A few days ago, Joe Pulizzi wrote a post, 4 Truths About Content Marketing Agencies. There, he outlined some of the agency trends and best practices that we at CMI have observed as the ideas around content marketing become more widespread — and as more companies join the “gold rush” of helping brands produce this content.

As with most new approaches (think social media, or cloud services, or “big data”), we have seen clearly thought-out practices being evangelized right alongside the short-sighted strategies of trend-obsessed hangers-on.

Naturally, this is resulting in ample frustration in our industry. You can see it in the conversations that are happening — the hype-posts; the content-marketing-is-overhyped counterpoint posts; the complete backlash posts; the sighing-in-disappointment posts — everywhere the trend is clear: Content marketing is now staring down a “Valley of Disillusionment.”

Send in the hype (too late — it’s already here)

If you’re not familiar with Gartner’s Hype Cycle, it’s basically a method of looking at the adoption of innovation.

First, there is a “Technology Trigger” — a breakthrough that provides early conceptual stories and gets significant coverage. I think we can all agree that we’ve heard enough about the Amex Open Network, BlendTec, and Red Bull efforts to recognize this trigger in action.

Then, there is the “Peak of Inflated Expectations.” Early success from innovative risk-takers is celebrated, and failures are disregarded as coming from those that aren’t “truly understanding the innovation.” The innovation then becomes “the new black,” where everybody’s doing it, but nobody is getting any results. Our latest 2013 Research found this in spades.

I believe we’re past this point, and are now entering “The Trough of Disillusionment.”

The Trough of Disillusionment is where the backlash begins, the “gold rush” and diffusion of the solution reaches its peak, and practitioners are left to succeed or fail.

But it’s also here that the real progress begins. As more cases start to really succeed, the innovation then ascends into the “Slope of Enlightenment,” where it becomes more widely understood and second- and third-generation “solutions” start to get deployed. The cycle eventually culminates at the “Plateau of Productivity,” where mainstream adoption really starts to take off.

So, as those who passionately believe that “content” is a truly worthy innovation, how do we help to move it forward?

Stop painting over the agency sign (even if we are one)

I recently wrote a post that asked the question, When Did Marketing Become IT? In it, I observed that — whether self-inflicted or based on the fact that the C-Suite doesn’t grokmarketing (a sentiment I hear far too often, frankly) — the phrase, “we’re an internal agency” is just nuts.

In many businesses (especially in B2B), the marketing department is an order-taking, tactical function that runs on the hamster-wheel of demand generation, trying to keep up with “client” orders for new collateral, press releases, case studies and, at times, marketing-qualified leads (MQL’s). And when that structure proves unproductive, the business simply moves people in and out, puts a new person in charge of the “agency,” and expects different results.

The same holds true on the agency side. Every one of the types of agencies that Joe listed in his post are going through some kind of business model disruption. But, many are reacting by merely putting a new kind of buzz-flavored coating on the old model. Not surprisingly, it’s not working.

In its most recent annual report on the state of marketing, the CMO Council found that only 12 percent of respondents view their agency partners as “extremely valuable.” And nearly half (47 percent) characterized their agencies as being average, underperforming, or not producing at all. Gack!

Wow, what a set of downers, right? Content marketing is in a state of disillusionment, the C-Suite has no faith in marketing’s ability to deliver, and marketers have no faith in their agencies. So how can we even hope to get content marketing into the mix?

Disrupt, or be disrupted

Today’s successful business strategy (whether you’re an agency or a brand) is about how quickly and efficiently you can adapt to conditions in your market. Look no further than an article that ran last week in Ad Age: Pepsi, thirsty for change, is now experimenting with new agency models at Omnicom — where teams are curated across business units and are then assembled (practically in real time) to manage a particular campaign. It’s evidence of both sides being willing to adapt in their efforts to improve results.

Content marketing is an approach; a marketing practice that is infused into everything else we may do as marketers. This is vitally important to understand, because it is the practice of marketing, on the whole, that is in the process of evolving, and content marketing is but one approach that factors into the entirety of this fundamental change.

Yet, I passionately believe that great content is at the heart of this broader shift. So, ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether a given strategy specifically resides in marketing’s domain or not (though I believe it should). Giving content a strategic seat at the businessstrategy table can be a unifying force internally — and a differentiating force externally. If your agency (internally or externally) is the agent of that change, you are setting yourself apart. In other words, you win.

So, what does that mean?

It means that, regardless of whether we consider ourselves a content marketing agency or an internal marketing department, deploying a successful content marketing effort for “clients” includes a few requisite points of view:

• It starts with our ability to create a plan to infuse the approach and the practices of content marketing into the changing culture of the organization. It gives content a central and strategic seat at the table. As Joe says in his recent post, “Be wary of a campaign or program. There is one thing that’s certain with any campaign: It has an end date. Not so with successful content marketing.”

• Content strategy is different than content marketing — and here I mean content strategy more broadly, not just content marketing planning. The required skills for content strategy and content marketing are very different from one another, and a great content strategist is worth his/her weight in gold. Whether you’re an agency or an internal team, knowing this (and staffing for it) is critical.

• The process must be infused into both our new and traditional methods.The approach of content marketing benefits from paid media, and it is amplified by earned media (and vice versa).

At CMI, our goal is nothing short of advancing the practice of content marketing. We want to make the Trough of Disillusionment as shallow and short as possible. We want to set everyagency, brand, and practitioner on the path to “enlightenment,” destined to reach the Plateau of Productivity.

To that end, if you work at an agency that is interested in building its content marketing practice — and you’re planning to head to Cleveland for Content Marketing World — I hope you’ll join me, the incomparable Jay Baer, and the multitalented Paul Roetzer for a pre-conference workshop called, Building/Growing Your Content Agency/Consultancy.

Every day, I get more and more excited about the opportunities that abound in this field. And I’m actually happy we’ve reached the place where we are right now — it’s an exciting position to be in, and it’s where the real progress starts to take shape. It reminds me of a quote by Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Let’s go play.

This Post Originally Appeared on CMI’s Web Site Here.

The process of marketing is changing. Yes! we finally understand this now. The need to deliver on Peter Drucker’s promise of marketing as “the distinguishing, unique function of the business” is becoming self-evident.

