books Archives - Bronwyn Ritchie -

books

Why do I read?

This from Gary Paulsen …

Why do I read?

I just can’t help myself.

I read to learn and to grow, to laugh and to be motivated.

I read to understand things I’ve never been exposed to.

I read when I’m crabby, when I’ve just said monumentally dumb things to the people I love.

I read for strength to help me when I feel broken, discouraged, and afraid.

I read when I’m angry at the whole world.

I read when everything is going right.

I read to find hope.

I read because I’m made up not just of skin and bones, of sights, feelings, and a deep need for chocolate, but I’m also made up of words.

Words describe my thoughts and what’s hidden in my heart.

Words are alive–when I’ve found a story that I love, I read it again and again, like playing a favorite song over and over.

Reading isn’t passive–I enter the story with the characters, breathe their air, feel their frustrations, scream at them to stop when they’re about to do something stupid, cry with them, laugh with them.

Reading for me, is spending time with a friend.

A book is a friend.

You can never have too many.

Is it the same for you?

books

The Message of You: Turn Your Life Story into a Money-Making Speaking Career

Steal the Show: From Speeches to Job Interviews to Deal-Closing Pitches, How to Guarantee a Standing Ovation for All the Performances

A powerful way to master every performance in your career and life, from presentations and sales pitches to interviews and tough conversations, drawing on the methods the author applied as a working actor and has honed over a decade of coaching salespeople, marketers, managers, and business owners
Every day there are moments when you must persuade, inform, and motivate others effectively. Each of those moments requires you, in some way, to play a role, to heighten the impact of your words, and to manage your emotions and nerves. Every interaction is a performance, whether you’re speaking up in a meeting, pitching a client, or walking into a job interview.
In Steal the Show, New York Times best-selling author Michael Port draws on his experience as an actor and as a highly successful corporate speaker and trainer to teach readers how to make the most of every presentation and interaction. He demonstrates how the methods of successful actors can help you connect with, inspire, and persuade any audience. His key strategies for commanding an audience’s attention include developing a clear focus for every performance, making sure you engage with your listeners, and finding the best role for yourself in order to convey your message with maximum impact.
Michael Port is one of the most in-demand corporate speakers working today. His presentations are always powerful, engaging, and inspirational. And yes, audiences always give him a standing ovation.
An inspiring program full of essential advice for spotlight lovers and wallflowers alike that will teach readers how to bring any crowd to its feet.
You can buy the book from The Book Depository, or Amazon

books, story

Winning the Story Wars : Why Those Who Tell (and Live) the Best Stories Will Rule the Future

Trying to get your message heard? Build an iconic brand?

Welcome to the battlefield. The story wars are all around us. They are the struggle to be heard in a world of media noise and clamor. Today, most brand messages and mass appeals for causes are drowned out before they even reach us. But a few consistently break through the din, using the only tool that has ever moved minds and changed behavior–great stories.

With insights from mythology, advertising history, evolutionary biology, and psychology, viral storyteller and advertising expert Jonah Sachs takes readers into a fascinating world of seemingly insurmountable challenges and enormous opportunity.

You’ll discover how:

* Social media tools are driving a return to the oral tradition, in which stories that matter rise above the fray

* Marketers have become today’s mythmakers, providing society with explanation, meaning, and ritual

* Memorable stories based on timeless themes build legions of eager evangelists

* Marketers and audiences can work together to create deeper meaning and stronger partnerships in building a better world

* Brands like Old Spice, The Story of Stuff, Nike, the Tea Party, and Occupy Wall Street created and sustained massive viral buzz

Winning the Story Wars is a call to arms for business communicators to cast aside broken traditions and join a revolution to build the iconic brands of the future.

It puts marketers in the role of heroes with a chance to transform not just their craft but the enterprises they represent. After all, success in the story wars doesn’t come just from telling great stories, but from learning to live them.

Globally recognized storyteller, designer, and entrepreneur Sachs argues that only those brands that tell “values-driven stories” through the “right” channels will revolutionize marketing and may become humanity’s greatest hope for the future.
About the Author: Jonah Sachs. As the cofounder and CEO of Free Range Studios, Sachs has helped hundreds of major brands and causes break through the media noise with unforgettable campaigns. His work on renowned viral videos including The Meatrix and The Story of Stuff have brought key social issues to the attention of more than sixty-five million people online. A constant innovator, his studio’s websites and stories have taken top honors three times at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. Sachs’s work and opinions have been featured in a variety of media, including the New York Times, NPR, and Fast Company magazine, which named him one of its fifty most influential social innovators. About the Illustrator: Drew Beam Drew Beam is the Innovation Director at Free Range Studios, where he helps clients see the future and leap into it. After earning his BFA at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Beam built a successful career creating visuals and innovation strategies for dozens of Fortune 500 companies. His illustrations have been published by Time Warner Books, Penguin Books, and Rolling Stone magazine, to name just a few.

