Olympians Biting Medals: How a Visual Transcends its Origins, and then Some
September 16, 2021
In conversation, we regularly use expressions without really knowing their origins. “That’s the ticket,” “put your foot in your mouth,” “bite the bullet”—researching the meanings and origins of these and others can sometimes provide surprising revelations. Visuals have similar long-running tropes that no longer have a clear tie to their origins, and during the Tokyo
- Published in Content Marketing, Content Trends, Creativity in Business, Sales, Visual Storytelling
Laughing More at Work
September 14, 2021
There’s something inherently weird about reading an article that purports to seriously examine humor. I think it’s in the bloodless effort to analyze humor with exacting, almost scientific language. Like this from Universal Class: “Humor events are defined as ‘discrete social behaviors that a producer intentionally creates for an audiences that influences audience positive affect.’”
- Published in Content Marketing, Content Trends, Creativity in Business, Sales, Visual Storytelling
What is a Whiteboard Animation Storyboard?
August 18, 2021
If you’ve ever watched the special features on a DVD or Blu-Ray of a film you enjoyed, you may have been introduced to Hollywood storyboarding. This tends to take the form of a series of single, hand-drawn frames, designed to give the filmmakers an early idea of what they want key scenes (or all scenes,
- Published in Content Marketing, Content Trends, Creativity in Business, Sales, Visual Storytelling
Meanwhile, Back on Earth
July 30, 2021
There aren’t a lot of wholly unique takes to have on the space flights of Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, so I won’t really pretend that I’m creating one here. Typically, responses are somewhere on the spectrum between “Billionaire joyrides are foolish” to “These were indeed historic moments,” and I’m not going to bother giving
- Published in Content Marketing, Content Trends, Creativity in Business, Visual Storytelling
Marketing Missteps To Avoid This Quarter
July 23, 2021
Marketing content creators tend to focus on best practices, and zero in on what they can and should do to achieve maximal engagement with their target audiences and produce the best outcomes for their organizations. But even the best marketing efforts can be derailed by making even one or two major mistakes—so let’s take a
- Published in Content Marketing, Content Trends, Creativity in Business, Sales, Visual Storytelling
Standing Out with Storytelling in CPG
June 07, 2021
If you’re in the consumer packaged goods (or CPG) space, you know better than most the unique advantages of challenges of the business. As Shopkick puts it, “Companies that produce or sell CPGs have the advantage of enduring demand, as consumers will always need these products… but, the CPG market is saturated, and switching costs are low for consumers who
- Published in Creativity in Business, Sales, Visual Storytelling
Telling Their Story: Narrative in Finance
May 25, 2021
If you work in the financial sector, storytelling might not be the first technique that comes to mind in handling complex, often difficult conversations with clients and associates. You might be more interested in ‘getting down to business,’ and explaining concepts, predictions, and approaches directly. Despite this understandable hesitancy, though, your conversations probably already involve
- Published in Visual Storytelling
Explaining Financial Concepts with Video
May 14, 2021
There are few topics that matter more to people than their finances, and it’s no mystery why. Yet despite the importance of financial security, many of us struggle to understand the intricacies of our finances, and as CNBC reported in 2018, avoid the topic with surprising regularity. As a financial organization, you need to break
- Published in Whiteboard Video
Creativity: Option or Necessity?
April 30, 2021
Creativity has become sufficiently understood and celebrated that, looking back, it’s hard to imagine a time when it was considered unimportant. But pieces like Theodore Levitt’s 1963 article “Creativity is Not Enough,” provide a full-throated opposition to the value of creativity in business. To let the fantasy-prone creative types have their way, Levitt insists, would
- Published in Content Trends, Creativity in Business, Visual Storytelling