As such, the skill of marketing is one that is pervasive throughout the entire organization. As Drucker  said, “leadership is a marketing job.” He believed that an organization’s leader is ultimately responsible for its success or failure. And, to that end, the leader has to be able to communicate a believable and desired story to those who she’s leading. An effective leader must never stop developing and working on promoting a compelling and effective story that creates demand both inside and out of the organization. I believe this leadership permeates all the way down to the practitioner.

So, in short, as marketing changes (and we change), so does effective leadership.

And this is where I see so many challenges in B2B marketing departments.

B2B Marketing As Internal Agency

I’m blessed in that what I do for a living enables me to engage with hundreds of B2B enterprises every year. And, despite all of the tectonic shifts going on, most still don’t value marketing as a strategic partner. Most are still wrapped up in a mentality of product-as-differentiator. They deploy a sales-driven culture where marketing is a tactical afterthought, throwing MQL’s (Marketing Qualified Leads) over the wall to a frustrated and dissatisfied sales force.

But marketing practitioners in these organizations aren’t doing themselves any favors either. Either as a symptom, or root cause of marketing’s inability to be strategic, one of the first things I hear from B2B marketing leaders is some flavor of the following:

“We structure our marketing department as an internal agency. We work with our ‘clients’ on their needs in order to deliver (fill in the blank)….”

By “clients” they mean sales, product management, the CEO, you name it.

Then, almost without fail, they lament how marketing isn’t perceived as a strategic part of the organization. As one VP of Marketing said to me “marketing just isn’t something our C-Suite understands.”

Subsequently the marketing department is, indeed, an order-taking tactical function –running on the hamster-wheel of demand generation — trying to keep up with client orders for new collateral. They dutifully create event banners, press releases, case studies and spend their days grinding out one more conversion metric for the book of analytics they are forced to produce to justify their worth. Consider these numbers:

• A study last year found that 75% of CEO’s feel like their marketing departments “misunderstand or misuse metrics like ‘results’, ‘ROI’, and ‘Performance.’”
• A survey of sales professionals at B2B companies found that only 20% feel like marketing is effective.
• A 2009 found that only 18% of B2B marketers surveyed said they were “operating at the most advanced levels of their discipline, as “growth champions.”

And the massive disruption of digital has frankly just exacerbated the problem. Instead of becomingmore strategic – many B2B marketing organizations have swung the other way – doubling down on the tasks/expectations of marketing, without making the process more strategic.

Is it any wonder that “do more with less” is the rallying cry for so many of today’s B2B marketing technology vendors?

In short – for many B2B enterprises, marketing has now been relegated as a service organization – just like the IT department — taking orders, servicing ‘clients’, and ultimately delivering no differentiation for the company inside or out. Or, to put it in Drucker’s own words, offering no distinguishing, unique value.

Now, before I incur the wrath of IT — I absolutely believe just as much in the office of a strategic CIO and IT.  I empathize that this department has had a similar struggle in both B2B and B2C organizations. This Wall Street Journal article framed this well.

But, here’s the thing; my mission in life is to raise the resonance of the marketing department.  Someone else can go take on the mantle for the CIO.

Content Can Be A Centralizing Force

If you’re a skeptic of the power of marketing in B2B, consider a few other numbers.

• A 2012 Executive Board study found that the average B2B customer has completed more than half of the purchase decision-making process prior to engaging a supplier sales rep. Some have even argued that solution selling is, well, transforming…
• Gallup performed research on B2B organizations and found that highly engaged customers (through digital content) deliver a 23% premium over average customers in share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth.

Today’s savvy B2B marketing department is not only charged with driving more leads into the sales organization – they are also charged with engaging those customers well after they have signed contracts to provide reasons to retain, cross sell, upsell and ultimately turn them into brand evangelists.

I sincerely believe that content and the facile management of it across multiple channels can be the centralizing force that transforms the B2B marketing department from collateral creator, to strategic partner.  I’ve actually seen it happen. I’ve watched as B2B marketing organizations are much more succesfull when they are empowered to act as centralized actuary, cheerleader, facilitator and, ultimately, owner of content and conversation for the B2B enterprise.

The enterprise inherently knows this is a process that needs to be owned. And Marketing should be the ones to own it.

The Marketing department can be changed. Beyond getting more customers, marketing can be the strategic provider of insight into new markets, new products, customer service efficiency and, yes, even new technology deployments.

This is what can really make marketing the best job in the world, and at its core the differentiating factor for the business. The ultimate value of marketing isn’t producing 100 more leads per month, 35 percent more traffic, or a 25 percent reduction in cost-per-acquisition. No, those are simple KPI’s. The ultimate value is in the unique perspective, powerful stories, and leadership that marketing can bring out the enterprise.

Today, as B2B marketers, we create value through the human connections we forge through relationships. These connections come in our ability to communicate our unique approach to addressing customer needs, and solving their problems. The value is the “big idea” that makes the brand immersive and experiential combined with the insight to deepen that emotional connection over time.

The fundamental key is that this value will not be created by an internal agency.  Our “sales-enablement group” will not create it. A strategic partner will create it; one that will push the organization into uncomfortable and innovative areas, and be willing to take both the power and the responsibility for having the privilege of that strategic seat at the table.

It’s our time to make B2B marketing remarkable.

This post originally appeared on the Digital Clarity Group’s Web Site.  View It Here.

As a content marketer, you have probably heard the call for us all to become brand storytellers. While this sounds great in theory, the tricky part for many companies is determininghow to develop these stories in the first place.

There are no hard-and-fast rules for developing your brand’s stories, but you can go back and look at classic storytelling and structure as a helpful map to guide you. For example, the classic “hero’s journey” from Joseph Campbell’s, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, outlines what he calls the “monomyth” — which is a pattern that many believe can be found in almost every narrative around the world.

Campbell’s point is that storytelling across time shares a fundamental structure and can be summarized into this journey. Later, in 1992, screenwriter and story consultant Christopher Vogler took Campbell’s structure, modernized it for today’s audiences, and reduced it to 12 stages in his book, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers. This made the stages much more approachable for today’s writers — and is now mandatory reading for any novel or screenwriter. Vogler’s hero’s journey is this: 

There are ways to use this hero’s journey to develop your own pillars of content — your own stories. In Managing Content Marketing, Joe and I reduced Vogler’s stages to 10 steps for developing your content marketing brand journey. But before I jump in to explain those 10 steps, know that this is just a framework, not a “to-do” list or a template. The structure is meant to provide a platform to help you to develop a way to tell your story, or maybe to discover what’s missing from your existing story. It’s not a template for the story — this is an important distinction, because your story will be unique to you, your brand, and the experience you are trying to create.

