The Work

Bill Baker (no relation) is nicer than I am, so don't pin any of my introduction on him. I recently spoke to an auditorium of C-level executives, and the title of my presentation was long but revealing: "The Happy Death of Branding, the Next Fad of Storytelling, and the Hopeful Rise of Alignment."

I guess that expresses my view of branding: there are a few firms really doing it, and the rest (and majority) aren't doing anything differently than they did before, but now they are calling it branding because it sounds upstream. There was no training in marketing, no classes, books, or even real processes. The typical four circles with the ubiquitous use of alliteration doesn't count and should be taken off your website.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with my view of branding, it clearly is yesterday's news, and storytelling comes up frequently. Rather than being marginalized even more, I think we ought to jump on this one early so that we don't relieve the word of even more meaning.

Bill (disclosure: a client) is one of the very few people really doing story telling. While the concept has been around since people wrote on cave walls, modern storytelling was really maximized by E+S (Envisioning and Storytelling) in Vancouver roughly three decades ago, a place where Bill was Chief Strategic Officer. Now, under BillBaker&Co he continues that great work with clients like GE, Relais & Chateaux, Johnson & Johnson, The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, etc. Here are some of his thoughts on the difference between faux storytelling and real storytelling. Real storytelling is a very complex skill, and I can sit for days listening to Bill point out the subtleties involved. This is just the outer layer.

Here's Bill:

I have had the privilege of working with hundreds of professional service firms over the years, spending at least one full day and countless hours with each principal, and also interacting with thousands of the employees who make things happen at these firms. I say “privilege” because it’s stimulating to be around their energy, creativity, independence, humor, and “otherness.” I love my work.

Because I’ve been successful in that work, many people informally ask me questions about starting businesses, fixing businesses, and even buying/selling businesses. This might happen over a drink or a meal. One of the concepts that frequently surfaces is this idea that people ought to pursue what they love and success will follow. “Just follow your passion and the success will take care of itself.”

About two weeks ago, I had one of the hardest weekends of my career. Many things came together all at once and pretty much brought me to my knees.

• Our wonderful, special dog Lucy has cancer. We rescued her from a very abusive situation and she's been a wonderful companion. She's fighting it well, but we don't know when and how the end will come. When we got her, she was terrified of men, terrified of newspapers, and had a bullet in her hip. Now she brings me the paper and is as sweet as can be. She's a Rottweiler and Labrador mix.

Burnout is widely felt in marketing field. So much so that every individual will face it at some point in his/her career.

Some of it stems from a propensity toward short attention spans, developed at an early age. Oddly enough, if you didn’t have access to a TV or hours of video games, you might be more creative now! (So much for the impact of your profession.)

For the purpose of this reminder, I’m going to assume that you are smart and that you do your homework, and that the only thing keeping you from doing more effective work for clients is that they don’t listen to you enough. Got it? If both of those first two things aren’t true, these suggestions aren’t going to help much.

We all define the ideal client in many ways, but essentially it boils down to two things: the ideal client relationship is one in which you make money and have an appreciable impact on your client. Sure, you want to enjoy the relationship, you want referrals, you want prompt payment, you want to work with a decision maker, and a dozen other things. But those two things are the really important ones: money and impact.

We talk about money in various other position papers—here I want to talk about impact.

Whatever convergence means to you, it’s usually spoken of in terms of how your work for clients is crossing media boundaries. However direct the relationship, a fallout from this trend has been the convergence among providers, too. In other words, labeling something as an “ad agency, a public relations firm, a design studio, or an interactive company” is difficult to do without an asterisk to explain how the label doesn’t really fit.

You may think this crowdsourcing movement is like a big trencher, circling closer and closer as you seek to hold the fort of relevance and value to clients. 

You may indeed think that, but I believe you’re wrong. I really do think this movement is good, and here’s why. Even if we end up disagreeing on that point, it really doesn’t matter. The change is already underway, and resisting it makes as much sense as promising to hold an inner tube under water forever.