Reviews

“Story Wars is a thorough guide for the novice or even practiced storytellers in all of us. Sachs offers story structures, ways of thinking about characters and messages. He pulls artfully from recent brand successes from companies including Nike and Apple. And he tells a few good stories along the way.” — Forbes

“Sachs is full of ideas and strategies to help readers give their brands the rare, compelling story that will raise their message above the melee of advertising noise… the ideas are powerful and solid, and will make inspiring reading for marketing professionals looking to set their stories apart.” — Publishers Weekly

“In this timely, practical, perceptive, and thought-provoking book, Sachs (CEO, Free Range Studios) does a remarkable job trumpeting storytelling as a means by which people can effectively influence others.” — CHOICE

“The book is an interesting blend of marketing and advertising history, mythology, and psychology that pulled me in and kept me turning the pages… the eye-catching illustrations of Drew Beam. Beam’s artwork combined with Sachs’s writing style kept me glued to the pages… this one has earned a place on my bookshelf and a noteworthy position on my leadership development reading list.” — T+D magazine, American Society for Training & Development

“This fast-paced entertaining book takes on storytelling from the POV of a 24/7 information culture and shares the strategies and tactics that fuel today’s most compelling content.” — Ketchum PR, On the Bookshelf: New Year Reads

“Sachs offers a step-by-step guide to corporate storytelling, showing how brands can use recognisable characters, such as “freaks, cheats and familiars” to create instantly relatable campaigns…Marketers who are able to define the core values of a brand then use them to engage the target audience in a compelling, relatable story are the ones who will thrive in the new media landscape of the “digitoral” age.” — Warc

“His investigation also unveiled a process to help others create winning stories that he shares with great depth and charm in this book.” — 800 CEO READ

“To influence this brave new world, first convince the global media marketplace of your story. The better the story, the better chance of making people think differently.” — Quantas magazine

“In the often superficial, deceptive world of marketing and advertising, social innovator Jonah Sachs is an individual with a conscience…Sachs’s engaging work is a call to arms for anyone who works to influence consumer choices.” — getAbstract

ADVANCE PRAISE for Winning the Story Wars: Dan Heath, coauthor, Switch and Made to Stick– “Jonah Sachs knows stories. He’s responsible for some of the most popular and respected viral messages of all time: The Story of Stuff, The Meatrix, Grocery Store Wars, and others. This book is a storytelling call to arms, an appeal to tell the stories that matter. So read Winning the Story Wars–and join the fray.”

Nick Coe, CEO, Bath & Body Works; former President, Land’s End– “History is written by the winners. And as Jonah Sachs makes abundantly clear, it is now being written by the marketers, the new mythmakers of our time. Whatever your product or your cause, if you want it to succeed, read this wise and enlightening book.”

Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director, Greenpeace International– “Winning the Story Wars will convince you that storytelling is the most powerful way to move people to action. And it will teach you to use that power to orient our world to a more positive future. If you’re ready to be a great storyteller, read this book.”

Deepak Chopra, founder, The Chopra Foundation– “Great leaders transform the world through stories that inspire hope, stability, trust, compassion, and authenticity. This important and thought-provoking book shows that leadership in marketing will require the living and telling of such stories as well.”

Bill Bradley, former US Senator; Managing Director, Allen & Company– “We know about who we are both individually and as a society through stories. In this brilliant book, Jonah Sachs tells us how we lost our storytelling capacity and how we must regain it, constructing our own myths and living the truth of the stories we tell.”

Paul Hawken, author, The Ecology of Commerce and Blessed Unrest– “In the current maelstrom of media babble and corporate deceit, Jonah Sachs makes sense where none appears to exist. Winning the Story Wars explains why we respond to lies–whether in political or product ads, campaigns or speeches–and how truth ultimately trumps all. This remarkable book delivers on that rare promise of changing how you see the world.”

Me? I am getting so many ah-has I have to stop reading to absorb them all!!