Step 1: The conventional market

This is your brand’s world — and as you brainstorm your pillars of content, you should know and be able to define the conventional:

• What does your market look like?
• Where are your competitors situated?
• Why do they currently identify with your brand?

Step 2: The challenge

This is your big “What if?“:

• What if XYZ were actually true?
• What would the world look like if you could actually realize that “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” (BHAG) that you’ve set out for your brand?
• What is the call to adventure for your product?
• What’s the big promise?
• Why hasn’t this been done?
• Why haven’t you done it yet?
• What’s the pain that the conventional market feels now?
• What will you need to add to your story to let your audience know what will be left behind?
• Are you conflicted about this?
• What will be the effect of this change on your existing brand?
• Who in your company (or outside of it) can help you take this adventure?
• Who will provide guidance for your brand as it makes this journey? Is it you? Is it your CEO? Or, do you even have that person? Is it more than one person? Can you get someone external for this?
• Will you need to conjure an imaginary character to act as your sage or mentor?
• Who can stand in front of the world and credibly tell your audience that you are going on this journey together?

Step 3: The rejection of the challenge

Step 4: Appointment of the sage

Step 5: Crossing into the unfamiliar

This is where you burn the ships so that you can’t go back. Ultimately, in your content marketing, your brand must take a definitive point of view that is differentiated — and it will cross into your new “what if?” idea. This is the unknown — and it’s what you are exploring:

• How will you communicate this crossing into this new idea — this new adventure?
• How will you lead your audience into this new unknown with you?

Step 6: Map the road of challenges

Part of this step is unknown to you as an author, but you can use it to determine how you’ll gather friends. Or maybe you’ll take a strong point of view that may actually create enemies, or controversy:

• Who will your brand align with?
• How can they help you move forward?
• What tests to your brand’s legitimacy will it face in the unknown?
• Who will be the naysayers?
• What tests and challenges can you plan for?
• What skills will your brand need to address?

Step 7: The final challenge

As your brand faces these challenges, attracts and aligns with friends, and establishes a differentiated point of view, it should establish itself as differentiated — as a leader:

• What will it ultimately achieve?
• What learned skills (or attributes) will your organization take into the final challenge?
• What will that final challenge be?

This is the culmination of your brand story. In the larger sense, you may never want your brand’s (your hero’s) story to end. And this content marketing campaign may be but one episode in your story. But this final challenge is what you have to overcome to get to the possibility of the “what if?“…

Step 8: Looking back

Take a look back at the ordinary world. Your brand is different now. How do you show that differentiation?

Step 9: The final renewal

Your brand’s story is never going to end, and you are now ready to continue on your journey. But you may encounter new, formidable challenges now that you are a changed entity: 

• What ambush could — or will — your brand face now that it is different?
• What will the competition say about you now — and how do you continue?

Step 10: The celebration

This is you realizing the dream. Celebrating. It’s the final part of your story. 

There you have it — the structure. It can be used across one small content marketing initiative — or across an entire strategy of content marketing across the enterprise. Changing the level of hero from product, to brand, to service can make it more interesting, and enables you to explore ever more creative “webs” of stories among them.

This story structure — which is inherently linear — can also help you structure your content into a story map. The story map helps to organize your pieces of content across a timeline. It compels you to think of your content pieces as “chapters” or “scenes,” and can help reveal the gaps. It may resemble a high-level editorial calendar — but is structured with a focus on telling your complete brand story as you continue along your content development process.

Want to learn more about brand storytelling? Catch Robert Rose’s workshop, “Content Marketing 201: Building Stories that Sell” at Content Marketing World Sydney on March 4. To register for the event, use promo code CMI200 to save $200 when registering (Note: The workshop has an additional cost.)

This piece was excerpted and edited from ”Managing Content Marketing“ by Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi.

This post originally appeared on the CMI Blog Here.

Have you seen true digital CXM in the wild? And what I mean by that is – have you personally witnessed an organization deliver truly contextually relevant, customer-centric content across multiple digital channels, using both implicit and explicit attributes to target and deliver that content?

I suspect you haven’t.

I haven’t – and I cover this space relatively thoroughly. Sure there are glimpses of it. And maybe Amazon is close. But ask any marketing technology solution provider for the actual CXM case studies – and they’re just not there. Yet.

And – it’s not their fault.

Business Technology Doesn’t Pull Customers Forward

Here’s the thing. One of the true blessings of working with my colleagues at DCG is that I get to work with disruptive start-ups, mid-sized companies, and global organizations. And, guess what? Right now, CXM is the sexiest thing that everyone is demoing and no one is actually doing.

Now that doesn’t mean the technology doesn’t work. No, in fact many of the software companies have truly amazing capabilities to drive contextualized digital content experiences across channels. It just means that marketers aren’t ready for it yet.

In fact, a study of marketers by Aquent and the American Marketing Association backs this up. In their very recent 2013 Marketing Salary Survey, more than 50% said that they were not at all equipped to handle new trends in technology.

Interestingly, that same study found that a similar number (53%) don’t feel like they have the right people on board to deliver results. But then (my favorite), almost 70% said that marketing would “positively impact the organization.”

Um yeah, we’re all sure marketing is a good idea — we just have no idea how we’re going to do it.

See, in almost every case, the marketers at the companies we’re talk to daily are simply navigating this tsunami as best they can. They’re working fast and furious at managing change, internally and externally, for their company.  And they are, quite literally, throwing technology at the challenge. Today’s global 5000 company uses parts of Google Analytics with their Omniture implementation, and runs Hootsuite next to WordPress and Drupal, except for landing pages which are managed in Marketo. Then, the brochure sites are managed in their enterprise WCMS systems. Is it any wonder that Gartner says the CMO is the new CIO? Marketers are up to their eyeballs in technology that means nothing to them.

But as I said in June of last year – we all know marketing is fundamentally changing. But the difference now is that it’s just unclear what it’s changing into exactly.  As my colleague Tim Walters says, in today’s world,  “The More Things Change, The More Change Changes.”

And herein lies the challenge.  Digital marketing software companies (WCM, Marketing Automation, Email, et al.)  are all eyeing each other warily and trying to out “more” each other. Read the marketing materials. It’s all about more engagement, more measurability, more flexibility, more scalability etc., etc. What it adds up to is more software and more complexity.

