Storytelling and Brands

What does storytelling has to do with Brands? Well, it seems alot has to do with it.


I remembered reading a book "We, Me, Them and It" by John Simmons last year. Really a fantastic book that really relates how a brand can be made into story where the consumer can feel the connection to it.

Sounds manipulative yeah? But the truth is we are bombarded everyday with so many messages that if some thing does not stick out in the crowd, our brains just do not register it.

John Simmons writing flair shows throughout the book where he shows how he manages the campaigns in the various organizations in the United Kingdom. I find his attention to words rather than images to invoke the emotions and feel of the brand story he works on to be very compelling.

I think the maxim "A picture is worth a thousand words" does not apply in Simmons case. His short stories of a brand (some fictional and crafted) were great. In bursts of a few lines, he was able to communicate to me as a reader the tinge of history and personality of the organization. Basically, the core values that the organization embodies.

I am unable to share the details of the stories he told, but it was an accidental find in the library, and it has been sometime ago. But do read it, its beauty lies in his way of crafting of words. He had somewhat convinced me too that the business style of writing that we uses on the daily basis were too impersonal.

Words can be used more simply without bombastic language. Ultimately, the brand needs to be understood by the receiver, and if you the sender can convey in a manner that can invoke the sense of connectedness and emotion; the brand will stick everytime.

Intellecutual Stimulation

Its been an enjoyable intellectual stimulation for me during past 3 weeks. Why, because there has been a resurgence of energy for me in the KM course. Its tough, considering I have to schedule my time properly for family, work and studies, but I feel it is worth the effort.

I also have met many new people from different cultures. The class has people from China, Myanmar, France, England, Indonesia, Nigeria, India, Vietnam and of course Singapore. Great diversity and mixture of people with different viewpoints and opinions on everything.

Lots of readings and discussions but really it is does bring more sparks in my mind but also fire up my enthusiasm!!!

Second Opinions

I have always wondered how doctors make analysis of problems they face during the treatment of patients. More so, because the human body is probably one of the most complex systems there is and scientists have not even decoded all its secrets.

So, western trained doctors with drug compounds, surgical techniques and other forms of tools are face with dilemmas when trying to diagnose, treat and hopefully cure their patients. In this book, Second Opinions by Jerome Groopman provided me an insight on how doctors think, analyze and decide the course of treatment.

In it, Groopman discusses about his own predicament of an back injury he suffered years ago in which he has since recovered. He also talks in personal terms of the anxieties he and his wife (also a doctor) felt when their first child had a potentially life-threatening episode. All in all, eight stories were shared by him with all the difficult medical terms but still told in a narrative manner that the lay-person like myself could understand.

With the limits of the tools and techniques available to western-trained doctors, it seems that once the onset of any disease has begun, it would be prove difficult for them to help repair the human body. There were failures but also successes in the eight stories which seemingly showed how frail our human bodies. It also showed the human element of emotion in play between the patients, the doctors and also the family members.

Making sense of the known or unknown disease is difficult for the patients as they face their own mortality. Therefore in light of such unknowns, even doctors with decades of experience do face tough decision making choices on what to do.

Not the best of books to read to reassure you that our doctors can help us in our time of need. But it does tells us that we should take our health for granted. Doctors like all other humans, do make mistakes and second opinions with other doctors do help the patients and their families in the overall process of clarifying, understanding and eventually accepting the health issues they face.

The book does actually talks about intuitiveness in decision making in this arena. Sometimes, the data that is being generated by the machines does not tell us the full picture and diagnosis do go wrong. It seems in the modern age, our healers has been too dependent on the high technology machines like CAT imaging, X-rays and many others.

The healers of ancient times did not have such luxury, but what they have do have was a body of knowledge kept through the ages of the medicinal properties of herbs, plants and animals that have curative effects for the various diseases. This is what we call "Traditional Chinese Medicine" or TCM.

I have watched some Chinese documentaries previously which showed how doctors in China are using a combination of TCM and western drugs and techniques in combating the major diseases of our age. I cannot remember the name of documentary now. However, the thought of marrying both western medicine and TCM is not widely accepted in other countries other than China.

Hopefully, with more documented evidence of more successes by the Chinese in the treatment of the various diseases, this knowledge can actually be used by western practictioners for the overall benefit of mankind.

Grameen Bank - Social innovation to fight poverty

I remembered I had read the story of Mr Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize winner for 2006.

This man brought about a total change in Bangladesh's banking industry but setting up Grameen Bank, a bank that provide small amount of money (microcredit) to poor villagers to help them startup small businesses. No longer was there a need for collateral and security when the villagers borrow money to help them sustain a living. The banking model that Grameen Bank had setup was based on trust, community and accountability.

