded in a garage in Silicon Valley. And as this world was starting to evolve and change in really rapid ways, it required this almost like reinvention of compute and how we think about it for the modern environment. And part of it was like, can we go back to that essence of being in the garage and start innovating and bringing new ideas to m market and driving passion and involving our customers in this world that we're trying to build? And it started to change how we presented content by kind of leaning into that essence and not necessarily just retelling that story, but saying like, hey, remember that? And that should be what's driving, uh, a unified approach to storytelling in our energy as we're trying to bring this to market. And the other thing was another company, Abbott, as they were, this was pre pandemic. And they were looking at how did they tell their story around innovation. And on their campus just outside of Chicago, there's a replica of Dr. Abbott's house in his desk. And on his desk there was a sign that said do it now. And we were looking and we're like, today that would be a campaign or a hashtag like this do it now. This urgency around innovation that has been present forever. So we use that as a launching off point to tell this like, passion and around innovation and this legacy of doing it for a hundred years. Right. So starting to like, look back to say, can I get inspiration from who we are, how we started, or key moments that. Right. Really like from a storytelling standpoint showed who we are. Right. Like when the pressure is on how you react tells the world who you are and what you care about and how you represent. So I think that's really interesting.

Speaker B: I love both of those examples. I think that is so cool. I love the HP example where you're talking about like that innovation in the garage. Because I think as well, like you can look at storytelling from different ways where sometimes we come together and we just want the story, but sometimes actually like the, the journey is actually really interesting. And I think companies forget that where like, they just want to get to the final product and say, okay, we're just going to tell the story. Whereas sometimes showing, like, how you got from A to B can be really interesting. And then I love the other example you said it was. Was it Abbott? You said, yeah, with like the messy desk and like that. The fact that's like a fixture and a thing that's core to the culture. Because then my brain starts spinning around. You could get your customers sharing pictures of their desks or, like, work with influencers to show, like, is. Ekaterina always told me this. One of the things that really inspired her at intel that, that she did on social media that she actually got her wrist slapped for was she showed a really messy engineer's desk. Like, not the perfect and polished kind of way. We. It's like, you know, who I am on Instagram versus who I am in real life. And they were like, oh, we shouldn't show that. But it was like, at the time it was one of the top performing posts because. Because it was so real. And I just, I love that you're giving me so many ideas right now.

Speaker A: Amazing. And so what we're getting at is the essence of the brand. You also mentioned consumer insights. So as you're looking at sort of why this matters and then saying like, okay, if we put our empathy hat back on and say, okay, now how do we tell stories that matter to our audiences both at a macro and a micro level? Have you found any data sources or tools or approaches that work really well when you're trying to understand how to translate some of these elements into something that people are going to really react to?

Speaker B: I mean, this is where, like, I feel like I'm great with collaborating with cross functional teams. I'll use Duncan as an example because when I started there, my boss at the time, the public relations director, she gave me, I think, one of the best career advices I've ever gotten where she had said, ah, she made a list of people from across the company and she's like, I want you to sit down and have a coffee with them and just get to know them. And what ended up happening was I ended up going on a really interesting journey with, like, insights for the customers, but also the business. Because I saw the business from so many different walks of life, from like an operations manager to like, the field marketing manager, someone in customer service, a product manager for coffee or donuts, the culinary team. We actually literally have a job title, Manager of Donut excellence, who is like, he just retired, but he was like Fred the baker in real life. And when you actually sit down with these people and everything, the red thread was the customer at the end of the day and the customer insights. But hearing how they approached it and how they served the customer through their work stream was incredibly powerful. So to me, the light bulb went on because not everyone realize how much great information they had at their fingertips. And what ended up happening was it wasn't just a one off coffee meeting. It started a cycle of meeting with them on a pretty regular cadence because they were on the front lines of interesting insights and they didn't necessarily know how that translated into my work with storytelling and social media. But I was able to coach them over time saying, hey, like this is really interesting to me. If anything like this ever happens again, pop me an email or give me a call. And then we created that culture of getting like these great stories. So going back to the tools piece, so I think your employees are probably one of your best resources. And then it's looking at okay, what tools do we have? So every business has like a customer, usually a customer insights team. We actually even had a competitive intelligence team like the secret agents trying to figure out what competitors were doing and testing and where, which was really fun. And then also tools. Specifically within my function of social media, I really became an early adopter of social listening tools. But those kind of give you like social listening tools are only as good as like the Boolean search queries you put into them. I think with AI, maybe this is going to change things a bit where like we have to put the data into the tool we want to get what we want out of it. So it can be a little self serving at times. Whereas one of the things I also did was the team of community managers that we had just in the channels every day. We also would look for ideas surfacing up from that like what's something a customer said that maybe isn't happening like in mass that we think would be something that sparks something in us. So it was a bit qualitative and quantitative. And then with working with consumer brands you usually look like things like NPS scores, you look for like kind of some of the feedback from shopping in retail. If you're a retail business, there's a lot of sources, but to me I think it's to summarize, it's that mix of like qualitative from your employees and like frontline people with where the customers are with the tools that you have. And to be honest, I would love to hear if there's any tools that you know in your world that you're seeing that you think has been really great surfacing up insights.