But again, today’s marketers can’t even handle the technology they have.

Back in November, Scott Liewehr and I presented our Systems Of Engagement workshop at the Gilbane conference. In that workshop, I presented this graph about how businesses are currently buying content/marketing software.

And this is the key. As marketers, we’re not ready for all the cool new stuff – because we haven’t even figured out how to effectively use all the cool old stuff. And then marketers feel really great when they deploy technology and the new launch consists of the very small subset of “stuff on our wish list” that “our current product doesn’t do.”

So How Do We Really Prepare For CXM

Does this mean that marketers should throw up their hands and ignore this CXM thing until the hype wears off? Absolutely not. It just means that for those that are feeling late to the party – you should know that you’re actually right on time.

But it’s time to ask what true CXM means for your organization.

1. Is it like Bigfoot?  Is it this large scary monster that we’ve heard campfire stories about, and we’re not quite sure we want to be true because it might totally disrupt our business?
2. Or – does our organization look at CXM like a unicorn – as some mythical, magical thing with flowers and rainbows flowing from its hooves. Do we view it as something that only lives in fantasy – and therefore can never really exist?
3. Or – do we believe that true CXM are aliens. In our gut we know they’re out there – but either we know we’re not quite ready for first contact yet, or we figure when they’re ready they’ll visit us.

My own take: true CXM is an alien.  We’re probably not ready for it, but we should be preparing our organization for it.  And the key is organizing ourselves around the ability to change to meet this unknown when its time arrives. In other words, it’s time for us in marketing to take the responsibility to document and understand how we’ll deploy a customer-centric strategy – and only then think about the technology needed to facilitate it.  The more we focus on building customer-centric systems of engagement that help us facilitate change more quickly and more flexibly, the better off we’ll be. Even though we may not know what’s coming, we should be able to quickly adapt to it once it arrives.

Oh, and software providers? My advice is this (take it for what its worth): There is an (as yet) unexplored opportunity for a company to truly differentiate themselves by making it EASIER for clients to actually take advantage of true CXM to adapt and change more fluidly. The days of product “scale” being a differentiator are over. Change – and enabling the ability to change – is the new differentiator for marketing technology.

The “appification” of the marketing department is slowly making it easier for marketing departments to roll out small, easy to use (yet very niche) solutions for managing CXM than it is to re-implement big, unwieldy software.

To be clear, I do NOT mean this is the end of suites or “stack” solutions.  In fact in some cases, these “all-in-one” solutions do the “change” thing better than some of the point solutions on the market.

But for those that aren’t watching disruptive technologies emerging in the cracks of their industry, watch out, lest ye too be disintermediated (said in my best pirate voice).

As always – if we can be helpful in helping you navigate the disruption, let us know.  We’re always glad to help you prepare for the alien invasion.

This post originally appeared on the DCG Blog Here

There’s a scene in the movie Adaptation when Nicholas Cage – playing a screenwriter struggling with telling his story – is in Robert McKee’s renowned story structure class.

He asks McKee about stories where “nothing happens”.  He wonders if telling these stories are actually more like “real life”.

It’s a wonderful setup because it’s a question so commonly asked.  What about those movies, or books or stories where “nothing happens”.   The sitcom Seinfeld was even self-aware enough to express this explicitly.  Jerry would commonly say that the show (and the fictional show he created with George) was “about nothing.  But of course that wasn’t true – because Jerry violated our expectations every time.

But back to McKee and the movie Adaptation. Watch McKee’s brilliant (NSFW-language) response here:

Okay… if you’re at work.. Or didn’t’ feel like watching the clip – basically McKee flips out and says – if you’re going to tell me a story where NOTHING happens – why are you wasting my 2 hours.

Having taken McKee’s class twice (which I can’t recommend highly enough) – I can tell you that the scene is largely based on fact.  Inevitably in the class there is always a student that asks about creating stories where “nothing happens”.  The reaction you see in the scene above – is basically the same hell that he brings on any student unlucky enough to ask that question.

What’s Happening In Your Story

What McKee is really talking about in storytelling is that you must violate expectations in order to keep an audience involved, engaged and interested in hanging around.  You must make interesting things happen.

For example – let’s look at the outline of the beginning of two stories.

Story 1 – Guy wakes up, he brushes his teeth, he gets in his car and drives to work – walks through the parking lot, drops his keys, picks them up – and walks into his office building.

Story 2 – Guy wakes up, he brushes his teeth, he gets in his car and drives to work – walks through the parking lot, drops his keys, and as he bends down to pick them up he notices his boss stuffing a bag with a human arm hanging out into his trunk.

Which story are you more likely to continue reading?

This holds true in everything we’re doing in marketing.  Let’s take B2B marketing for a moment.   If you frequently give or receive overview/sales PowerPoint presentations for  customers – let me predict how most sales presentations are ordered:

Slide 1 – Who we are – why we’re a great company.  We’re awesome.  We’ve been in business for X amount of years.  We’ve won awards.

Slide 2 – Here’s our products – and the awards they’ve won.  Did I mention that we’re awesome?

Slide 3 – Logo Slide – here’s all the customers that have bought from us – and wow aren’t we impressive that we’ve closed all these big deals.

Slide 4 – Case Study – here’s one of those customers and a quote telling you why we’re so awesome.

And so on…..

What if instead…. This company’s overview deck went a little like this.

Slide 1 – Picture of a man.  Let me tell you a story about this man.  Normally you might think I’m going to tell you a case study.  But this guy didn’t buy from us and he is NOT a customer.

Okay… I’ve already violated the audience’s expectations.   I could go on from there and tell the audience how we pitched this guy – and even though he wanted to – he wasn’t able to buy from us.  He was forced to buy a competing product from a “safe” vendor.  They had a horrible time with it.   In fact, he now works as our Director of Marketing – because he was so taken with our solution that he wanted to work for our company.

Now when we show that logo slide and we tie it into how our solution has changed the direction of all these companies -  it starts to mean something very different than simply “we’re awesome”.

Start Watching For It Everywhere

Every single movie that you love – every single scene you think is great – and every single book that you can’t put down uses the violation of expectation to keep you engaged.