In effect, it revolutionized the way banks were being seen as just a pure profit making entity. Yunus "changed the rules of the game" by making a great social impact in the lives of these villages by this innovative approach of lending. It has proven to be good weapon against the vicious cycle of poverty that had perpetuated the poorest villagers in Bangladesh.

In the year 2007, Grameen provided loans to 7.21 million people of which 97% are women. What is interesting is that Grameen has been profitable other than some years; maintaining an excellent loan recovery rate of 98.61% while at the same time achieving its social aims of helping the poor.

Clearly a success story by Yunus to eradicate poverty in Bangladesh and perhaps in the future to the rest of the developing world. For more information on how they lend the credit and their 16 decisions model.

BTW, Yunus recently was also named the top 30 entrepreneurs of all time too by Business Week alongside Bill Gates, Henry Ford and other well-known people.

Knowledge Innovation - Google (Innovative web-centric business model)

I originally posted this in my master's course discussion forum about how knowledge innovation can really "change the rules of the game" in a given industry. In my forum posting, I described the rise of Google in comparison with Microsoft which were reliant on their PC-centric model of software.

From the early 1980s to the late 1990s, Microsoft was the dominant leader in the software industry, totally eliminating all competition through its sheer financial might. It had a virtual monopoly of the PC market, where all new computers shipped to consumers were Microsoft Windows. Netscape, Novell and other companies were all defeated or eliminated out of the respective market shares. Microsoft made the PC the central component in their strategy to continue their dominance. It was the PC-Centric model that Microsoft had the consumers hooked on.

However, in 1996, here comes along two Stanford University Ph.D. candidates namely, Larry Page and Sergey Brin who both co-founded Google. Bill Gates did not see this coming where the PC-era has somewhat shifted towards the network age of the dot.com era. Google revolutionized the entire industry by introducing a very effective and efficient search engine which can allows users to access the most viewed or ranked web pages. Microsoft at that time, did not even have a search engine like what we see today in MSN. Yahoo was No. 1 search engine then, but Google slowly caught up in the upcoming years. Google currently has 49.2% share of searches as compared to Yahoo's 23.8% according to Nielsen NetRating for July 2006. MSN is in a distant third at 9.6%.

What is more significant for Google was the way they innovated using their new knowledge. They managed to somehow bring about a new business model of advertising in the web. This product service was called AdSense which allows web advertisers to put content to Google's search results. This had a cost-per-click and cost-per-view scheme. This advertising revenue brought about nearly USD 10.5 billion dollars in the fiscal year of 2006. With their high stock prices and large cash pile, Google had been able to attract the best software talent in the job market, and also make several key acquisitions like YouTube, Blogspot and Doubleclicks in the past 1-2 years.


Furthermore, there has been an introduction of use of on-line productivity software called Google Enteprise Premium Applications which is a direct challenge to Microsoft Office. Obviously, Google is trying to increase their licensing revenues which stood at only USD 112 million dollars as compared to their Adsense revenue which is significantly higher.

The market has shown tremendous confidence in Google's ability to innovate and to continue to earn better profits than Microsoft. On the last market closing day on 8 Aug 2007, the following are the stock prices for both companies:

Google: USD 525.78
Microsoft: USD 30.00

Thats a difference of nearly USD 495.78 dollars! Certainly Google is way ahead of Microsoft if stock prices are used as a measure of success.

However, It seems that Bill Gate is not resting on his laurels. He has been quoted in leaked memos in October 2005 to have said:


"More than any other company, we have the vision, assets, experience, and aspirations to deliver experiences and solutions across the entire range of digital workstyle & digital lifestyle scenarios, and to do so at scale, reaching users, developers and businesses across all markets."

So, the battle between the giants continues even though the old PC-centric world is long gone and we are now in the web-centric age.

Overhauling Studies Engine

After taking a break of nearly ten years since my bachelor's degree, today is going to be first class in Nanyang Technological University's Msc in Knowledge Management.

Well, imagine putting your car engine in the garage for the past decade and then suddenly bringing it out for use! I guess I would have start lubricating and overhauling the inner pistons of this engine so that I can be able to speed up like a Ferrari.

However, it is with anticipation and sheer delight by the thought that I will be having discussions and conversations with fellow like-minded classmates on a subject like Knowledge Management which really spans across many disciplines like psychology, anthropology, technology and other "gies" you can imagine.

I do hope this studies engine of mine can really accelerate and speed up in the highway..... of course within the legal speed limit.