Speaker A: I think you hit on something before we get to tools that is really important. And especially as leaders, what happens as you progress in your career is your distance from the customer starts to get greater and greater and greater. Right. So as you look at ah, how to understand and get to a level of insight, now you're looking at some of these self serving queries that you mentioned or keyword searches or broad based Personas and trying to get the level of insight or uniqueness when you don't understand the customer directly in what they're going through becomes really difficult. And so what happens is what you produce gets either really generic or it's fine, but it's not like rooted in something unique or interesting because you're not close enough to the customer. For us there's been a couple of things that have been really interesting. So one is customer panels. So like literally like just sit and talk to some of the customers within the brands that we work with doing quantitative kind of state of the market studies and then building off of those from an editorial standpoint. So can we take some of the original data, especially now specifically with B2B but also B2C. Like if you're trying to understand, like how do we understand the M market and the problem better than anybody else? Well, what better way than to name and own the problem, measure qualitative and quantitative research studies against that and then build off of that through empathy based storytelling. And how can we help customers overcome the current state to the future state and use our offering to get there. So I think as you were talking I wrote down like shrink the distance between us and the customer because I think that's so important.

Speaker B: Yeah, because I relate to so much what you're saying because like the way Duncan and a lot of these, like any consumer packaged good or like fast food company works is like I would be sitting there and like the marketing lead or the brand manager for coffee would give us like a one to two page brief and say hey, I've got X budget. Here's what we want to focus on. Maybe there's a new flavor coming out or it's we're shifting from it's iced coffee for the summer. Here's the Persona and profiles and there's probably a few because it's coffee and it's a big, here's the Personas of like who drinks iced coffee and we're regionalizing It. We're internationalizing it. If it's going to be a global campaign. And then there's like, some market research. You've got, like, this perfectly packaged, like, tie a bow on it. But then I feel like sometimes we would always blow things up a bit with, like. I'm like, okay, but what else can I get from some of my other stakeholders that we can maybe add, like, a little something we sprinkle on top to bring an interesting. Another insight to the table or something? I feel like that's what creative agencies do, right? Like, they take those perfect package briefs, and then the creatives are thinking with other qualitative or quantitative data sources, and that's where they come to you with a revolutionary idea where, like, yes, this is where we should be taking the business or taking the campaign.

Speaker A: You know what I want? If you gave me that, like, perfectly sanitized brief, I'd be like, yeah, but I want that messy desk. I don't want this, like, clean, boring, like wallpaper. Where's the mess? And how do we get at, uh, something, like, interesting or funny or unique or unexpected that's not going to come if everything is too sanitized.

Speaker B: I know it's. Some of. It's even like the messaging. Because, you know, for Dunkin Coffee is. You think of it as. Well now. It's Dunkin. It used to be Dunkin Donuts when I worked there, and the whole rebrand was to refocus on, um, coffee. Right. And I, uh, would work with, like, the iced tea and hot tea manager who always felt like, oh, gosh, I'm, like, left out because all the sales are coming from coffee. But how do I support our small but passionate audience of tea drinkers? And I remember in one of those briefs, it was like, it's the refreshing taste you crave of iced tea. And I'm like, nobody talks that way.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, and if you're going to Dunkin Donuts to get tea, you're a unique animal. Let's talk to those people. Like, why?

Speaker B: Yeah, So I think that's where, like, focus groups or even, like, that's where we could maybe do some social listening and pull up real customer tweets. Being like, iced tea is the bomb.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yo. Did you realize Dunkin has good iced tea? That sounds like customers are talking.

Speaker A: They're not, like, refreshing iced tea.

Speaker B: Actually, I think you're right in a sense that, like, that's probably what's driving repeat purchase. But we've got to figure out a more human way to capture that insight, yeah.