A few examples:

The classic scene in Good Will Hunting when Ben Affleck is trying to woo Minnie Driver in the bar.  The arrogant Harvard student goes to embarrass Affleck’s character by talking about “the economy of pre-revolutionary America” and your expectation is that they’re going to fight.  Instead, Will (Matt Damon) comes over and mentally obliterates the arrogant student with more knowledge than he could ever know.

Or… this classic scene from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade where Indiana and his father have managed to get into Berlin to retrieve the diary – a book that the whole German army is looking for.  As they’re trying to escape they manage to bump into Adolph Hitler… And… he signs the book like it’s an autograph.

Or maybe the best example of all – there’s this amazing scene from Casablanca; where almost every single line of dialogue violates your expectations; starting with the lines  “what’s your nationality?”  Rick says  “I’m a drunkard”.  It’s just amazing writing.

As a side note – if you take the McKee class – I guarantee you that after you experience his day-long analysis of Casablanca if it doesn’t become your absolute favorite film – it will be top five.

So…. if you’re a marketer – and you’re going to start to use content to help power your strategy – start to exercise this muscle… Watch a movie, read a book – and watch for the turns, the violations of expectations…

You may even surprise yourself where it will take you….

Oh… by the way… how many of you noticed that the picture for this post is the earth “upside down”…. Remember – there’s no rule that says North is up….

See original -

Great Storytelling Violates Expectations

For whatever reason, I seem to have been spending a lot of time lately reading and commenting on creative marketing strategies.  From strategic positioning, to tag lines, to business plans.   I’m struck not by the uninspired creative (although a few clearly are) but rather how “safe” they all want to be.

It all reminds me of this George Bernard Shaw quote:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. All progress, therefore, depends upon the unreasonable man.”

I combine this with this true fatigue I have over the phrase “data-driven marketer”.  Interestingly, if you Google this phrase, you’ll get about 25 million results and most of them are links to how to become one.

There was an interesting article over on HBR that talks about how much we, as marketers, really suck at using data.  And there’s a wonderful quote (that I’ve heard attributed to Scott Stratten and I’ll paraphrase here) that says – “why would we look to the nifty new things of tomorrow, when we suck at what we have today?”

Now that the news cycle is back to normal, and we head into the planning season for 2013, I’d like to humbly suggest that Marketers just need to lose the vision of the  “data driven marketer” holding a spreadsheet triumphantly over their head, ROI emblazoned on their super-hero cape as they stand at the summit of their mountain of Google Analytics.

Now – of course this isn’t to say that data is useless. Quite the contrary – it’s an essential piece of what we do.  Insight derived from data can be powerful and spur new creativity.  But, if we are a slave to it. If we are driven by it.  We will end up with a story that is, well, just incrementally better than it was yesterday.  And, I don’t know about you – but I’m hoping for more than that.

Thankful for Mediocrity

Do you ever wonder what our world as marketers would look like if everything were creatively amazing and compelling?  Basically what would the world look like if every product were marketed as well as Apple Products?  What if it was easy to create amazing, compelling, persuasive stories?  What would we do?

Well, I think Paul Arden had about as good an answer as I’ve seen.  In his book,  It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be – he asks:

Why do we strive for excellence when mediocrity is required?

There is little demand in the commercial world for excellence.  There is much, much bigger demand for mediocrity.

Arden wonders what we would do – and suggests that we would “react against it, saying, “Isn’t this boring.  How can we be dull?  Let’s do it badly, let’s make it ugly, and let’s make it really cheaply.”

In fact, you can even see some of this happening today.  I actually wrote an article for iMedia connection back in June of last year called How ‘Ugly’ Can Boost Your Campaign.

But the key difference in all of those campaigns was that “ugly” was “remarkable”.  They weren’t trying to be safe – they were actually trying to be different.  That’s the key.  They actually said something.  As Realtor Mark Seiden relayed to me when I interviewed him for that piece:

“We took the challenge of ‘ugly’ very seriously. The designer’s first iterations really missed the mark. They were too pretty. The key was for the designer to really feel the emotion and the feeling of the frustrated seller.”

So, thank goodness the world is demanding mediocrity.  In today’s noisy, information overloaded world, it gives us a fighting chance to do something weird, out of the box, different.

No Remarkable Marketing Is Ever Data Driven

Name any remarkable creative marketing campaign you can remember,  and I’ll guarantee you that it did not come out of a spreadsheet.    Our most compelling story, our most persuasive campaign our most viral content didn’t come as the result of an A/B test.  It did not come from our Google Analytics report – and it did not come from our landing page conversion metrics.

It came because we took the time to figure our what our business REALLY does and what problem we are REALLY solving for our customers. And we creatively figured out a way to tell a story that was different from our competition.

Differentiating means “being different” not being incrementally better than our competition.  If you haven’t read “Different” by Youngme Moon – give yourself a treat.  It’s wonderful.

Data is important.  Data is helpful.  Data helps you wring efficiency out of your visitors, and target your message more capably and generally make your campaigns better.  Data helps you be incrementally better today than you were yesterday.

Data gives you the opportunity for insight.  But YOU are the one that has the insight.

You are the one that makes the exponential leap. You are the one that thinks up the B version that outperforms the A version by 2000%.   You are the one that dreams up the story of your business that you’ll tell through content marketing.

Our Content Our Unique Story

If I can butcher the Shaw quote for a moment I’d say that the reasonable marketer adapts their story to the world.  The unreasonable marketer persists in trying to adapt the world to their story.   All of our success therefore, will depend upon us – at some time  or another – being unreasonable.

Whether it’s our creative brief, our positioning statement, our content marketing story or our newest creative ad campaign.  Let’s occasionally try to be unreasonable.   As Arden says – there’s little demand for it.   And, we’ll certainly fail more than we succeed at it.   But it’s our best bet to create something remarkable.

Originally posted here:

Who Is Driving The Story? You Or Your Data?

I’ve just returned from Content Marketing World New York – and boy did we ever have alot of fun. Many of the comments afterward were how much the attendees liked the exercise of getting to “story” as opposed to “plot” – so it inspired a quick blog post on my way home.

As marketers, don’t we dream of capturing the hearts of our consumers so that they become loyal?  As content marketers – our goal is to not only grab the attention of our audiences, but to engage, inform, entertain and ultimately influence them to maintain or change a behavior.   As marketing storytellers we do all this with our content.   We do it with the hope that our audiences become so engaged with our content that they ultimately “subscribe” to our brand – and will themselves actively share our story and build the success of our business.

