Star quality is part of today’s business leadership style — FT.com

This article hearkens back to a time of “fear and hate” that define successful products while portraying this as the dominant model going forward. Yes, some uncompromising leaders have had success, but most leaders develop coalitions rather than treat everyone in their company and marketplace as herds to be terrified.

Finally, hate, once the emotion to avoid at all costs, is now a bonafide form of engagement. In an environment where most people are too busy to care, hate means you are at least connecting on a deep enough level to inspire a response.

Source: Star quality is part of today’s business leadership style

Al Franken’s devastating strategy for taking on Trump’s team of climate science deniers

Want to see activist storytelling? Look to Senator Franken.

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) has emerged as one of Congress’ most devastating questioners of the myriad climate science deniers who fill President Donald Trump’s cabinet. And it’s largely because the comedian turned Senator combines two abilities rarely seen together — actual knowledge of climate science and genuine communications chops. Franken knows how to tell a good story, and as the best science communicators will tell you, the best messaging requires storytelling.

Source: Al Franken’s devastating strategy for taking on Trump’s team of climate science deniers

Sampling memory to make profitable choices : Nature Neuroscience : Nature Research

Stimulating familiar memories would lead to more engagement with new options similar to those memories, research suggests.

A computational model explains how memories of past rewards guide value-based choices. Incorporating behavioral and functional MRI evidence, the findings indicate that ‘sampling’ from individual memories of past rewards influences choices.

Source: Sampling memory to make profitable choices : Nature Neuroscience : Nature Research

Facebook video ad viewability rates are as low as 20 percent, agencies say – Digiday

Volume is up, quality is still equally distributed. Most video is either one-off novelty or single-play creativity that doesn’t engage over the long term. A message is insufficient to start a movement, but every message must rise above the noise to have a chance. Facebook’s video projects have a long way to go, and $3 million webisodes are not the sustainable answer.

Some agencies started using the new auditing capabilities a few months ago and have been stunned to see viewability rates on Facebook video campaigns as low as 20 percent, going up to 30 percent, according to interviews with nine agency execs. That’s way below the average viewability rate for video ads on sites, which is approximately 50 percent, according to Integral Ad Science.

Source: Facebook video ad viewability rates are as low as 20 percent, agencies say – Digiday

Social media is forcing brands to flex their muscles

Brands are not America’s conscience, but they are part of the debate in a significant new way: Consumer identity is tied up with their spending, which people increasingly want to reflect their values.

In the end, consumers always have more money, though less concentrated than brand budgets. Brands must engage in evolutionary discussions about their plans with the customer and community to be trusted and supported in their goals.

Have brands become America’s conscience? Some are certainly acting like it, judging by a spate of media boycotts that have targeted certain television programmes and even the production of a Shakespeare play.

Source: Social media is forcing brands to flex their muscles

Digital Narrative’s Change Imperative

We’ve gathered a world class line up!  Marketers, producers, designers, and creatives will share how they motivated participation and action with their narratives. Their stories engage their audiences with content for commercial and positive social interests. This is a short 4 minute read.

Please join with the Digital Narrative Alliance on June 20, 2017, as we experience a day of stories, content participation and audience engagement around digital narratives. Do you want to learn new ways to engage around social and commercial interests, to mentor the next generation, or learn how to advance our ability to bring compelling stories to a fragmented audience? Join us and become a member!

THE RUN DOWN:

The day kicks off with a ground-breaking manager, story-teller, and game developer Aaron Loeb. Aaron is the President of Fox NextGames.  He is currently working on a new platform for an “Avatar” game with James Cameron. He will share how you can engage with a team that builds compelling experiences in order to provide individual engagement in a collective story. What if you could apply this to your organization or audience?

Next, Richard Okumoto, mentors the next generation of narrative leaders as they develop stories to amplify their projects or start new businesses. Rich left being a CEO and leader of companies with global reach to pursue a doctorate in digital storytelling. He will share how to tell short, impactful stories with examples from his students. Discussion with our speakers will be encouraged — we’ve included ample conversation time after their short talks.

