Posts Tagged → storytelling

The Power of Branding (A Story of Two Supermarkets)

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There is a story I recently heard that I haven’t been able to get out of my head. I told some of my team and then I’ve found myself telling it to friends, in meetings, on the phone. That’s called “stickiness” and so I want to share it here as well.

There are two supermarkets. You walk into the first supermarket and they’ve run out of a product you want and you think, “That’s really a crap store.” You walk into a second supermarket that you really admire and they’ve run out of the product and you think, “I should have been here earlier.”

That’s good branding.

How we feel about places, people, things we interact with on a daily/weekly/monthly basis matters. It matters because our perception of a place becomes reality. Reality is a hard thing to shape, it’s not as cut and dry as everyone would have you believe. After all, the second a moment passes it stops being reality and becomes memory – the most personal and subjective emotion in the world.

Whether you’re creating a Brand from scratch, in the process of reinvention or elevating your Brand to another level, remember you have limited opportunity to create a “moment of truth” and those moments matter. This message applies to all businesses, nonprofits, startups, etc. It’s these succinct stories and messages that I’ve been thinking a lot about as I work to build brands in my day-to-day work.

What’s your story? Which supermarket are you?

This story comes from Michael Wolff, Founder of Wolff Olins (and comes at 3:42 on the video above). I found his video on m ss ng p eces, a Brooklyn-based creative company who created videos for the Intel Visual Life series. I found them through Cowbird, the new storytelling project website from Jonathan Harris. I met Jonathan at Davos in 2010 and greatly admire his work, creativity and creation of new projects on the web.

Tell the good said the Haitians. There is positive happening here.

“What is the one thing we can take back from Haiti with us to tell people?”

That was the question I asked people while in Haiti over the weekend. For there is a lot going on. A lot of sadness. A lot of frustration. A lot of violence. Struggles to reconstruct, rebuild, take a country that was already the poorest in the Western Hemisphere and have it come back better than before.

“Tell the good. There is positive happening here. The (traditional) media only tells the stories of hardship but there are a lot of positive stories coming out of Haiti too.”

And indeed there is. Smiles and laughter. People helping each other. Community leaders stepping up. International aid organizations committed to helping in the reconstructions. Houses are being built. Schools are in session. A presidential election is right around the corner.

So that’s what I want to do. I want to honor the wishes of the people I met in Haiti. I want to tell stories that haven’t been told 100 times. It’s important for us – us in the privileged developed country – to remember that in the aftermath of a natural disaster most other countries don’t have the option to cleanup like we do.

Sanitation is often argued to be the number one indicator of how developed a country is. Second is infrastructure in roads and the ability to get from point A to point B. Haiti is obviously behind the U.S., so is there trash in the streets and piles of rubble? Yes. But I expected that.

What was amazing was the bright colors! The creativity of the Haitians. The way they are embracing art as a means of expression. They are struggling of course, but there is hope in Haiti. There is hope for the future. That is humankind, that is what makes us resilient. Hope.

I hope you’ll remember that when you think of Haiti, if nothing else.

I’ll be sharing more of that perspective of Haiti in the coming days. In the meantime, I’ve just started using Cinch to record audio messages to share. Below is a message I recorded today about Haiti and storytelling.

If you have specific questions about Haiti, please let me know. If I don’t know, I’m happy to help find someone who would. And for more information on the Heart of Haiti campaign visit Fairwinds Trading or follow the hashtag #heartofhaiti on Twitter.

Digital Storytelling; Connecting Us to Our Causes and Ourselves

I’m really excited to announce that I’ve been asked to co-lead the uber-fabulous #kaizenblog this week. I’d love for you to tune in on Friday at 12pm EST to join our conversation. This week’s topic is Digital Storytelling; Connecting Us to Our Causes and Ourselves.

Some of the questions we’ll be asking, talking about, and debating include:

  • How does social media connect us more to each other and to causes we support?
  • What does storytelling mean for an individual versus a nonprofit or organization?
  • How do we want to hear the story? What about a story compels us to want to know more?
  • What is the difference between a connection and noise?

What is #KaizenBlog? This weekly chat uses the concept of “kaizen” for continual improvement in how we think and act in business. And what is kaizen?

Kaizen (改善?), Japanese for “improvement” or “change for the better”, refers to philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, supporting business processes, and management. It has been applied in healthcare, psychotherapy, life-coaching, government, banking, and many other industries. When used in the business sense and applied to the workplace, kaizen refers to activities that continually improve all functions, and involves all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. It also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organizational boundaries into the supply chain. By improving standardized activities and processes, kaizen aims to eliminate waste (see lean manufacturing). Kaizen was first implemented in several Japanese businesses after the Second World War, influenced in part by American business and quality management teachers who visited the country. It has since spread throughout the world and is now being implemented in many other venues besides just business and productivity.

It was started by Valeria Maltoni (@conversationage) and Elli St. George Godfrey (@3keyscoach), two amazing women I admire and so I’m really excited to be joining them in leading the conversation tomorrow.

Look forward to seeing you tomorrow in #kaizenblog. Let me know in advance if you have any specific questions you’d like me to cover!