You can buy the book at The Book Depository , The Nile , Fishpond or Amazon

books

Better PowerPoint with Universal Principles of Design

We all want our PowerPoint slides to be the best they can be, not detracting from an excellent presentation. And yet not all public speakers are trained in design.
Here is the answer.
It isn’t a public speaking book.
It isn’t a PowerPoint book.
It presents the principles of design.
There is little surprise then, that it is beautifully designed.
It pairs clear explanations of every design concept with visual examples of the concepts applied in practice. The left side is dedicated to theory, the right to visual examples of how this theory can be used.
From the “80/20” rule to chunking, from baby-face bias to Occam’s razor, and from self-similarity to storytelling, every major design concept is defined and illustrated.
Every theory is pared down to these two concise pages.
And within the theory page are two more elements – some incredibly useful references to other resources for further exploration and reading and to other theories as well – research on motivators and perception, psychology and biology, and so many more.
As a reader, we are being encouraged to make connections – to other ideas about the principle and to other principles that intercept with it.
And making connections is certainly necessary – it is a great mindset by which to use the book, to apply the principles to one’s own discipline – in our case, public speaking and PowerPoint.
The connections are not made within the book, and several reviewers have complained about that, and the lack of full information about each principle. I like making connections, exploring further, and the discipline of making creative use of rules. It is a stimulation of creativity that is necessary among the rather linear thinking involved in creating a storyboard, and a logical development of ideas.
And the concise treatment of the material makes the book an easy reference to use, and book that can be picked and read in small chunks.
About the Author

William Lidwell writes, speaks, and consults on topics of design and engineering. He is the Director of Design at Stuff Creators Design in Houston, Texas. He is author of the best-selling design book, Universal Principles of Design, which has been translated into 12+ languages; Deconstructing Product Design, a social deconstruction of 100 classic products; and lecturer of two video series on design: “How Colors Affect You: What Science Reveals” available from The Great Courses, and “The Science of Logo Design” available from Lynda.com.
He lives in Houston, TX.
You can buy the book from Amazon , The Book Depository , Fishpond.com.au

books, storytelling

The Elements of Persuasion: Use Storytelling to Pitch Better, Sell Faster & Win More Business

“Every great leader is a great storyteller,” says Harvard University psychologist Howard Gardner.

According to master storytellers Richard Maxwell and Robert Dickman, storytelling is a lot like running. Everyone knows how to do it, but few of us ever break the four-minute mile. What separates the great runners from the rest? The greats know not only how to hit every stride, but how every muscle fits together in that stride so that no effort is wasted and their goals are achieved. World-class runners know how to run from the inside out. World-class leaders know how to tell a story from the inside out.

In The Elements of Persuasion, Maxwell and Dickman teach you how to tell stories too. They show you how storytelling relates to every industry and how anyone can benefit from its power.

Maxwell and Dickman use their experiences—both in the entertainment industry and as corporate consultants—to deliver a formula for winning stories. All successful stories have five basic components: the passion with which the story is told, a hero who leads us through the story and allows us to see it through his or her eyes, an antagonist or obstacle that the hero must overcome, a moment of awareness that allows the hero to prevail, and the transformation in the hero and in the world that naturally results.

Let’s face it: leading is a lot more fun than following. Even if you never want to be a CEO or to change the world, you do want to have control over your own work and your own ideas. Ultimately, that is what the power of storytelling can give you.

You can buy the book from Amazon or Abe Books

books, public speaking, speeches

A promise of success – The Official guide to TED Talks

ted_talks TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking Hardcover
– May 3, 2016
by Chris Anderson
At long last – what promises to be the definitive guide to public speaking, well to TED talks anyway (and no, I haven’t read it, and will wait for the Kindle edition, I think. It should be worth waiting for.)
Who wouldn’t want to be a speaker for TED? The whole system provides wonderful exposure. The discipline of being limited to 18 minutes ensures a tight, well constructed speech. There is professional coaching for all speakers.

Since taking over TED in the early 2000s, Chris Anderson has shown how carefully crafted short talks can be the key to unlocking empathy, stirring excitement, spreading knowledge, and promoting a shared dream. Done right, a talk can electrify a room and transform an audience’s worldview. Done right, a talk is more powerful than anything in written form.

Many people have shared their understanding of the magic behind TED talks, Carmine Gallo especially.
And now we can all share in the secrets behind the speeches. I guess it will be disappointing to some that there is no formula, but heartening, nevertheless since we become inured of formulae. No two speeches should be the same.
As Sir Ken Robinson said,

Is there a single recipe for a great speech? Of course not. But there are some essential ingredients, which the TED team sets out here with concision, verve and wit (which are also some of the ingredients). An inspiring, contemporary guide to the venerable arts of oratory. Sir Ken Robinson

‘Nobody in the world better understands the art and science of public speaking than Chris Anderson. He is absolutely the best person to have written this book’ Elizabeth Gilbert.

He coached her, along with the other TED speakers who have inspired us the most, Sir Ken Robinson, Amy Cuddy, Bill Gates, Salman Khan, Dan Gilbert, Mary Roach, Matt Ridley, and so many more,and has shared tips from their presentations.
Anderson lists his five key techniques to presentation success: Connection, Narration, Explanation, Persuasion and Revelation (plus the three to avoid). He also answers the most frequently asked questions about giving a talk, from ‘What should I wear?’ to ‘How do I handle my nerves?’.
The promise …
For anyone who has ever been inspired by a TED talk…
…this is an insider’s guide to creating talks that are unforgettable.
I suspect that it very well might be and look forward to reading it.
You can buy the book from Amazon, The Book Depository , Fishpond

books

All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low Trust World

All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low Trust World (2005)

This was the seventh published book by Seth Godin, and the third in a series of books on 21st century marketing, following Purple Cow and Free Prize Inside.

