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Mythic Strategies for Modern Storytelling
Joshua Johnson@Joshywashington
Content Creator, Content Marketing Consultant
editor-at-large
My Story1986
Italy 2003500+ person travel story email chain
1000+ travel blogs150+ videosAudience of millions
Aruba 2013
In 10 years of Travel I’ve Discovered 2 Core Truths
•Everyone has a journey to undertake, but you have to own it.
•The story of that journey - the lessons and morals -are very important personally and culturally.
•Founded 2006
•2MM monthly visitors
•14,000+ pieces of content
•100’s of contributors
•Community of 1000’s of active travelers
•500,000+ following daily on social and RSS
•Working with top brands to create original travel content
Matador tells stories that connect people to the world (and brands to people)
Matador has gained the audience it has because it is a brand of storytellers for storytellers that, through the connectedness of digital media, has create a rock solid brand culture.
5 Reasons why your Brand should be
Creating Content (telling stories)
NOW
Text
#1 Real Engagement
#2 the gift that keeps on giving
Text
Published 2009 - still #1 Google search
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#3 connect your platforms
#4 content is social currency
#5 you can create content NOW
+ + +
+ = WINNING!
But how?
that’s easy...
Tell a STORY!
‘The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories
it loves and believes in.’ - Harold Goddard
STORY IS EVERYTHING
•Storytelling was a quantum leap in information technology.
•Story describes the world and how you should behave in it.
•Stories build our culture, morals, national and personal identity.
STORY IS EVERYTHING•Stories are vehicles for values.
•Stories break through receptivity barriers with metaphor and emotional language that can be repeated.
•The best stories self replicate - go viral.
Stories Create our Cultural DNA
The Edge of the Knife•I had to find a way to progress professionally but not
compromise my authenticity. Dealing with travel brands, hotel chains and corporate messages can be creative suicide. The travel industry (as a whole) DOES NOT know how to tell authentic stories - and a professional travel storyteller can be led astray quickly...and wither...and die.
•The following tools gave me a new way of thinking about what I do - so that regardless of where I am or who the client is, I can tell authentic and meaningful stories.
‘Winning the Story Wars’ by Jonah Sachs
Value Statements
Human Needs and Values
•In the 1940’s the psychologist Abraham Maslow studied top achievers who were living out their life’s purpose to chart what makes exceptional people stand apart.
•Maslow discovered a structure of human needs that seem to follow a basic progression - we call this ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’.
•Bottom of the pyramid = deficiency needs•Top of the pyramid = self actualizing VALUES
Travel is a Self Actualizing EventRecreational travel is a top-of-the-
pyramid activity...
...and people love to broadcast that!
The Values found in our location’s culture:
The Values expressed in our products and services:
The Values that we feel resonate with our customers:
Exercise: Identifying Core Brand Values
• WHOLENESS the need to feel connected to others and apart of something larger.
• PERFECTION the need to seek mastery of a skill or vocation, often through hard work.
• JUSTICE the need to live by high moral values and to see the world ordered by morality.
• RICHNESS the need to examine life in all its complexity and diversity, to seek new experience.
• SIMPLICITY the need to understand the underlying essence of things.
• BEAUTY the need to create and experience aesthetic pleasure.
• TRUTH the need to experience and express reality without distortion, to tear down falsehood.
• UNIQUENESS the need to express personal gifts, creativity and nonconformity.
• PLAYFULNESS the need for a joyful experience.
from ‘Winning the Story Wars’ by Jonah Sachs
Broadcasting your Core Values
•Are you recognizing/connecting to the Values of your customers?
•Are your Values represented in your marketing and website copy?
•Are your Values apparent in your facilities and amenities?
Look for your Values in ActionLook at your brand’s social media accounts and
identify how/if your CORE VALUES are being broadcast to your intended audience.
What do your Values look like on Facebook? .... Twitter? ...your website? ...your blog?
Heros Wanted
Joseph Campbell
HJ for Travel Storytellers•Each traveler is a HERO.
•The Journey is a transformative act.
•The ‘Elixir’ or moral outcome of the Journey is of great personal and collective importance.
•Each act of travel contains a HERO’S JOURNEY.
THE MENTOR: The embodiment of your brand. You are not the Hero, you are the force that puts the hero in motion.
ALLIES: Secondary characters that aid the Mentor and the Hero.
THE HERO: The embodiment of your core audience that you seek to reach. Your ‘ideal’ customer.
Your Brand’s Hero’s Journey from ‘Winning the Story Wars’ by Jonah Sachs
THE SPECIAL WORLD: The ‘World’ of travel that your storytelling takes place in. This place is ‘Special’ in that it is foreign and exotic.
MENTOR’S GIFT: That special something that you give your Brand Hero that makes their journey possible, i.e. inspiration, information - giving the Hero the Brand Gift is your most important function as Mentor.
THE ELIXIR: How, ultimately, life is changed for the better.
The Hero
The Ordinary World
The Mentor
The Mentor’s Gift
The Special World
Allies, Helpers
The Treasure
The Elixir
most liked FB pic
742 likes439 likes
1.5k likes
The SPECIAL WORLD wins!
My Marriott Marquis : The Ordinary World
Marquis: Call to Adventure
Marquis: Brand Gift
Marquis: Special World
Thou Shalt Create Content
10 Commandments of Digital Storytelling
#1 Create a Process
We aim to share/engage x5 social media daily.We aim to create x3 original content a week.We aim to publish x2 blogs a week.We aim to create and publish x2 videos a month.
#2 think outside the box
#3 explore your culture
#4 inspire wonder
#5 use your cell phone...a lot
Food and Beverage Manager updates with his cell constantly & gets great engagement.
• Juxtapose contrasting images• Create a before-and-after sequence• Produce a photographic series
#6 Use Smart Phone Apps for Visual Storytelling
Instafood Instaplace Instaweather
Colorsplash
#7 be human
#8 announce your values
#9 be (extremely) visual
#10 outsource your storytelling•court photographers / videographers.
•host cross-brand events with a strong social components.
•incentivize content with employees and guests.
•host bloggers / create a blogger event.
•curate content
•UGC contests and promotions
Tell Value-based Stories that Empower
your Brand Hero’s Journey
Thank You!JOSHUA JOHNSON
Content Creator, Content Marketing Consultant and Storyteller...for HIRE!