The Journey Of A Foster Child Is Not An Easy One

Today is the final #CauseItsSummer guest post and as such we’re doing a double header! Once a week this summer, The Causemopolitan has featured a guest post that will inspire you right up out of your seat to get involved and give back in a special series called Cause It’s Summer. Featured bloggers will be sharing their own reflections and stories, tips and resources, and perspective on philanthropy, social entrepreneurship and their own cause-filled life. This week welcome Stephanie Schneider, who works at X PRIZE by day and blogs at Paisley Petunia at night. Stephanie has one of the biggest hearts of anyone I know and I’m honored for her to share her personal experience working with foster kids here on The Causemopolitan.

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Check out www.fosterhood.tumblr.com to follow one mom's journey through foster care

Imagine being a young child and suddenly taken from the only home that you have ever known and separated from every familiar face in your life? Frightening, no?!

The journey of a foster child is not an easy one.

And neither is that of the foster parent. But I cannot think of a better, more giving role. Foster parents open their own homes and hearts to provide a temporary, safe haven for children in crisis.

In 2004, I became acquainted with the foster care system at my first bona-fide real world job. Fresh out of college, I was bright eyed, naïve and hopeful. I landed at Southern California Foster Family & Adoption Agency in Los Angeles, CA. The agency is dedicated to helping abused and neglected children find secure, stable, nurturing homes to live in, until such time as they are reunited with their birth families, are adopted or become independent adults.

My first month on the job, I attended the foster parent orientation classes that are required to become a certified foster home. Requirements vary by state, but here are some of the qualifications to be a foster parent:

  • You must be 25 years of age
  • You need to have a safe, clean home with room for a child(ren) and their belongings
  • No one in your home, or caring for the child, may have a criminal record
  • You must be open to a team approach for the care of the placed children, cooperating fully with agency, county personnel and birth families

Over the next two years, I learned so much about the bureaucracy of the foster care system in America. My thoughts on how to improve this decaying, failing system are too long for this post. But along with these challenges, I witnessed the joy in reuniting a child with their parents or extended family (when it was the best thing for the child). I participated in keeping adoptable sibling sets together by matching them with new parents that were waiting patiently to have a family. The creation of new families through adoption is a beautiful thing. We watched as children that had been neglected or abused flourished from the nurturing care of a foster/adoptive parent. The news tends to only report on the horror stories in the foster care system. But I wish they would highlight more stories about the heroes of foster care – foster parents (and social workers) that are so giving of their love, patience and time.

Now, I know that becoming a foster parent is a life changing decision and many of you reading this might not be in a position to fit the requirements above at this time. However, your local foster family agency can always use your help:
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Khaki-Wearing Westerners Do Not Have The Answers

Once a week this summer, come back to The Causemopolitan to read a guest post that will inspire you right up out of your seat to get involved and give back in a special series called Cause It’s Summer! Featured bloggers will be sharing their own reflections and stories, tips and resources, and perspective on philanthropy, social entrepreneurship and their own cause-filled life. This week welcome Milena Arciszewski, who I first met in the Philippines last summer where we were both Kiva Fellows. I have a ton of respect for Milena, her courageous story and journey creating her new venture, Pando Projects. From Westernized volunteer to self-aware activist, Milena’s story is one we can all relate to. What is the story that shaped you? Email me at sloane@thecausemopolitan.com to share your story in an upcoming guest post.

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In 2008, I quit my job as an investment banker in New York and left to volunteer in Bosnia, Kenya, and the Philippines. I still remember the satisfaction of cleaning out my desk and leaving the office for the last time. The sun hit my face and I smiled a magnanimous smile – thinking that I was so brave and selfless to leave for a year to help people in developing nations.

For the majority of my time abroad I was a typical Western volunteer, wearing “sexless t-shirts and over-zippered khaki shorts” and thinking that I had the solutions to problems I couldn’t even begin to understand. It’s hard for me to admit this on a blog; it took me a long time to even admit it to myself. But I need to be honest about my initial superiority complex, because I think it’s a common problem among Western volunteers and aid workers, and is reflective of the larger problems of the Western aid model.

There was one specific experience that put me in my place and cemented my skepticism of Western aid. In Kenya I volunteered at an organization that trains teenage girls to be cooks, tailors, and hairdressers. These teenage girls live in the slums and many of them are single mothers, high school drop-outs, and/or sex workers. The program gives them an amazing opportunity to turn their lives around. Based on my experience as a banker, I was brought in to teach them business skills and raise money to pay for the equipment and supplies they needed to start their own businesses. I was ecstatic! It was such an amazing program and opportunity for me to make a real difference in their lives. I thought the program was a brilliant strategy for helping them break the cycle of poverty.

But nothing is ever as simple as it seems. The issues challenging these girls were so complex and so nebulous, that many of my initial assumptions for designing the program proved to be wrong. And despite my “expertise,” the program faced challenges I had never anticipated. For one, the girls didn’t want to work. As typical teenage girls, they showed up late, made excuses, and avoided responsibility. Secondly, the community rallied against the new businesses. There was already so much competition in their neighborhoods that the new center was perceived as a threat and attacked with salacious rumors that drove customers away. By the time I left Kenya, the program was a “success” in that we had trained the girls to be entrepreneurs and stocked a center with the equipment they needed to run their businesses. But the program was also struggling to survive, brought down by waning enthusiasm and the lack of customers. In my final days at the center, I felt overwhelmed and defeated. I had been so sure that the program would help get these girls out of poverty, but now it was unclear if we had accomplished anything more than pumping thousands of dollars into a program that no one even wanted in the first place.
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