But in order to do this – we marketers must often get out of our own way.  I know it’s true for me anyway.  We must allow our consumers an easy way into our world.   We spend so much of our time crafting amazingly well-thought out, thickly filled content.  We focus on content that informs and positions our brand as the leader in the space, and that illustrates that we really do have a big idea to share.  But we’re often so focused on WHAT we’re producing – that we often lose the WHY we are doing it in the first place.

Unless we layer in what it all *really means* – to our brand (our organization) and what the ultimate “throughline” is – our content marketing efforts are ultimately at risk of just being more meaningless data that serves our competition as well as it does us.

Difference Between Plot Vs. Story

When you read a book, watch a television show or go to a movie and you feel emotionally connected – it’s because the storyteller has given you a way into that main character’s struggles and dreams.  And this is very often quite different than the main plot.   When you walk out of a movie feeling disconnected (I’m looking at you Total Recall remake)  or close the novel feeling unfulfilled it’s usually because the writer didn’t give you that way in.   You were just an observer of the plot.  And while you may have been sympathetic at times – and maybe even rooted for the character to win – you didn’t get emotionally connected.

Let’s take one of my favorite movies – Star Wars as an example (I dare say I won’t spoil the ending for anyone).   We’re dazzled by the light saber duels, the space ships and the romantic adventure.  But that’s not what hooks us emotionally.  It’s Luke – staring out over the sand dunes…having just argued with his uncle about leaving home… Luke feels trapped by his circumstances – and family commitments… He’s wants to get out of his small world and go do something big…  and THAT’s what we engage with when this scene plays…

Now argue as we may about the strength of that emotional connection – the fact that it is still the second highest grossing film ever in the US says it resonated.…  That one minute scene tees up the rest of the entire series.  Now, when Luke goes through those adventures, we go with him – connected.  We have been given an opening into our hero and we can now ride along with him – not only just rooting for him – but now emotionally attached.

By the way… just in case you think that’s not purposely designed – The Binary Sunset Music that you hear in that scene is one of the most recognizable pieces of John Williams’ score.  Across all six movies, it is used most prominently in this 30 second scene.  And, it’s only used when Luke is “expanding his world” or when Ben Kenobi is present.  Check out this write up.

Data Vs. Content Marketing

The same holds true with our content marketing.  Take for example, a content-driven startup company I worked with recently.   They had, literally, mountains of data (hundreds of thousands of web content pages) to back up their claim to be the “owner” of information on their particular topic.  They owned the domain name that was basically the “industry.com” of their space.  Their site was beautiful and slick (rounded corners and everything).   And they owned the front page of Google for their key search terms.  And, yet there was zero engagement.  They couldn’t get conversions – and they couldn’t keep people on their site.   Why?

It’s because they were providing a plot – with dazzling special effects and set pieces – with absolutely no way in for the visitor to become emotionally engaged.  The user searched for some data, visited the page, got the answer they were looking for – and then went elsewhere to be engaged.

Build Ways Into The Throughlines Of Your Brand Heroes

I’ve written about this a bit before over on the Content Marketing Institute site – when I wrote What Your Content Marketing Is Really About.

As a content marketer, you’ve got to understand the difference between your brand plotlines and your brand’s throughlines.   Plotlines are the WHAT.  The content you’re producing; the wonderful, engaging and thought-provoking content you create and use to drive a marketing result.  The throughlines are the WHY – they drive the emotional connection to this content.

Remember this: Content developed without a “WHY” is just data – and you might as well cross-post it to your competitors’ sites as well.

Character Driven Content Marketing

We’ve got to make sure that we’re making personal connections to the WHY we are driving this content forward.

We struggle with this for sure.  It’s hard to let people into our brand mission.  We boast to our boards, our families and our investors about why we want to change the world.  But for some reason we hide it in our content.  We want to hide our foibles – our limitations – our hopes and dreams.   But this is precisely what gives our audience a reason to identify with us – to go on the journey WITH us.

Look at any content marketing success story – and you’ll see this emotional connection whether it’s actually planned or not.

Our consumers are inherently aware of when the story is broken.  And, in our case, when we don’t create it – it’s a lack of engagement, decreasing conversions and no bottom-line results that will tell that story.

In the book Managing Content Marketing (shameless plug) – Joe Pulizzi and I frame this as identifying “The Challenge”.   If we take the time to clearly identify our brand purpose – and WHY we want to “change the world” – our content will become something much more than just a plotline of data illustrating how “smart” or “entertaining” we can be.  We can infuse our content with an emotional connection – and that’s what will engage our audiences and produce the bottom-line results we all want.

Our content marketing should be unique.  It should tell OUR story.  It should be meaningful, evoke emotion and represent the big ways in which we want to change the world.

Why should we settle for less?

Link to article:

Blockbuster Marketing Is Story Not Plot

My grandfather used to say something that’s been on my mind a lot recently.   Whenever I got frustrated about anything – school, a job, life more generally he would ask me “what have you created lately.”  Then, he’d chide me – “go create a new experience for someone.”   He wrote this to me once in a card that explained this idea which was – when you create a new experience for someone, you get to experience it – and in turn it creates new opportunity for you.

I didn’t really know what he meant by that until just recently.  I’ve rewritten my grandfather’s suggestion a bit and this is what I’ve come up with:

 - “it is in the creation of the experience that we get to experience new creation.”

It’s taken me 20 years to really understand what this means.

You’ve heard the saying before that if you want to learn something – go figure out how to teach it.   At it’s core, it’s a very similar type of suggestion.

Businesses are changing.

We’ve heard this of course.  Business is changing – marketing is changing.  But really what’s happening is that people are changing.    And, as employees, team members, managers  – basically anyone focused on making money by observing and working with influencing human behavior.  We have a choice.  We can change – or we can be changed.

I’ve been out on the road the last two months teaching content marketing workshops to companies both large and small – everything from multi-billion dollar insurance companies to technology startups and even people who want to BE a startup. And,  I’m seeing a similar pattern come up with each experience.

Employees – our team members – see “Content Marketing” and “Marketing-as-Storytelling” as this very interesting thing that will be near impossible to execute.  Why?  Because it means the organization has to change….   And well… it probably won’t so why should I even try.

Managers – our directors and VP’s see content marketing and storytelling as this fundamental change in the way they are managing teams…  They want the flexibility to try new things – but because of a focus on short-term performance and data they’ve worked themselves into a box – that quite frankly they’re not ALLOWED to think outside of….

