Think of any great presenter—Steve Jobs, Richard Branson or Jeff Bezos—and it won’t take you long to figure out that they are also master storytellers. Storytelling is increasingly becoming a “must-have” skill for business leaders, but you still won’t find it on any MBA curriculum.
This webinar will give you a deeper understanding why story is such a powerful strategic tool and how it can be used in the business setting. We will show you a specific “before and after” example of how a case study was transformed into powerful case story for pitching new business. We’ll also give you some key tips on how to craft and use stories to make an impact in your next big presentation or business meeting.
“As an ex-newspaper reporter, I have always recognized the value of storytelling. This webinar helped provide a great framework for bringing people into the important strategic and cultural stories I need to be communicating.”
What You Will Learn:
- The neuroscience and psychology that proves why stories work
- Tips for transforming run-of-the-mill presentation content into powerful stories that engage audiences
- How storytelling can be used as strategic tool to build chemistry and trust with others
- How even data-driven presentations can benefit from the art of storytelling
- The difference between conventional storytelling and strategic storytelling for business purposes. Please bring your ideas and questions!
Who Should Attend
This webinar is primarily aimed at those in the early stages of implementing or learning about strategic business storytelling, although it will also help more advanced practioners to focus their efforts. It is especially suitable for:
- Small and mid-sized business leaders
- Corporate executives who are new to storytelling
Presented by:
Jane Praeger is a former documentary filmmaker and faculty member in Columbia University’s M.S. program in Strategic Communications and Communications Practice where she teaches presentation design and delivery, communications strategy, strategic storytelling and writing. She founded Ovid Inc. in 1992 to help people find their public voices. Since then, she has provided speech, presentation, media training and customized workshops, to corporations such as Nickelodeon, Coach, Estee Lauder, McKinsey & Company, Euro RSCG Worldwide, as well as other technology, entertainment, and consulting firms. On the non-profit side, she has worked with Open Society Foundations, Doctors Without Borders, Atlantic Philanthropies, The Ms. Foundation, Harvard University, Columbia University Business School, and many others.
Heather Thomas is a business builder who has clocked countless hours performing “on stage” in the presentation spotlight. She earned her stripes in the agency world, working at Agency.com, Modem Media and the digital agency Critical Mass where she built their Business Development and Corporate Marketing practice from the ground up, ultimately tripling their revenue. After crafting hundreds of high-stakes presentations to win clients such as Procter & Gamble, NASA and Dell, Heather joined Ovid in 2010 to pass what she learned about persuasive presentations to others. In addition to her work with Ovid, Heather runs Winsome, a business development consulting boutique. She is also an adjunct instructor at Columbia University where she teaches Masters students the art of strategic storytelling. Heather is a cum laude graduate of Princeton University.
Activating Companies for Good: The Trojan Horse of Social Responsibility
How companies are innovating new ways to connect people, planet and engagement.
Judah Schiller, Co-founder and CEO, Saatchi & Saatchi S, North America
Presented at:
COMMUNICATING SUSTAINABILITY 2010: Integrating Social Responsibility Into Your Organization’s DNA
Ebay: Engaging Employees in Innovative Social Responsibility Projects
Amy Skoczlas Cole, Director, eBay Green Team
Amy Skoczlas Cole has worked at the nexus of business and sustainability for 15 years. As a thought leader in embedding authentic and strategic corporate responsibility programs into business operations, Amy has advised dozens of Fortune 500 companies. Her expertise covers a myriad of CSR issues, including greening operations and supply chains, creatively engaging customers and employees in environmental efforts, and partnering effectively with stakeholder communities.
