Visual Storytelling Today

In this episode, I chat with Park Howell, Business Storytelling Strategist at Business of Story. We talked about his journey as an early pioneer of business storytelling, what tactics he uses to bring to life business stories both in his audience minds (aka theater of the mind) and externally through rich visual aids. Park also shares a few insightful success stories from his clients and simple, yet actionable tips you don't want to miss. About our guest Park was honored as Advertising Person of the Year in 2010 by the American Advertising Federation of Metro Phoenix. His agency was also recognized among the Top 10 Impact Companies in Arizona by the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. He created the communications curriculum (based on the Story Cycle) and teaches in the Executive Master of Sustainability Leadership program at Arizona State University to help international B2B executives advance their social initiatives further, faster through the power of story. What you will learn: Can you describe how do you appl

In this episode, I chat with Tory Gentes, an Immersive Ethnographer, and partner at The Palmerston Group. We talked about what is Ethnographic Research, why marketers should adopt ethnography as part of getting to know better their audience - a paramount ingredient for creating a powerful brand narrative, what are the typical business objectives marketers should consider, and the various on and offline tools an ethnographer uses to get the backstories behind the hard data. About our guest Tory resides mostly out of her suitcase; however, she has roots in New Hampshire and a strong affinity for living in Colorado. She has a deep love for travel and people, which has helped set the foundation for her journey into qualitative market research as an immersive ethnographer. Tory has been throughout North America, Africa, and Asia collecting ground-level insights from individuals, CEOs, founders, NGOs, and community members that she leverages to solve strategic business questions. With a background in entrepreneursh

In this episode, I chat with Susan Emerick, Sr. Manager, Global Marketing, Customer Experience & Advocacy at IBM. We talked about what is Influence Marketing, what are the main influencer categories, what are the typical business objectives marketers should consider, how influencers leverage visual social networks, the process, pitfalls to watch out for and top tips on how to get started. About our guest Susan Emerick is one of the early visionaries that helped defined the influencer marketing space both at her pioneering influencer programs she launched at IBM and as an educator, speaker and author of the book “The Most Powerful Brand on Earth: How to Transform Teams, Empower Employees, Integrate Partners and Mobilize Customers to Beat the Competition in Digital and Social Media (2014). What you will learn: what is Influence Marketing? What are the main influencer categories? What are the typical business objectives marketers should consider? How influencers leverage visual social networks? What is the

In this episode, I decided to explore one of the fast-growing areas of visual storytelling - offline Branded Environments Design. I am talking about those visual narratives you most likely have seen when you visited a major corporate office. Local artists create them through digital or physical expressions such as paintings and sculptures commissioned by brands to support their unique culture in both customer-facing or corporate offices. About our guests That’s why I am excited to have on our show Abbey Melsheimer and Gustavo Tonelli owners of Chilipop.co a branded environments design company.  Abbey is hailing from a small town in Ohio, Abbey studied architectural design in Germany and graphic design in New York - developing an understanding and respect for cultural nuance that took her to large-scale projects in New York, London, Shanghai, and Miami. Her sensibilities for both design and purpose led Abbey to work on a wide array of spaces – from banking behemoths (Chase) to world-leading technology giants (

Knowing how to connect better with audiences is always one of the top challenges for marketers and business leaders. With this in mind, in this episode, I decided to invite a business leader outside the traditional marketing space to share her story.   About our guest That’s why I am excited to have on our show Yasmine Kotb, the owner of Mina Mediterraneo - one of the great success stories in Miami’s cuisine landscape. After receiving a degree from the University of Texas in Journalism, Yasmine began her career in the music industry where she managed various facets of concert production. Working with a plethora of A-list musicians including Paul McCartney, Beyonce, Coldplay and Cher (to name a few), Yasmine spent most of her time on the road where she would stay at the best hotels and dine at the finest restaurants. While traveling the world, Yasmine learned about different cultures and their cuisines. Now a seasoned world traveler and lifestyle connoisseur, Yasmine decided to leave her impressive career in t

Our clients typically ask us: how do I find and own my business story? And a follow-up question, what are the secret ingredients to make a good business story. With this in mind, I’d like to focus this episode of Visual Storytelling Today show on these fundamental questions I am sure any business leader can relate to.   About our guest I have the great pleasure to speak today with Diana Yazidjian, a business storytelling expert with DFY consulting based in Montreal, Canada. Diana has extensive experience in marketing and technology helping start-ups, Fortune 500, retailers, and municipalities. She provides strategic and hands-on training on social media, brand storytelling, stand-out content and thinking like the customer.   What you will learn: What makes an effective business story? How does the end-to-end process of creating an effective Visual Storytelling program look like? Where is the future of business storytelling headed? Great industry examples and actionable tips to get you started Read our episo