And – the C-Suite recognizes that new marketing paradigms like Content Marketing (and digital more broadly) are changing the rules of the game for marketing… But this change will be different than anything they’ve done before…  They ask themselves how can they institute change from a top down basis without risking a big failure across one quarter.. or two… or forever…

Ultimately all of these things come down to one thing – and that’s fear of the chaos….

We’re New At This Business Storytelling Thing

See, one of the things that we are challenged with as business professionals is that we are always striving for two things: – harmony and measurability.

We have spent our careers building business systems for consistency.  We have laser focus on removing operational conflicts, and anything that will take away from consistent, predictable, harmonious processes.

We believe in measurability as a foundation for that predictability.  The old saying “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” comes out of this thinking.   This, of course has been morphed into “if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t count”.  And this last one is, of course, complete nonsense.

Think for a moment about the love you have for someone special in your life.  Maybe it’s your wife – or your mom, or your dad or your children – or even a dog.  How much love is there?  Have you measured it lately?  Well, if you can’t measure it – it doesn’t count – right?

Storytelling Is Hugging The Chaos

Great Storytelling IS a contradiction.  Engaging stories set out to deliberately draw a conflict – a comparison of morality, or of fundamental change – or of good and evil.   Of starting at a place where we DON’T KNOW how it’s going to turn out….   We Hug The Chaos!

The story of how you met your wife STARTS with you not knowing if she would eventually become your wife….  You had no idea.

As marketers today, we are inundated with reasons to do the opposite of this.

We operate from knowledge; from past experiences.  We very often only act when we have the data to support our product, our position – our package – our pricing… our promotion….  In fact we’ve historically scaled our data analysis skills in marketing and we hire outside our company for anything creative.  We keep a safe distance from the “creative genius” that can be so compelling – but also so unknown, so chaotic – so tragically wrong.  Why is that?

To become storytellers we’ve got to change that.  We’ve got to not only embrace the absence of data – we should, ourselves, make time to move ourselves occasionally into the chaos – and into the winds of change.  We need to exercise our creativity as frequently as possible to let it bloom and deliver us a contradiction, a conflict -  a story that will introduce a conflict that we can resolve with a passionate, engaging story.  

The chaos is a place that we should make space for in our marketing strategy.  It is a place where we sometimes feel panic, or where we don’t know where to go.  It’s a place where we have no idea what  should or will come next.  And it can often provide truths that you could never have believed before.

We can use this chaos to build a story around a piece of content we want to write for our content marketing – or we can use it to develop entirely new brands or even our own career paths. Use the embrace of chaos to summon your genius and move your audience into something that immediately draws a conflict – or a contradiction that MUST be resolved… that an audience will engage with you UNTIL it is resolved…

So, find the time to not only embrace the chaos… But find the time to love it….  Use the benefit of NOT KNOWING what the answer is t summon your inspiration, your wisdom…   And to tell your story…

That’s how you become different… that’s how you start to tell stories – and it’s what makes your story… remarkable…

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Hugging The Chaos

Next week here in the United States, we celebrate Thanksgiving – a time for each of us to express gratitude for the bounty we enjoy.   This week because of some business commitments I’m missing my yearly spiritual retreat – in which I review, refresh, reflect and recharge for the year upcoming. Now, I’ve already carved out time next week to make up for it.  But perhaps it’s because of the reason (so many opportunities so little time) that my gratitude for everything that’s happened this year is fresh on my mind.

One of the great quotes about gratitude (which I’ll put further below) comes from Albert Schweitzer – and encourages us that gratitude can actually be a great healer for us.   It strikes me that this is so vitally important right now when we feel as citizens, as business people and as humans that there’s so much conflict in our general universe.

It’s  been scientifically studied of course – that hugs, and general morality is good for our health.  There’s a wonderful Ted Talk  given by Paul Zak where he discusses how hugs generate more of a chemical called Oxytocin in the body.  Oxytocin is generally released by breast feeding mothers and is considered the driver of that “special bond” that parents have with their children.

And so – being thankful helps us too.  It lifts our self-esteem and improves our confidence to be better at our work.  It enhances our emotional capacity – and helps us to heal and repair faster from failures.  And it can simply help us live longer.   As Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy head of the biologic psychology department at Duke University said recently – “if thankfulness were a drug, it would be the world’s best-selling product with a health maintenance indication for every major organ system”.

Thanks To Those I’ve Never Met And Even Those I Don’t Agree With

It’s easy for us to be thankful for our families, our friends and our colleagues who continually give us the things we need on a regular basis.   But, this year, I find that in addition to those people (to whom I’m deeply grateful) I also find that I’m grateful to people I’ve never even met – and to some who I don’t even care for that much.

From political candidates, to business leaders, to celebrities, to competitors and just people “in the neighborhood” there are many people that have impacted my life this year that will never know or understand their level of impact on me.  They’ve made me think differently, act accordingly and believe passionately about a great many things.  In short – they also shape who I am at this moment in time – and I’m grateful for them.  Schwietzer said it well:

“One thing that stirs me when I look back at my youthful days is the fact that so many people gave me something or were something to me without knowing it. Such people with whom I have, perhaps, never exchanged a word, yes, and others about whom I have merely heard things by report, have had a decisive influence upon me; they entered into my life and became powers within me…. Hence I always think that we all live, spiritually, by what others have given us in the significant hours of our life.”
- Albert Schweitzer

What Eyes Are We Looking From

One of the key lessons that has helped me this year is to continually ask: What “eyes” am I looking at this challenge with?   I won’t belabor all the versions here –but you’ll know what I mean if I just say that there are “child’s eyes” and “adult’s eyes” and “the ego’s eyes” etc…

And, this can be so helpful for us as business managers, as friends – as humans.  Whether we are creating that next, great content strategy, or brand – or coding our next project – or just visiting with our friends at dinner – we can be aware that we can look at all the conflict that we see right now and actually have gratitude.  We can see that it in its own way, it represents change and – yes – hope.  We may or may not like the direction.  We may or may not like the source.  We may be discouraged and appalled at the violence it sometimes incites.  But we can have gratitude that it makes us all think or act differently.

In the wonderful book “Choosing Gratitude” author Nancy Leigh DeMoss suggests that “gratitude is a choice.  If we fail to choose it, by default we choose ingratitude”.