Today, as the Director of the eBay Green Team at eBay Inc., Amy leads eBay’s efforts to engage their 88 million active users in making more sustainable buying choices that both can save consumers money as well as help protect the planet. Building off a grassroots efforts started by eBay’s own employees, the eBay Green Team is a community of over 100,000 people who have pledged to be smarter, greener buyers and sellers. Launched in March of 2008, the eBay Green Team has focused on raising awareness of the environmental benefits of using products that already exist today, and demonstrated how small actions can collectively add up to a big difference. Within eBay, the employee Green Team, which numbers over 2,000 employees in 23 countries, has spearheaded a number of projects to make eBay a greener company, from developing alternative commute programs to planting the first ever Fortune 500 company sponsored community garden. In her role, Amy also serves as on the company’s Sustainability Steering Committee, the executive body empowered by eBay CEO John Donahoe to set and implement eBay’s own operational commitments, including installing the city of San Jose, Calif.’s largest solar installation, building eBay’s newest building to LEED Gold standards, and most recently, announcing a commitment to reducing eBay’s greenhouse gas emissions by an ambitious 15% by 2012 over 2008.
Prior to joining eBay in early 2008, Amy was a co-founder and Vice President of Conservation International’s Center for Environmental Leadership in Business. For well over a decade, she engaged business leaders across a wide range of industries in creating strategic sustainability programs that benefited the global environment and the bottom line. In that role, she led multinational companies through the process of understanding, measuring, mitigating, and offsetting their environmental footprint and that of their supply chain – and in doing so, creating leadership brand enhancement and marketing opportunities. Amy applied this expertise during three years in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she helped to found a Brazilian sustainability organization focused on engaging Brazilian companies in environmental efforts. A seasoned expert in crafting partnerships between the business and non-profit communities, Amy launched relationships with companies as diverse as Starbucks, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Vale do Rio Doce, Intel, Petrobras, Office Depot, Aracruz Celulose, Fiji Water and Bank of America.
Amy holds an MBA in marketing and finance from George Washington University, and a BA in Environmental Policy from Vanderbilt University. She is the author of various articles on business and sustainability issues, and a frequent speaker at national and international events, conferences and business schools. She is the associate editor of Footprints in the Jungle, a book about natural resource companies and the environment. Amy serves on the advisory boards of the Brazilian sustainability organization Instituto BioAtlantica, and Climate Earth, an enterprise carbon accounting start up. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband and son.
Businesses are rightfully demanding metrics and ROI from social media marketing. How can you pull that rabbit out of the hat?
Sally Falkow APR, is the co-developer of PRESSfeed, the social media newsroom. A veteran of the PR industry, Sally has translated her extensive experience in marketing, PR and communication to the Internet and her blog, Proactive Report, is a resource for PR professionals who want to learn about digital PR and social media. Her book, Mastering Social Media Strategy: a handbook for PR professionals will be available in May 2011. She is an adjunct professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC lecturing in Social Media Strategy, Content and Tools. Sally is also a Sr. Fellow with the Society for New Communication Research, a new media research think tank based in Palo Alto, CA.
Tony Adam is currently Director of Online Marketing at MySpace where he heads up all aspects of SEO, Social Media, and Viral Marketing. He is also the Founder and Principal of Visible Factors, an online marketing agency, a Startup Advisor, and Internet Entrepreneur. He speaks at many of the top online marketing conferences and writes a column at Search Engine Land about InHouse SEO.
Employee Engagement: Mobilizing For a Cause
Laura Rodormer, Director of Corporate Citizenship, McKesson
This session will identify and describe the actions companies and their leaders can take to safeguard their corporate reputations, and rebuild their reputations and restore their good names after a crisis.
Jon HarmonJon Harmon is a communications consultant and author. He founded Force for Good Communications, a consultancy offering services ranging from brand-building media relations to crisis communications. His book on crisis communications, Feeding Frenzy: Inside the Ford-Firestone Crisis, was published in October, 2009. Previously, Jon was vice president – Communication and Reputation at Navistar, a global manufacturer of commercial trucks and military vehicles.
Jon’s career includes 23 years at Ford Motor Company in virtually every aspect of public relations, including media relations, employee and dealer communications, governmental affairs, issues management, product promotion, crisis communications and communications strategy.