With all the latest talk about Facebook changing their newsfeed’s algorithm and the inevitable comparisons to Instagram (aka maximal vs. minimal design approaches), I’d like to focus our upcoming Visual Storytelling Today show on Instagram and how visual storytellers like you can take advantage.   About our guest Julie Cabezas is a co-founder of The Ideal Marketing Agency. Julie (B.S.B.E.) was a key marketing team member in the $1.65B acquisition of a groundbreaking medical device robotics company prior to co-founding IDEAL. With a background in engineering, training, and marketing, she developed the elegant, flexible framework IDEAL uses to teach entrepreneurs and executives to create social brands their customers love. She is the inventor of Social Brand D.N.A. and the Content Creation Formula. Julie has loads of expertise transforming brands into what she calls “Little Black Dress Brands” on Instagram.   What you will learn: What is Instagram Storytelling and why as a marketer you should care? What are th

In this episode, I chat with my good friend and digital futurist Geoffrey Colon at Microsoft. We reviewed the road visual storytelling has already made, crossing the lines from the entertainment world to marketing and what to expect in the near future.   About our guest Geoffrey Colon is a compelling voice at the intersection of marketing, tech, and popular culture. DJ, data punk, podcaster and author, Geoffrey is a Communications Designer at Microsoft in Redmond, WA. Colon has written for or been quoted in media outlets including Business Insider, Fast Company, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Billboard Magazine, Adweek, and Entrepreneur. He has also appeared on Cheddar TV, NASDAQ Live, WABC-AM New York, and Marketplace on NPR. He is an avid speaker on the global marketing conference circuit and has keynoted events in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berlin, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Seattle, Bangkok, Portland, Raleigh, Porto Alegre, Sao Paulo, Oslo, and Tromso. Disruptive Mar

Do you know how to harness the power of video at each stage of your buyer’s journey? With video expected to make up 80% of all Internet traffic by 2019 (source: Cisco), video has become a dominant tactic in marketer's’ toolbox for every stage in the buyer’s journey. When you think about it, video is the most accessible visual medium that lets your audience re-enacts real-life events, but remotely. In this episode, Shlomi Ron, co-founder at The Visual Storytelling Institute is speaking with B2B video storytelling expert, Tyler Lessard, VP Marketing at Vidyard.     About our guest Marketing, Product and Business Development executive with a passion for customer-centric problem solving, creative storytelling, and data-driven marketing. Over 15 years of experience in enterprise technology, marketing tech, sales enablement and video marketing. Currently, serves as VP Marketing at Vidyard.com, a versatile B2B video marketing platform, host of the Content Pros podcast, Chief Architect of Viewtopia and avid Chalk Tal

Do you know how to harness the power of social listening to craft more authentic visual stories from your audience oceans of conversations?  With over 5 billion content pieces that are produced every day, the hunt for your dormant intelligence will be decided by skill and strategy. Imagine having a real-time "magic pitchfork" that finds the most valuable nuggets of information to match your business objectives.  In this episode, Shlomi Ron, co-founder at The Visual Storytelling Institute is speaking with social listening maven, David Berkowitz, Chief Strategy Officer at Sysomos.     About our guest David Berkowitz is the chief strategy officer at Sysomos. Previously, he served as chief marketing officer at Publicis Groupe creative agency MRY. Prior to that, he spent seven years leading emerging media at Dentsu agency 360i, co-founding its social media practice and running its Startup Outlook initiative.  Through his agency work, he has been a strategist and advisor to brands such as Coca-Cola, Johnson &

Augmented/Virtual Reality revenue forecast is expected to hit $108 billion by 2021. Mobile AR could become the primary driver of a $108 billion VR/AR market by 2021 with AR taking the lion’s share of $83 billion and VR $25 billion (source: Digi-Capital). Are you ready? With all this action, marketers need to learn how to navigate this new discipline against realistic business objectives, and realize that there are new game rules for developing and distributing immersive experiences. In this session, we'll go over the basic terminology of the entire immersive spectrum; from 360 video, AR, MR to VR. We'll review the business objectives immersive visual storytelling experiences serve, typical mistakes and how you can launch your own immersive visual storytelling strategy.   About our guest Our guest, is Cathy Hackl, is an Emmy-nominated communicator turned VR & AR, producer, speaker and futuristic content creator. She served as chief communications & content officer for Future Lighthouse, one of the worl