Speaker A: As we're talking, obviously, like telling some of these stories in an isolated way is fine, but it's not going to create a market position for you as kind of a leader. As you look at the difference between a brand story and a strategic narrative, are those things different in your mind or are they the same thing?

Speaker B: I think they have to tie into each other. So when the reason why we structured our book with like macro versus micro stories was to make the whole point that your why of your business needs to be grounded in your overall business strategy. So again, this is where we as marketers and storytellers and the creative people, we love the creative side of it. Right. But if what you're doing doesn't layer up to the strategy of the business, it's not going to be successful. So this is where we have to think about, okay, what are the overarching goals? What are we trying to achieve as a business? Then we want to, to your point, build a strategic narrative strategy that's going to support that. And that's where I think you pull those kind of macro and micro stories and that storytelling strategy from.

Speaker A: We refer to it and I think you may as well as a blueprint like, so how do we start thinking of what is the large scale position that we want to occupy and to whom does it matter? What are the opposing for and why does it matter to each of our audiences? And what are the key moments that I want to show up in? And then what role does our product play at, ah, what point in these stories to make them come to life in meaningful, true, honest ways that all reflect ladder up to that top position that we're trying to create. So I think it's really important.

Speaker B: I love that, uh, because it just gives you this platform and I think that's a really great way where sometimes it can feel overwhelming to build this strategy. So because you have such great frameworks there at each moment, that's giving you the whole ecosystem. You're working with these big companies, right. So you're giving them those moments to build that creativity off of, uh, so. And still keeping it grounded in the business. I think that's brilliant.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think what's happened, um, we've been in this space for about 15 years and we've seen different sort of swings. Early on it was fairly easy to be purpose driven because you had to be in order to stand out. And then everyone's like, oh, content is king. Everybody needs content. So the way content was created got really distributed. So now all of These different centers started creating content, especially in big companies. And guess what? None of them knew each other, talked to each other, collaborated with each other because the demand far outweighed the supply. So you're just all of a sudden getting stuck in this like production land. And at the same time as marketers we're told like volume, volume, volume, volume. And it's really easy and a lot of folks, probably a large majority of folks, got lost. Right? Because now it's like this production beast that we can never satisfy. And what now we're seeing in this sort of age of AI is almost like a refocus moment where you're saying, okay, if this volume approach is, feels kind of crazy, especially if it's a bunch of micro stuff that is disconnected from a larger purpose because we've created this distance, how do we now move from this like bottoms up fire hose of content to more of this like top down architecture of how we show up as a brand? So I don't know if you agree or you've noticed a similar shift in your work.

Speaker B: I have seen that problem at every single company. So it's, and especially it also layers in with how the media environment has changed. Right. Like in the book we have the term the era of infobesity, which I feel like I talking about for like a decade or more, maybe even two. Because with the ride, I mean I started my career in 2005 when social media channels were first, just like I got early access to Facebook, going to college in Boston. So I've really lived my career seeing kind uh, of just the rise and proliferation. I can say the word of all of these channels and then what that's done to companies as a result, because it does create the pressure with feeding the algorithm to feel like you need to put a certain volume of content out. And in a sense like I do agree and disagree with that. I think you have to find the right volume that works for you. As a company, I am a big believer in quality over quantity unless you have crazy budgets. And I do think the one area I am starting to learn more about is AI, because I think you're right that AI does drive that scale. But I think what we can't lose in how AI scales is still that commitment to quality. Because sometimes AI content can be generic, not be kind of as personable and as exciting. And it's all in how you prompt it and how you feed it. So I think AI is going to be a remarkable tool. I already see it for myself because I feel like I'M doing like three jobs at a time on any given day with all the things I'm invested in and it's helping me scale myself, but it's not replacing the original creativity.