The Force for Good blog is centered on the conviction that reputation is a company’s greatest asset, and that doing the right things in terms of corporate social responsibility can lead directly to success in the market. The most effective means of protecting and enhancing reputation is a consistent dedication to “aspirational public relations” built on transparency, honesty, integrity and social responsibility.
Our Approach to Sustainability Reporting and Stakeholder Engagement
Cecily Joseph, Director of Corporate Responsibility, Symantec Corporation
Too many companies – including some who should know better – still think that you have to choose between making money and making sense. You don’t.
Gil Friend, President & CEO, Natural Logic
A systems ecologist and business strategist with nearly 40 years experience in business, communications, and environmental innovation, Friend combines broad business experience with unique content experience spanning strategy, systems ecology, economic development, management cybernetics, and public policy. Tomorrow magazine called him “One of the country’s leading environmental management consultants—a real expert who combines theoretical sophistication with hands-on, in-the-trenches know-how.”
Friend is Adjunct Faculty at Presidio Graduate School, and guest faculty at California College of the Arts. He lectures widely on business strategy and sustainability issues and writes The New Bottom Line, offering strategic perspectives on business and environment. Friend is author of the acclaimed book The Truth About Green Business.
By Ralph Reid, VP, Corporate Social Responsibility and President, Sprint
Presented at Communicating Sustainability 2010, organized by Communitelligence
Speakers included: Michael Splinter, Chairman and CEO of Applied Materials; Matthew Bishop, author of Philanthrocapitalism; Dave Stangis, Vice President, CSR/Sustainability at Campbell Soup Company; Gil Friend, CEO of Natural Logic; Steve Lippman, Director of Environmental Strategy at Microsoft; Judah Schiller , Co-founder and CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S, North America; Amy Skoczlas Cole, Director of the eBay Green Team; Shel Horowitz, ethical/green strategist; Christine Arena, CEO of sparkUp; Lindsey Held Bolton, Senior Director of Sustainability Global Communications at SAP; Ralph Reid, Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility at Sprint; Laura Rodormer, Director of Corporate Citizenship for McKesson; and Bruce Klafter, Managing Director, Environmental, Health and Safety at Applied Materials.
Despite a steady stream of corporate-caused financial, social and environmental disasters, the debate about CSR’s fundamental value carries on. “While companies sometimes can do well by doing good, more often they can’t,” said a recent Wall Street Journal article on the subject. “In most cases, doing what’s best for society means sacrificing profits.” In this provocative session, we’ll answer the most pertinent questions: What fiduciary duties do today’s executives really have? Which business strategies generate the most good? and, Where do the most promising future opportunities lie?
- Christine Arena: Co-founder and CEO of sparkUp
- Sandy Skees: Executive Vice President, Sustainability Practice, Cohn & Wolfe
At Cisco, they’ve changed the way they use words. It’s saving them money and helping them work together better. It’s connecting the internal culture to the business in deeper, more meaningful ways. And that’s helping them serve customers better and sell more.
In this session, Mark Buchanan, program lead for Cisco’s brand language initiative, paints a picture of how Cisco is changing the way 75,000 employees are using words across a $130 Billion business. He’ll walk you through how the brand language team set the plan in motion and made lasting changes. He’ll include practical tips and share insights, successes, and challenges. And he’ll give you his thoughts about how the lessons from Cisco can make a difference for your business.
The session includes:
- Evaluating the opportunity
- Aligning your voice with your business
- Connecting with your audience
- Scaling the program
- Making it stick
Presented by:
Mark Buchanan is the program lead for brand language at Cisco. He’s helping the company use language that is simpler and more distinctive. And he’s helping bring empathy back to a technology company that has always cared about people, but has found those values challenged by rapid growth and increasingly complex technology. He’s worked with Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Services and Corporate Communications and has seen impressive results across every function. Together, Mark and the people at Cisco are changing the culture of language and communications, around the world for 75,000 employees, 50,000 contractors and vendors, across a $130 billion business.