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Sweet marketing music

Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

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by Andrew Tellijohn
June 2003

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Stories have power to
sell that trumps facts, glitz, tech

by Brian McDermott      

Stories compel. They endure. They stick to the soul. They sell. But in many business settings, the good ones languish untold. And with all the bad news in the headlines (Enron, WorldCom, Qwest) there’s probably never been a time when we’ve been in more need of a few good corporate stories.

I don’t know if Scott Adams was the first to coin the phrase “PowerPoint Poisoning” when he portrayed its dangerous effects in his Dilbert cartoon strip, but most everyone knows what it means.

In our efforts to sell our ideas, products, services and organizations — to customers or to our own employees or potential employees — we may be spinning our audience right into the hands of the competition. We’re using data and technology like intoxicants. We jazz up the same old company facts and figures to the point of dizzying self-satisfaction. But we can’t walk the line when it comes to distinguishing ourselves in the marketplace with a bit of emotion, humor or humanity. We don’t allow ourselves to go low-tech with from-the-heart storytelling.

What is storytelling?
Storytelling, many experts argue, is the most potent tool a person has. Think of the choices you’ve made about places to do business, or to work, because of stories you’ve heard — stories that provide some hope of relationship that transcends the typical business transaction.

Obviously, there are many sources for rules about good storytelling. I’ve got a considerable history of education and career experience myself that qualifies me “technically” as a storyteller, and genetic predisposition provided by two gab-gifted Irish parents. 

But I believe good storytellers are neither born nor created. They flip open like the pages of a book because they have the courage to express their authenticity, in their own words, in their own ways.

Once upon a time
Fridley-based Medtronic Inc. is an organization that understands the importance of storytelling.

Barbara Whitmore, a Medtronic organization development consultant, says new employees participate in two-hour “mission and medallion sessions” with company founder Earl Bakken or top executives such as CEO Art Collins to hear stories that illustrate the importance of the company’s mission.

In reinforcing the company’s focus on quality, for example, employees hear the story that led Bakken to develop the company’s first battery-operated pacemaker in 1957. While an engineering student at the University of Minnesota, Bakken and his brother-in-law started a medical equipment repair business. In the process, he met pioneering heart surgeon Dr. C. Walton Lillehei.

Lillehei had been using pacemakers that plugged into wall outlets and during a power outage had a young patient die. He told the story to Bakken, vowing he never wanted to lose another patient in that way, and asked the young engineer if he might be able to develop a battery-operated replacement for his current equipment.

Bakken developed a device in his garage workshop, Whitmore says, and after testing it in a university lab handed it over to Lillehei, expecting the doctor would analyze and test it himself. The next day, however, Bakken saw his device being used on a child. It was at that moment, the story goes, when Bakken was struck by the importance of his work — and the need to do it extremely well.

At the end of these storytelling sessions each employee receives an Olympic-medal-sized medallion inscribed with the first part of the Medtronic’s mission statement: Contributing to human welfare by application of biomedical engineering to alleviate pain, restore health and extend life.

“The idea is to keep the medallion out where you can see it,” says Whitman, “where it can always remind you, even on those tough days, of the stories and the importance of your work.” 

David vs. Goliath
Peggy Lauritsen used a twist on storytelling earlier this year to land a graphic design project with the Minneapolis Foundation.

“It was a David and Goliath story,” Lauritsen says. Her Minneapolis firm, Peggy Lauritsen Design Group, was David.

“We had great design to offer. Experienced professionals. Extensive experience. But we needed to distinguish ourselves, to tell a story about all the assets we had as a small company that would help explain why to choose us over a really large firm with a far broader range of services.”

Her team did all their homework in preparing for a sales presentation in front of 10 “extremely experienced professionals, from all walks of life, who we knew had probably seen every kind of standard presentation,” Lauritsen says.

The story they wanted to deliver: “When you work with our small company, everyone is invested in the success of your project. You work with everyone.” And at that precise moment she said, “And here they all are.” She swung open the meeting room door and in walked the rest of the company, nine people in all. They waved, smiled, introduced themselves and Lauritsen said, “And now they have to get back to the office because there’s no one answering the phone.”

This way of telling their story struck a chord. “It was a crowning moment,” says Lauritsen.

Christelle Langer, vice president of marketing and communications for the Minneapolis Foundation, agrees that telling the Peggy Lauritsen Design Group story with the whole group draws attention.

“It was very important for us to know who we’d be working with on this account. So often firms come in with their senior account executives or the president for a presentation, but you never know for certain who will handle the work.”

What Lauritsen did was “a bit disarming, but charming,” Langer says. “They showed us this is a company that is very hands-on, personal and personable.” 

Your stories matter
Good stories unfold every day in our organizations, whether we’re saving lives or creating marketing materials, but we’re often so focused on polishing our image that we lose sight of what’s real about ourselves and our organizations.

The advice I offer about corporate storytelling is: Be aware. Believe that whatever you’re doing you can do in a way that makes a difference. And pay attention to those moments when you and your organization feel most vibrant and real. Those are your stories worth telling.