Speaker A: I think you hit on something really important on the AI side. So we've been looking at this space for gosh, probably four or five years, pretty in depth before a lot of these commercial tools came to market. And um, what we started to see, and especially as GPT and others came to market was AI was almost like in service of the wrong problem, right? So we had created this volume of work that was disconnected from purpose because the channels demanded it and we could never keep up. And oh by the way, we also need to like personalize everything at a hyper personalized sense for individuals and GEOs. And all of a sudden you're just like, oh my God, like I can't, I don't have enough time or budget or, or, or. And so we started looking at AI a little differently and saying like, hey, can we leverage AI to get at a lot of the things around the core human insight? So like, can we use it to get at anomalies and data or understand, like get to a baseline of a conversation really quickly? How does that show up? If we're a global company, how does that show up in different GEOs or markets and like data correlations that just were never possible before? Or if we're a partner with a brand, what a pain in the ass it is to onboard a new partner. Like could we onboard ourselves by capturing so much data and make your life way easier so we can like hop in and be productive on day one? So starting to like get at, at acceleration to what you said earlier, which is like human insight. And then once we have that we started looking and say, okay, can we atomize uh, our position or can we take the human insight and the idea and recreate it for different audiences or channels? And basically it's a, uh, sort of nuance. But what we've seen is if you can understand that architecture, who are we, how do we want to show up? Can we like get a really good understanding of how those conversations are showing up in market in lots of different ways to give us like good creative ideas? Once we build that idea, can we use AI to scale our position versus using AI to like serve the unending demand for individual asset creation? Which makes me want to rip my hair off.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's totally fair. I mean where I've personally found it is in a few ways. So one of the companies that I've worked for for no joke has like 80 pages of brand guidelines. And you should see how soul crushing that is when you have to send that over to a new partner or agency.

Speaker A: You like grit your teeth, you're like, here you go, good luck.

Speaker B: I don't even remember all of them. So I think I've not actually really trained AI on this, but I've been thinking like, how could we use AI number one in kind of using that as a tool? Because obviously you have to think about the security and the privacy of it. So we've been doing a lot of work around like, how could we use that? Is there a solution that could help us scale the teaching of our guidelines? Maybe something more proprietary? So it's not like in the ethos of ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini. And then I think the second piece of it is also I think about something I would be really excited about is from a compliance standpoint, because in a lot of the jobs that I've done, and especially Duncan, I had to manage so many markets both in the US and internationally. And that in itself is a full time job to do compliance and approvals on all of the marketing assets. So I would love to know if there's any tools out there where, when they're just flipping stuff over the fence. There's a lot AI can do with like, is the logo print placement, right? Or like, if you feed in those 80 pages of brand guidelines, can it start to flag and surface up some of the initial things and maybe it brings it to you for like the last pass kind of thing?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And those areas are all emerging. There's a couple things on Global that are interesting. One is it's like the nuances of how you show up in a different geography is how you present your value and connect with people and culture and words you use. And all those things are different. So can you take a topic and then apply it to a local market and then bring it in local language and make sure it's brand compliant? So like a lot of those things are starting to automate, which is awesome, right? And it gets back to the concepts that you're talking about, which is like, okay, do we have a story to tell and can this story be told in a unified macro way? So all these micro stories mean something and they're not just chasing individual interactions. So like in this world, the concept of brand storytelling and being unified with that is arguably like incredibly important, more important than ever in a way where you can start to connect the dots. And for me, as you were talking, I wrote down AI readiness. There's so many tools out there that we can automate or expedite individual tasks, but are we ready to transform? And I think part of it is, do we have this story captured? Do we have our ducks in a row? Are we starting to understand how we want to present in the world? And that is almost a precursor because absent of that, you throw AI in the mix and you just have chaos.

Speaker B: Well, exactly. Because I think my one fear with AI for storytelling, because I love AI tools. But my fear is that if you don't have the right insights going in to prompt it, you're just going to get generic gobbledygook, right? So like I do think I can be a great tool in teaching you how to be a better storyteller. Like for example, I can be great with. You can ask AI to like write you a list of like the top 10 storytelling frameworks, right? And you could start to learn from that when it will even give you a big brand example to go with it that you can like ask it to include the link and go and look at it so you can start to learn like, wow, wow, okay, the Hero's Journey. How would I structure a story in the Hero's Journey style? And wow, Nike is a great example of this. And here's a campaign from Nike where they use the Hero's Journey. So I really like it in that education space. But where I think I worry is I'm starting to play around more now with like using frameworks. But to get to the point where you're going to prompt AI with a framework and a brief, you still have to be grounded in those insights. And then I think it's not just taking the output and like going to print with it. I think it's about, you have to know what good looks like and where. Even if I use AI to, I'll give you an example. I do a weekly newsletter on LinkedIn which is, it's called the Marketer Storybook. And I use AI to help me write it. But to be honest, I still have to spend hours working on it every week because I'll feed, uh, just the full news article with like some insights I've written on what I think makes the, the story interesting and AI hallucinates AI. Like it gives me something kind of half assed that I'm like, this is, you have to know what good looks like for the AI to best serve you. And maybe as the tools improve, this will improve as well, but I don't think it's at a stage right now where you can completely just drop something in and, like, it's 100% there.

