This is a story about storytelling.

Steve Jobs strolls into the employee break room and starts making himself a bagel.

The staff chew their lunch warily.

Then, out of the blue Jobs addresses the room: "Who is the most powerful person in the world?"

A few names are nervously put forward. One employee suggests Nelson Mandela.

"NO! You are ALL wrong" says Jobs. The most powerful person in the world is the story teller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come and Disney has a monopoly on the storyteller business."

"You know what?" he continues "I am tired of that bullshit, I am going to be the next storyteller" and walks out with his bagel.

I dug this story up from a long Quora thread about chance encounters with Steve Jobs.

I think Jobs was spot on here. Human beings follow people who tell stories. Even more, they value people who people follow. 

As a communicator, you're well positioned to carve out your own 'monopoly' on storytelling in your organisation.

Nobody will ever tell you to do this. And when you do, sometimes it will feel uncomfortable. But if you do grab this opportunity, you'll have the 'Steve Jobs' of your organisation eating out of your hand.

BMW a lansat o noua platforma de comunicare la nivel global. Imi placea mult "Pure driving pleasure". Parca era mai aproape de spiritul brand-ului.
Dar, cum spun chiar ei: "Is very important how you make people feel, but is more important what you make".
Si ei fac masini incredibile.


Pentru mine "Joy" de la BMW este clasicul 507. O bucurie de masina. Sper sa reusesc sa conduc una o data.

1. Products are made and owned by companies. Brands, on the other hand, are made and owned by people … by the public …by consumers.

2. A brand image belongs not to a brand – but to those who have knowledge of that brand.

3. The image of a brand is a subjective thing. No two people, however similar, hold precisely the same view of the same brand.

4. That highest of all ambitions for many CEOs, a global brand, is therefore a contradiction in terms and an impossibility.

5. People come to conclusions about brands as a result of an uncountable number of
different stimuli: many of which are way outside the control or even influence of the product’s owner.

6. Brands – unlike products – are living, organic entities: they change, however imperceptibly,
every single day.

7. Much of what influences the value of a brand lies in the hands of its competitors.

8. The only way to begin to understand the nature of brands is to strive to acquire a facility which only the greatest of novelists possess and which is so rare that it has no name.

9. The study of brands – in itself a relatively recent discipline – has generated a level of
jargon that not only prompts deserved derision amongst financial directors but also provides
some of the most entertaining submissions in Pseuds’ Corner.

10. It is universally accepted that brands are a company’s most valuable asset; yet there is
no universally accepted method of measuring that value.

11. The only time you can be sure of the value of your brand is just after you’ve sold it.

12. It is becoming more and more apparent that, far from brands being hierarchically inferior to companies, only if companies are managed as brands can they hope to be successful.

13. And as if all this were not enough, in one of the most important works about brands published this year, the author says this: “Above all, I found I had to accept that effective brand communication …involves processes which are uncontrolled, disordered, abstract, intuitive … and frequently impossible to explain other than with the benefit of hindsight”.

by Jeremy Bullmore, WPP, 2001

So we've made a little video. It's the spoof from the previous post.We've had a lot of fun making it. We've had very little expectation. I mean, we've thought that once our friends will see it, the whole thing will be forgotten.
It turned out exactly the opposite. Right at this moment the video was seen by 33,707 people in two days. It was favorited by 117 people and linked by a whole bunch of blogs, forums and sites. The thing just blew out of proportion! Everybody talks about it, people from all over the country are calling us to congratulate. The media got interested and we going to be in the papers. Even the most viewed TV station in the country found out about it and now they invited us to be part of a program about media and advertising. And let's not forget that we are talking about a Romania spoken video. Even more, a Moldavian dialect!!!!

Now, I am really surprised by all this. And learned a lot from the experience. First of all a viral becomes viral if it's interesting, well written and beautifully executed. Then, like Russell (I think) once said, "build stuff that people want". Apparently, our little idea is something people from Romania want to see. And have fun doing it!

So be creative, have ideas, share, be inspired by your friends while having a beer. You might do some really funny stuff that other people love to see and talk about it.