It is one thing to talk about telling your brand story, but quite another to roll this out comprehensively within a business. It is even more surprising when a business encourages and empowers their employees to creatively engage with the brand AS a story. But this is exactly what Australian broadcaster, SBS, has done.
SBS focus their broadcasting as well as their messaging and brand advertising around the tag line “six billion stories and counting …”.
Last night, after the NSW Knowledge Management Forum on Online Communities, I met Aisha Hillary. (BTW both Jye Smith and Niina Talikka share their excellent notes and insight from the forum.) We got talking about her business card and how its creation became a personal challenge to every employee. You see, rather than placing contact details directly under her name and position, Aisha’s business card also shares her own, personal story:
Aisha means LIFE and that is why I make the most of everyday and believe you miss 100% of the opportunities you never take.
Apparently, some people focus their short sentence-long story on their job and the outcomes they hope to achieve – like a personal mission statement. Others reflect their collaborative nature. But, as we learned with The Age of Conversation, committing text in a printed format is far more daunting than blogging. After all, with a blog you can always delete or edit your work – but once it is printed, your ideas, thoughts and words are released into the world without recourse to change.
I wonder, if you had to commit it to writing, what would be the one sentence that defines you? In my recent contribution to Sean Howard’s Passion Economy eBook, I was able to whittle this down to a single magical word. Can you?
UPDATE: But imagine if your business card was like the one shown on John V Willshire's post?
I recon I would go with “I am not scared!” as in, let’s give it a go and see what happens. Let’s get amongst it!
Printing that would certainly make people ask me “not scared of what?” and that would start a conversation.
Great idea- I’m loving SBS fully sick (ala the Pizza boys) at the moment. It’s hard to commit something to writing for the fear that you will think of something infinitely better the moment it goes to print. However, right now would be along the lines of “I believe The Beatles were wrong – do not let it be.”
I love Drew McLellan’s business card. His title is “top dog”. Again, another great way to open a conversation without effort.
Business cards are a much under-utilized asset in my opinion.
LOL … there is always going to be the next, next thing. And anyway, you can always change your story for the next round of printing!
oh, please and thank you. It’s my agency’s client.
And Gav, my peeps are calling you “The world’s second most popular marketing blogger”…
Oh, you say the nicest things. If I had known they were your client I would have made you buy me coffee last week 😉
sure. next time.
you do know who’s number one?!