Speaker A: Yeah. And that gets back to what is our role in how do we lean into tools? Because for me and for our organization, AI has been incredibly transformational. As for a lot of people, like, we're in this moment where it's like, what a time to be alive, right? You start to hear, uh, like, all of the direction on where this is headed. But here we are in the middle, right? Like, you have a lot of companies that are restructuring with the thought that AI is going to expedite, uh, and maybe replace or change their headcount or reimagine how they think about a marketing organization or any of those things. But those same organizations don't have access to the tools and they don't have an AI strategy. And so it's like, we're in this, like, oh my God, we're figuring it out, like, in real time, and the tools are changing almost weekly and all of those things. So it's really interesting. But I think what's comforting as we think about that is as marketers, like, our value is in our expertise of storytelling, uh, and connection to business and human empathy. And then we can start to take a step back on the job to be done and say, like, okay, how does this help and how does this not help? Right? Like, AI doing all those things. For me, probably not. But can it help expedite that and then scale my message? Like, can it help me have empathy? Like, can I understand how maybe this audience is showing up differently and what they care about? And it can it correlate data points that I just can't do on my own, or I don't have access to? Like, the volume of information is just astounding and the speed at which you have that at your fingertips, and it puts the pressure on us to then tell much better stories, right? Because now if that's the game and everybody has access to tools and everyone has access to data, and everyone has access to GPT or cloud or insert LLM here, then the stories are going to win. But if you're not using those things to aid you in getting to those stories, then you're in trouble, right? So it's starting to kind of find our footing in that world.

Speaker B: I think the people who will be the most successful in the future are going to be the ones that learn to master the AI tools. But I think going back to my point about my Former boss who gave me kind of the best career advice ever about really staying grounded in the customer insights and the different employees. I still think like AI is going to be incredible. But you know how we always, like there's the saying where it's like, you can't make this stuff up. I still think there's always going to be a place for that where it's like, especially in big enterprise, uh, like especially B2B big enterprise organizations, sometimes your employees have the most remarkable stories and that can be something like you tell the story of an employee who's been there for 20 years and why they're so passionate with kind of their piece of the business. Right? You could do that on the B2B or even the B2C side. Like I was talking about Rick golden, the actual real life Fred the baker who had just retired from Duncan not too long ago. It's those kind of people. Like, I don't think AI could make up a fictional character. But they can't invent Rick, right? Or they can't invent this incredible. There's one story that we have in the book that I just think is so hilarious where like Tesco, which is a British supermarket, they started taking a really funny approach to customer service where one customer found like a dead worm in the cucumber which if you work in the food business, that's like any foreign object in food is not good. But of course they apologize, they offer to send a gift card back. But the customer took a really funny approach in complaining. So instead of just saying, yeah, yeah, we're really sorry for your experience, here's the gift card to replace it. The customer was like, oh, I found a dead worm. Now I've lost my m taste for cucumber sandwich and I have some upset children like, how are you going to wiggle your way out of this one Tesco? And the customer kind of opened the door for a fun response and they started the whole idea where they're basically where they wrote a poem for the dead worm and sent a sympathy card to the house for like the worm funeral the customer was talking about. So I think AI can't replace those kind of things. So I think that's where we're going to have probably an insights driven layer from AI but then we're still going to have to keep our eyes and ears open for what's really happening for like that stuff you can't just make up. That's those remarkable once in a lifetime stories and opportunities that I think are some of those Cut through pieces.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it gets back to some of the REI examples and things like that, where the next wave of content and storytelling is real, human, authentic approaches. Right. And I think to that point, AI, ah, to our earlier conversation, AI can get you to that sanitized grief that is like. AI does a really good job of, like, normalizing the conversation. So it'll take everything and it'll, like, pull it down to the median storytellers. That's the most boring place to live. So if we can get the insight down to, like, a structure or something interesting and get all the data now, how do we get from here to the messy desk? Right? Like, get to something real, honest, interesting, funny, insightful, that shows who you are as a brand and connects you in a meaningful way to your audience, which is awesome as we're wrapping here. As you're thinking about this conversation and the work you've done, are there any sort of rules or laws that you think apply that people need to keep in mind as we look at this next wave of, uh, where we go in this crazy world?