This Thanksgiving – I’m so deeply grateful for my family, my friends, my colleagues with whom I work, the clients for whom I do the work and all of the people I get to interact with on a daily basis (including you who read this).  But I’m also grateful for those who I do not know, those who I do not necessarily like – and those who will never realize what impact they have upon me both good and bad.

That gratitude feels good – and well… I’m selfish that way.

I hope you all have a joyous celebration next week. I give thanks to you all.

Link -

Be Selfish – Have Some Gratitude

Happy New Year!  So, we’re back to work – having been “saved” from what the news portrayed as some Thelma and Louise type ride off of the fiscal cliff.  So, what will be Your story in 2013?  How about your business?  Whether you threw three wishes into your New Year’s fire, or you’re making resolutions, coming up with your Chris Brogan-esque “three words” or putting the finishing touches on your 100 slide 2013 Go To Market Powerpoint – it’s all the same thing:

Crafting your story is knowing what you want – and then accepting the responsibility for making it happen. 

If you simply state what you want without accepting the responsibility of realizing it/receiving it – you’re simply not authoring your own story.  In short (to paraphrase Jagger and Richards) you’ll always get what you NEED, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to what you WANT.

Stories, at their heart, are a hero’s attempt to solve a problem. Whether they are internal or external – our heroes must eventually work to solve them.  In short – heroes WANT something.  And what creates the emotional bond with an audience is how what they WANT aligns with what they NEED, and how they deal with the some one or some thing that stands in the way of them getting it.

So, what problems will you solve so that you craft a 2013 narrative that creates an emotional bond with your consumers, your boss, your colleagues – yourself?  What kind of hero will you be?

Need Vs. Want In Storytelling

There’s a storytelling technique in building some stories (as we’ll see it’s not exclusive) where our hero must come to realize their ultimate internal struggle.  This is the point at which they finally realize that what they NEED is not aligned with what they WANTED – and it completely changes the reasons they’re fighting for what they’ve been fighting for up until this point.

Two quick examples from two favorite movies.  So, Phil Connors in Groundhog Day starts out as a person who rejects almost everyone and everything in his life.  In the beginning he simply WANTS to be done with doing something he hates (covering the Groundhog Day festivities).  But through trying to solve that one problem – he comes to realize that he NEEDS to be more accepting. He goes from rejecting everyone to accepting everyone and his circumstances.  In the end – he becomes a better person, finds love AND solves the problem of being stuck in the same day.

The second is, of course, our old friend Luke Skywalker. In the beginning Luke simply WANTS adventure, and thinks he can do everything on his own.  In the end, through all that he deals with, he realizes he NEEDS to rely on others and trust in things much larger than himself.  In the very end, this trust and faith in something he doesn’t fully understand, is what enables him to destroy the Death Star and save the rebellion.

But of course this isn’t true for EVERY story.  No.  Think of heroes like Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs, or William Wallace in Braveheart.  These heroes don’t need to LEARN anything.  Instead, they are what we might call “Teaching Heroes”.   Instead of coming to a realization of an internal “problem” they must solve – they are driven to solve an EXTERNAL problem – and others come along for the ride (and may themselves be transformed).  For William Wallace it’s saving Scotland; for Clarice Starling it’s finding a serial killer.  For these heroes, each scene builds toward the justification of what they will eventually do when faced with the ultimate challenge at the climax of the story.

So put simply:  One set of heroes (our transformational heroes) learn through each challenge and are transformed by each of them – until they ultimately realize what they really need.  Phil Connor doesn’t realize he’s a pompous ass – until… well… he does.   Our other set of heroes (the Teaching Hero), on the other hand already realize what they WANT/NEED – and just need to overcome the ultimate challenges to achieve it.  Both are doing the same thing:  solving problems.  The only difference is that one may be initially looking in the wrong place.

What Do You WANT In 2013

Inevitably this is the time of year of both reflection and forecasts.  Our inboxes, feeds, televisions and radios are filled with “year in review” and “predictions for the one to come”.  It’s also a time of year for us to plan for the one ahead.   Whether it’s our strategy, marketing, sales, weight loss, romance, what have you – it’s the time we wipe the whiteboard and start anew.

So – which hero will you or your brand be this year?  If you immediately jumped to the “teaching hero” – you might just think twice. It’s not always that straightforward.

Time to craft a new story.

Maybe we really do know what we WANT/NEED – and we just have to map our road of challenges in order to get there.  Or, (and this has been the case in at least two clients and one friend I’ve spoken with recently) – maybe we only THINK we know what we want?  We’re not quite sure if it will come to pass.  Maybe we’re unsure of our hiring capacity, the economy, the new congress, the competition or even our own capabilities.  Maybe for us – our Hero is young and impetuous.  We know we want to win – but we know our hero may have to transform along the way.

One client I know is crafting a 2013 story of the “teaching hero”.  They’ve spent the last year building their company as a thought leader in their space. They’ve “transformed” their hero and people really believe it.  This year it’s all about solving the problem of scaling. They are crafting a story that creates bigger and bigger challenges to build to an event at the end of the year that will be culmination of this brand “becoming a real player in their space”.

Another Hero I know is working the exact opposite “problem”.  She is in flux.  It may be time for her to double down on what she’s known.  Or, it may be time for her to tell a completely new story.   It might be an incredible year of opportunity – or it might be risky as all hell.   She knows there’s big adventure there – and she WANTS it.  But the story she’s crafting ALLOWS for her brand to LEARN – to have the NEED revealed to her over time.

So, which will you be?  What story will you craft?

Again, it doesn’t matter whether you are simply lighting a wishing candle for 2013, listing out your 23 New Year’s resolutions or tapping “send” on that new content marketing strategy – it’s all the same thing.   If you simply state what you want without accepting the responsibility of realizing it/receiving it – you’re simply not authoring your own story.

In the movie “The Matrix” Neo asks Morpheus, “What are you trying to say, I can dodge bullets?” Morpheus replies “No Neo, when your ready.. You won’t have to.”

It’s not until Neo accepts the responsibility for that awesome power that he truly understands what it means.

As for me – I come into 2013 ready for a brand new story. It’s the continuation of a grand adventure, but this episode is going to push me way beyond my comfort level and I’ll be fully transformed by the end of it.  More to come on that for sure.

That’s mine anyway…. And I’m sticking to it.  Whatever yours is – all I ask is that you make it remarkable.

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What’s Your Story in 2013?