{"id":2194,"date":"2010-12-21T17:13:12","date_gmt":"2010-12-21T17:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/?p=2194"},"modified":"2010-12-21T17:13:12","modified_gmt":"2010-12-21T17:13:12","slug":"how-to-make-your-marketing-alive-in-the-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/how-to-make-your-marketing-alive-in-the-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"How to make your marketing alive in the moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marketers can learn much from storytellers. Over the past several of years, I\u2019ve been studying storytelling and encouraging marketers to adopt the mindset of storytellers. One essential element of storytelling, though, seems to be uniquely in the domain of storytelling. It\u2019s something Connie Regan-Blake<\/a> calls \u201cbeing present in the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Whenever I encourage companies to use video, blogs, and yes, even Twitter, for storytelling, my good friend, Sean Buvala<\/a>, who IS @storyteller<\/a> on Twitter, says, \u201cAlways remember, those are only shadows of an experience, not the experience itself.\u201d Sean agrees with Connie: storytelling is a right-here-right-now-together experience<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Storytelling IS a powerful experience. When I attended Connie\u2019s storytelling workshop in Asheville, North Carolina, I caught a glimpse of what she and Sean call \u201cpresent in the moment.\u201d All participants paired up for a story exercise. Connie asked us to focus on an experience with an animal. At the end of the exercise, I was taken aback by how close I felt to my partner. Even though we had known each other for less than 15 minutes, we both felt we shared a unique bond that made us FEEL like friends.<\/p>\n

In that moment, educational background, life experience, material possessions, fashion, and every other possible factor of \u201cclass\u201d made no difference whatsoever: we were simply two human beings caught up in \u201cthe moment.\u201d The content was nothing profound; the sensation was unforgettable.<\/p>\n

Connie says this is the paradox of story: \u201cstory takes us to another place, yet when it\u2019s working, it makes us really present in the moment.\u201d Herein lies the challenge for marketers. Almost by definition, and maybe even by default, we marketers deal in the world of mediated experiences: there\u2019s something (usually media) between us and the people we seek to influence. How can we use media (mediated experiences) to create \u201cfully present in the moment experiences\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m hoping some of you have some profound comments you\u2019ll share to shine some light on the possibilities. At the moment, I\u2019m both fascinated and perplexed by the notion of using media to create right-now-together experiences. It\u2019s possible that events hold a key (i.e., focusing all media on getting people together face-to-face; though I do realize that won\u2019t work for everyone).<\/p>\n

Connie offers a final thought to fuel our pondering on the topic: she says for her, being present in the moment includes \u201cbreathing together.\u201d She adds, \u201cthough we\u2019re experiencing story individually\u2026there\u2019s a sense of connection\u2026even if we don\u2019t know [each other], we\u2019re in community, listening together.\u201d Aha! Now, how can we, as marketers, create opportunities to \u201clisten together.\u201d Hmm\u2026<\/p>\n

Trey Pennington<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marketers can learn much from storytellers. Over the past several of years, I\u2019ve been studying storytelling and encouraging marketers to adopt the mindset of storytellers. One essential element of storytelling, though, seems to be uniquely in the domain of storytelling. It\u2019s something Connie Regan-Blake calls \u201cbeing present in the moment.\u201d Whenever I encourage companies to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,54],"tags":[672,901,437,900,596,312],"class_list":["post-2194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-treypennington","tag-experience","tag-in-the-moment","tag-mindset","tag-present","tag-storyteller","tag-storytelling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2194"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2196,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2194\/revisions\/2196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}