We’re truly a people business as a consultancy. As a result, our people are our business and, ultimately, are our story. And, from my viewpoint, the story is the content. Nobody knows our story better than them. So I do my best to let them tell it, helping them shape the narrative and find their voice across our content platforms.
This may sound a little crazy: try to fail, do it fast and recover with the lessons learned even faster. What I mean by this is if you’re not failing every once in a while, you’re either not trying hard enough, you’re not pushing your boundaries and comfort zones far enough, or a combination of both. One of the key things I’ve learned about helping my folks find their storytelling voice is sometimes I’ve got to explore new platforms than I’ve used in the past to maximize their potential.
The work we do is incredibly complex and typically manifests itself in hundreds of pages of reports with, nearly indecipherable to the average person, electrical engineering language. But the work we do has a tremendous impact on the day-to-day lives we live that rely on electricity. We felt that story needed to be accessible to the average person. Visualizing and making the content from those reports interactive helps connect people like me without an PhD in engineering with the really important, really cool work we do.
I’m super stoked about what the future for content marketing holds in the context of AR, VR, and wearables. These technologies bring a whole new angle to what it means to tell a story. Telling a story becomes a completely immersive and potentially full sensory experience. For example, how do you answer the question as a marketer: “What does my brand feel like, smell like, look like, and sound like… all at the same time?” Such an exciting mind-twist!
With how quickly technology is advancing and how quickly that same technology is coming down cost-curves, I truly have no idea, which is really fun. What I think I know is the marketers that are going to be successful will be the ones who never lose track of the fundamentals of good story-telling and are willing to try everything at least once to bring that story to life.