Speaker B: I think there's probably two principles I really like to live by. One thing we suggest in the book is building something called an authenticity playbook. So going back to our early conversation about brand values, I think that's an interesting exercise because your brand values kind of skim the surface. But where an authenticity playbook is really interesting is it starts to make you a bit more relevant for, like, the issues of the day. And we all know it's a very interesting climate at the moment with everything that's happening in the world. And I think companies are being tested more than ever. So I think one thing that's always a phenomenal exercise to do is start with your brand values and the guidelines you have for your employees and all those things that are set in place. But also take it a step further for, like, the issues of the day and the principles that you think are the most important to you as a company. And it's not necessarily things about. I mean, DEI initiatives could be one example, which is quite a hot button topic at the moment. But it also can be things about zeroing into, like, how your products and services are structured. So, like, from a B2B side, obviously you have, like, a software engineering piece of it. How are you doing the work that you're doing? Why are you structuring your product in the way that it is? Like, what's the experience you want to provide? You can actually learn a lot about, like, what you stand for from that same thing with any kind of consumer product. What's your supply chain look like? What kind of factories and labor are you using? Do you prioritize, like certain ingredients because they're better, they're more sustainable, they're of a superior quality for kind of people to consume certain fabrics, really layering into all those pieces. And that's where I think working with like your public relations, your investor relations, having that cross functional team of like product people and customer care to do that authenticity playbook, I think can really ground you because we've talked a lot about the happy and proactive side of storytelling right now. But if you actually go through some of the biggest storytelling fails of the past decade, the red thread there is that it's not aligned with who the business is or they made like such a faux pas that they weren't thinking, uh, correctly about the issues of the day. So I think that's a really huge part where sometimes we get really excited on the creative side and we go too far because we lose those values.

Speaker A: That's a great place to kind of summarize and wrap things up. I think as leaders, as we look at the stories we're telling, really it's connecting the big picture and the small picture. Right. And I think I love your approach of investigating those stories across the company and looking at your historical values and talking to people, then connecting with the customer and then using data as an overlay. And all of a sudden you're having this sort of rich understanding of your value in the world. And now you have the foundation through which you can tell really meaningful stories about your why and why you matter. So I think that's really interesting. And then your story becomes a common mission, right? Like, how are we, you know, working together as an organization to impact the world in a positive way and our products, services and offerings become an avenue to do that or just brighten somebody's day with a iced, uh, tea in the afternoon and maybe a fun spider donut. But really it's the stories are how we connect with one another and how as brands, we can connect with our consumers and really kind of occupy that position that we're looking for. So really appreciate it. Any final thoughts as we wrap up here? Yeah.

Speaker B: So the final thought I always like to end on is my mantra is always tell the stories that matter. So I think if we've all been in those meetings where trust your intuition, we get the briefs, we have the business objectives, but if you don't really feel like the story matters and you are not going to sell this. You're not going to live by it. You're not going to get excited by it. Why are you telling it? So I think always have that be kind of something that's like your North Star, personally, in the work that you're doing.

Speaker A: Yeah. In a crass way. If you keep saying, who cares? You know, like, yeah, I want to build this. Who cares? I don't know. And then if you can answer that question three or four times, your idea will probably get a little sharper or more interesting.

Speaker B: Yeah. We could be like the angel and devil on people's shoulders. Like, tell the stories that matter. And you're like, who cares?

Speaker A: Who cares? Yes. I love it. Well, Jessica, this has been amazing. Really appreciate all of your thoughts and guidance and structure. How can people connect with you or how should they connect with you?

Speaker B: You can find me on every social media channel. I think for the storytelling work, I would encourage subscribing to my newsletter either on LinkedIn or you could subscribe to the blog posts on jessica jolio.com I'm still trying to decide on an email client for the newsletter, so maybe offline you can give me some. Some tips, Dan, but those would probably be the best places to connect. But I'm also on Instagram in my stories. Every day I share a couple inspiring stories and campaigns I'm seeing. So pick a channel that you like to spend time on and I'm probably sharing some content on there.

Speaker A: Love it. Well, this has been amazing. Thank you so much. And I think you've inspired me to tell bigger, better stories. So thank you.

Speaker B: Oh, thank you so much.

Speaker A: Thank you for listening to content disrupted brought to you by Skyward. To stay up to date on the latest ideas and insights in brand building and content marketing, visit our website@skyward.com that's s k y w o r d.com join us for our next episode where we'll continue to challenge marketing norms and inspire you with fresh strategies for growing business through brand storytelling.