Basically, Seth Godin suggests that there are three questions to ask, as a marketer.

“What’s your story?”
“Will the people who need to hear this story believe it?”
“Is it true?”

First question “What’s your story?”

There are small businesses that are so focused on what they do that they forget to take the time to describe the story of why they do it.

If what you’re doing matters, really matters, then I hope you’ll take the time to tell a story. A story that resonates and a story that can become true.

What we do know (and what we talk about) is our story. Our story about why people use, recommend or are loyal to you and your products. Our story about the origin and the impact and the utility of what we buy.

Marketing is storytelling.

The story of your product, built into your product. The ad might be part of it, the copy might be part of it, but mostly, your product and your service and your people are all part of the story.

Tell it on purpose.

Second Question: “Will the people who need to hear this story believe it?”

Just to be clear…

The truth is elusive. No one knows the whole truth about anything. We certainly don’t know the truth about the things we buy and recommend and use.

You believe things that aren’t true.

Let me say that a different way: many things that are true are true because you believe them.

We believe what we want to believe, and once we believe something, it becomes a self-fulfilling truth.

If you think that (more expensive) wine is better, then it is. If you think your new boss is going to be more effective, then she will be. If you love the way a car handles, then you’re going to enjoy driving it.

That sounds so obvious, but if it is, why is it so ignored? Ignored by marketers, ignored by ordinarily rational consumers and ignored by our leaders.

Once we move beyond the simple satisfaction of needs, we move into the complex satisfaction of wants. And wants are hard to measure and difficult to understand. Which makes marketing the fascinating exercise it is.

Third question: Is it true?

When you are busy telling stories to people who want to hear them, you’ll be tempted to tell stories that just don’t hold up. Lies. Deceptions.

This sort of storytelling used to work pretty well. Joe McCarthy became famous while lying about the “Communist threat.” Bottled water companies made billions while lying about the purity of their product compared to tap water in the developed world.

The thing is, lying doesn’t pay off any more. That’s because when you fabricate a story that just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, you get caught. Fast.

So, it’s tempting to put up a demagogue for Vice President, but it doesn’t take long for the reality to catch up with the story. It’s tempting to spin a tall tale about a piece of technology or a customer service policy, but once we see it in the wild, we talk about it and you whither away.

If your stories are inauthentic, you cross the line from fib to fraud. Marketers fail when they are selfish and scurrilous, when they abuse the tools of their trade and make the world worse. That’s a lesson learned the hard way by telemarketers, cigarette companies, and sleazy politicians.

Godin himself has said….

“I wasn’t being completely truthful with you when I named this book. Marketers aren’t liars. They are just storytellers… I was trying to go to the edges. No one would hate a book called All Marketers Are Storytellers. No one would disagree with it. No one would challenge me on it. No one would talk about it.”^[1]

Godin is witty and his writing is compelling.

There is much to learn about marketing in All marketers are liars and subjects like framing, the attention economy, cognitive dissonance, and adoption curves, and, of course, marketing mindset.

He set out to “go to the edges”, cause hate, instigate disagreement. And perhaps he did.

The bottom line is that marketers were, and some continue to be, liars – to some extent. Storytelling allows us to stop that, and yet remain effective. As I wrote in this article , the brand story you tell is the brand you live, create, deliver.

books, branding

8 Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century

A New Brand World

8 Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century

By Scott Bedbury, Stephen Fenichell

What does it really take to succeed in business today?

Now in paperback, this powerful and practical guide to brand building is offered by a man who helped propel Nike and Starbucks beyond mere sneakers and coffee.

In A New Brand World, Scott Bedbury, who helped make Nike and Starbucks two of the most successful brands of recent years, explains this often mysterious process by setting out the principles that helped these companies become leaders in their respective industries. With illuminating anecdotes from his own in-the-trenches experiences and dozens of case studies of other winning–and failed–branding efforts (including Harley-Davidson, Guinness, The Gap, and Disney), Bedbury offers practical, battle-tested advice for keeping any business at the top of its game.

About the Author

Scott Bedbury was Senior Vice President of Marketing at Starbucks from 1995 to 1998. Prior to that he spent seven years as head of advertising for Nike, where he launched the “Bo Knows” and “Just Do It” campaigns. He is currently an independent brand consultant and a speaker for the Leigh Bureau.Stephen Fenichell is the author of Plastic: The Making of A Synthetic Century and Other People’s Money. His articles have appeared in New York, Men’s Journal, GQ, Lear’s, Spy, Connoisseur, Condé-Nast Traveler, and Wired.