In the last 50 years, the amount of ads and brand content we get exposed to on a daily basis has increased from 500/day to ~5000/day. This growing information overload, coupled with decreasing attention spans required marketers to figure out new ways to break through the clutter. In this episode, we'd like to talk about the drivers for the rise of user generated (UGC) marketing and how to harness its power with visual storytelling. UGC marketing falls under earned media where 93% of consumers find UGC to be helpful when making a purchasing decision (source: Adweek). Why? User generated content is more authentic, and believable than official brand content. It offers unbiased customer perspectives. This humanizing effect builds trust with audiences and drives engagement. About our guest Our guest, is Tim Sae Koo, CoFounder, and CEO at Tint, which is a platform that helps brands aggregate, curate and display any social media feeds anywhere they want. With so much marketing noise out there today, people are turni

90 percent of the information consumed by our brain is visual. Humans are visual beings who have been communicating through visuals for eons. You remember 80 percent of what you see but only 20 percent of what you read. With over 5 billion pieces of content published daily online (AKA "Communication Noise") and audiences that experience decreasing attention spans, businesses of all sizes are struggling to get their marketing messages across. In this episode, we'd like to unpack the narrative power of visual content, and discuss how to master its core formats; from infographics, graphics, charts & reports, to interactive presentations. About our guest Our guest, is Payman Taei, Founder, and President at Visme, an easy-to-use online tool to create engaging presentations, infographics, and other forms of visual content. He is also the founder of HindSite Interactive, an award-winning Maryland based digital agency specializing in website design, user experience, and web app development. In this episode, Shlom

Infographics have become one of the fastest-growing tactics savvy visual marketers use today. In fact, the effectiveness rating for infographics rose more in one year than any other tactic—from 50 percent to 58 percent, according to the 2016 study by the Content Marketing Institute. In this episode, we'd like to unpack the power of infographics and dig deeper into infographic story-making, visualizing and effective distribution.   About our guest Our guest, is Brian Wallace, president at NowSourcing, one of the world's top infographic design agencies based in Louisville, KY, and Cincinnati, OH. Brian also runs a local event to make the Louisville / Cincinnati corridor a more competitive region (#thinkbig) and has been named a 2017 Google Small Business Advisor.   In this episode, Shlomi talks with Brian about: What is the definition of an infographic? How many infographic types are there and what business objective do they serve? How to make effective infographics that tell a story? How does the end-to-end p

“Cartoons are fun, simple and also minimalist, you don’t need a lot of details, so your message comes out loud and clear and that’s very liberating. They also can hit somebody in 5 seconds”~Hugh MacLeod Hugh MacLeod has been drawing about life and business for over twenty years. Mission, purpose, and meaning are the cornerstones of the message behind his art. At the heart of Hugh’s work is one core belief: art has the power to transform business. Art can express ideas, vision, beliefs, culture, and purpose faster, better and more deeply than any other method of business communication. Art, particularly cartoons, are perfect for conveying the root of an idea in a way that starts a dialogue between the right people. Hugh harnesses art in a way that helps businesses confront tough problems, parses complex human relationships and engages employees to collaborate on solutions. Together with his business partner Jason Korman, Gapingvoid Ltd. has created custom artwork for some of the largest companies, including In

"A truely interactive video offers users a non-linear navigation experience, supported by embedded digital resources (e.g., images, videos, text bubbles, links, online forms etc.) for users to learn more.” ~Gavrilo Bozovic A recent study from Vidyard found that businesses are now creating an average of 18 videos per month. Over half of business videos created in the past year were 2 minutes or shorter, and Cisco recently predicted that 84% of Internet Traffic will be video by 2018. With all this action around video, in this episode, Shlomi Ron talks with Gavrilo Bozovic, founder & CEO at Teleport, a Swiss-based innovator of an interactive video platform.  What you will learn: What is the state of video marketing landscape? Where are we going wrong today in the delivery of compelling video content? What is the definition of "interactive video" narrative? What are the common use cases? How do you measure the success of an interactive video program? Watch the interactive video of this episode: http://bit.l