by Jacqueline Koch | Sep 12, 2017 |
By Janinne Brunyee
At Boost! Collective, we are committed to the art of storytelling. Why? Because we believe that an engaging story energizes your audience to act. It drives results by providing meaning and purpose to the work of your organization. Our goal, and a mission we take with great commitment, is to combine the key ideas that communicate value with a compelling story to create a truly unique message that will rise above the noise and endure.
Is storytelling simply the latest marketing cliche?
For many marketing teams, storytelling is simply a buzzword. While the idea of storytelling is almost universally appealing and easy to understand, it is not always clear how to implement it within an organizational setting. That is because it doesn’t matter how complex or convoluted an organization and its products/services may be, there is always a human story to be told. In organizational settings, storytelling is always human-centered.
Stories help move your organization forward because they are personal, authentic and compelling. The key to persuading people is by uniting an idea with an emotion. The best way to do that is to tell a compelling story.
What is the return on storytelling?
The return on storytelling is: Did you make a connection? Did people find it valuable enough to share? Did they remember your message? The potential return becomes particular interesting when you consider that stories are remembered up to 22 times more than facts alone. When data and story are used together, audiences are moved both emotionally and intellectually.
To get the creative juices flowing, we put together a tiny book that explains why and how your team take take advantage of this invaluable tool to drive deep and authentic engagement with your audiences.
by Jacqueline Koch | May 10, 2017 |
The story of how two women devised a grand plan to help level the playing field for women
We first met Amy Nelson at a workshop we hosted on messaging and storytelling at the end of last year. She told us about this crazy idea to start a co-working space for women. A few months later, she called to tell us that their crazy idea had grown a bit (a lot) and she was ready for us to help her develop The Riveter’s message in time for the launch of the first of 20 planned locations – in Seattle on May 1. This is their story.
The Riveter is founded in a story that women in the workplace know well. We’ve worked hard to break through arbitrary, man-made barriers to claim our seat at the table. In the end, we realized that there was only one way for our voices to be heard, to make a difference and to create the life we want. We had to build a brand new—fundamentally different—table.
That’s The Riveter: an inspired collaborative workspace built by women, for women.
We want to support women to take bigger risks: to write a business plan, to pitch a really smart idea, to raise her first round of venture funding, to launch a company. We’re an ally to every woman, anywhere, and wherever she may find herself in her career. We’ve created a community of support so she can start her second—or third—act. We offer a network of resources so she can come back from years at home raising her children or taking care of others. We are a source of expertise and empowerment so she can off-ramp from her corporate job and on-ramp to her next successful venture, as a freelancer, a small business owner or any role she chooses!
Women are no strangers to hard work and accomplishment. But we’ve paid the price with self-sacrifice and burnout. We’re changing that. Providing women with a great space to work isn’t about ping pong tables and beer kegs. It is about redefining the workplace guided by our fierce conviction that women are strongest when we take care of our minds and our bodies. The Riveter creates a new way to work, integrating wellness into our lives, simply and seamlessly. With yoga and meditation on site, just steps from your desk, we offer the space to breathe, stretch, pause and build self-care into each day.
Yes, we are equal, but we are not the same. And women deserve a place to define success on their own terms.
The Riveter is more than a collaborative workspace, it’s a movement. We aren’t celebrities, we are working mothers. We are not a club, we are a community and we are entrepreneurs in the broadest sense of the term. We own businesses and build brands. We give to good causes with our time, talent and treasure. We manage households and lead our nation’s youth. There is strength in numbers and to truly amplify our voices, we intend to share what we know and who we know. We welcome everyone, including men. We want all to have a place at our table: The Riveter.
Boost! Collective is a story-driven marketing and communications firm. We work collaboratively to discover, create and tell powerful stories that driven authentic engagement.
by Jacqueline Koch | Mar 2, 2017 |
By Janinne Brunyee
A new imperative
At Boost! Collective, we believe it has never been more important for organizations – whether they’re startups, established firms or nonprofits – to forge close, personal and authentic connections with their key audiences. This requires moving beyond facts, figures and features. It means engaging with your audience’s head and their heart. And there’s no better way to do that than with a story.
While all organizations have many stories to tell, perhaps one of the most powerful is the story of their founder. It allows the organization to reveal the founder’s personal journey, their values and the big idea that energized their decision to create the organization in the first place.
Connecting with values
As the millennial generation continues to be a key audience for many organizations, the need to find ways to connect at the values level becomes increasingly urgent. According to a recent Forbes article, millennials as a consumer group care about what they perceive to be genuine and authentic. This interest falls somewhere between a purely aesthetic preference and a search for honesty and truth. It’s a powerful force for motivating millennial customers.
There are a number of well-known examples of founder stories that have been integrated into the fiber of an organization’s values-driven message: Blake Mycoskie of TOMS shoes and Jessica Alba’s Honest company.
As a story-driven marketing and communications firm, our team is passionate about working with mission-driven organizations and the bold individuals who found them. One of our favorites is Aimee Robinson, founder of EcoBalanza.
Big idea: Taking care of the environment
Aimee founded EcoBalanza seven years ago to be the anchor for her personal, philosophical and professional equilibrium. The mission: to discover how to create a sofa with integrity. To reach her destination, to build a small, custom, truly toxin-free and sustainable furniture design studio in Seattle, she had to blaze her own trail and draw her own roadmap.
We have told Aimee’s powerful story in a number of formats including on the About us page of her website, a case study that showcases the work we did for her company and through a blog post that provides an intimate and personal experience of visiting the workshop. Here is a short extract:
“Before I leave, Aimee shows me one last thing. She brings it over cradled in two hands; the foot of a couch. It’s only about 4 inches long, hand tooled on a lathe and stained. She hands it to me, like a sacred artifact, and she’s beaming with pride. “Look at this, look at these colors, look how this stain has come out”. And she’s right, it’s beautiful. There are warm tones, cold tones, streaks of lights and darks, more complexities in this one tiny detail than in half of my apartment. “
Read the full post.
Beauty as empowerment
With enthusiasm and excitement, we are putting the finishing touches on the content for a new website for Visette, a one-of-a-kind dress shop in Seattle’s vibrant Capitol Hill district. What makes Visette special? It’s not just the beautiful dresses sourced from emerging local and international designers. It’s Visal Sam, the founder.
Visal is a woman of absolute determination and contrasts. Her drive and ambition for her career as a commodities broker, and now the creative force behind Visette, was borne of a painful childhood shaped by Cambodia’s civil war. Surrounded by hunger, brutality and tragedy, she found solace in the beautiful. “Imagine that all the people around are dressed the same, and all you see is black. This is what made me embrace color and shape,” she recalled.
“We know that beauty is only skin deep,” she acknowledged, “but we also know that you feel differently when you look good, and that’s what motivates me.” She relishes the role as a sage guide for her clients as they explore fashion beyond the box that has hemmed them in. “I think a woman who steps into something unexpected, something new, suddenly sees another side of herself.” It’s a transformation she’s witnessed many times over. This has shaped one of Visal’s fundamental convictions: “We are all inspired by beauty.”
It is Visal’s life experiences and passion for empowerment that are the key drivers for the content we are developing for www.visetteboutique.com which launches in early March.
Your founder story is potentially an unexplored treasure that could allow you to invite your audience – customers, funders, donors and more – into the heart of your organization. We would love the opportunity to work with you to tell it.
Boost! Collective is a story-driven marketing and communications firm. We work collaboratively to discover, create and tell the powerful stories that drive deep engagement with your audiences.
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