yours, mine & ours

“Stories worth telling, tell themselves.”

My day at the Digital Advertising + Marketing Summit was full of great lessons. The one that resonated with me the most, though, was the importance of telling authentic stories:

Telling the authentic story of your brand. Digital Kitchen’s advice on creating great content emphasized how essential it is to make something that’s meaningful to the user, not just the client or agency. It’s about telling brand stories that entertain, engage or inspire; brand stories that the audience actively chooses to spend time with. Trying to sell a story that doesn’t come from a real place of emotion is like forcing your audience to watch someone else’s home movies — they just won’t care.

Telling the authentic story of yourself. Molly Currey’s presentation about leaving a successful job in order to find a life that truly mattered to her was so inspiring. Especially with graduation only two months away, it’s important for me to look carefully at who I am and what I want as I move forward with life. But that’s not a journey that stops after I have a diploma in hand. Staying in touch with our own stories is essential throughout our lives and careers as they continue to grow and change.

Telling the authentic story of yourself and your brand together. Pixar’s James Ford Murphy was the perfect example of someone who created a union between his personal story and the story he tells for a living. The obvious authenticity of what he created, along with the skill of his storytelling, is what makes his film resonate so well with viewers. It’s a great story because it’s a real one.

This isn’t a new lesson, but it’s a hard one to actually practice — and so it’s one worth repeating and remembering.

Especially when we evaluate strategy and analytics, we should always go back to evaluate the story we’re telling — is it genuine? Does it mean something to us as creators, to our client or brand and to the people who will consume it?

Authentic stories are more than just a way to reach other people — they’re an essential tool to reach ourselves, so we can maintain perspective and create something great. Because sometimes even stories worth telling do need a little help getting told.