As a longtime colleague, I can attest that Rich has a way of engaging students so that they want to embrace new potential realities.

If you want to turn this into practice, the next session will help to bring you into an experience of live storytelling to learn how to be a part of an adaptive improvisational experience. Speaker Ricci Victorio will introduce the use of improv in management before our first break-out  session. These workshops give attendees an opportunity to participate in an improvisational experience to apply yourself around story and purpose. Learn to put your voice in the story confidently with improv tactics.

While you are enjoying lunch Kate Neiderhoffer of Circadia Labs will describe her research in dream sharing and narrative development. Her backgound in data analytics at Dachis Group, Sooth, and other companies will give you things to chew on while learning to create and share stories from dreams.

After lunch we are pleased to have Academy Award-winning environmentalist Louie Psihoyos.  Louie will share his experience in turning disruptive narratives into social movements. He has practiced the art of building audience engagement around critical environmental programs and connecting narrative with community engagement.

Join the Digital Narrative Alliance for a game changing experience. Send some of your team, sponsor some students, join our membership to have access to exclusive content to use for training, engagement and participation.

Support the Narratives that can build a better future.

Next you will hear from another Academy Award winner, Scott Burns, with a different orientation. He is recognized as helping to amplify the narrative of Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth.” Scott will be in conversation with Barry Johnson, who recently came off a role at the White House and now is focusing on the relationship between media and the human reactions to stories. Scott and Barry will also discuss the importance of championing untold stories and uninvited storytellers, as well as his current development of two narrative films that break cycles and smash stereotypes.

Now that you have heard some ways to get engagement with content you can explore more in our second set of workshop sessions that give you an opportunity to participate in the improvisational experience in order to apply yourself around story and purpose, or explore a different topic, we have a number discussing round tables in a World Cafe setting.

In looking to the future, learn how to apply yourself with Pragmatic Imagination, a framework that turns your ideas into action with Ann Pendleton-Jullian, an architect, writer, educator and world builder. Learn from her soon to be released five-volume collaboration with Silicon Valley pioneer John Seely Brown, Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World.

In this short talk, she introduces the basic idea of pragmatic imagination where action and engagement with the world is the natural approach to design and the creation of human spaces.

Next we have Tom Bedecarre, Chairman, Cofounder, AKQA, and Stanford DCI Fellow leading a roundtable discussion about the future of story as advocacy and narrative engagement with audiences and communities that are emerging from digital networks.  Silicon Valley advertising pioneer Tom Bedecarre will put a bow on the day, tying together threads from the talks and experiences presented in a conversation with speakers and the audience.

We are focusing on “Stories that Change”.  We want to help you improve how to create stories that inspire CHANGE.  Any change that you are interested in creating.  Tell us where you would like to see us take the Digital Narrative Alliance.  Reach out to those you know who would enjoy the day and might consider becoming a member of the Alliance. Together we can build a Narrative that moves our planet in to a better future.

Join us with some drinks and networking after the event.

Register now to attend the Narrative Summit: Stories That Change on June 20, 2017. The event will take place at the University of California San Francisco’s Mission Bay Conference Center. Please consider $299 for a great day that will be a game changer. Get access to follow up content you can share.

In dumping the Public Theater’s ‘Julius Caesar’ over Trump, Bank of America and Delta are making us angrier and dumber – The Washington Post

A very worthwhile discussion at The Washington Post about the meaning of free speech and corporate unwillingness to be associated with dissent. Marketers should acknowledge that their refusal to take a stand isn’t taking a stand, that backing away from their country and customers’ discussion of controversial issues makes the company a weaker participant across the entire range of engagements. Positive actions, including taking a stand against art that is objectionable, make impressions more powerful than those created by refraining to fund institutions they have previously supported with no detailed explanations.

Corporations seeking to protect their reputations from hordes of complaining consumers may not examine art this deeply or carefully. From a corporate perspective, support for the arts is generally meant to jazz up the bland images of giant companies and to suggest that they have a civic function beyond merely extracting money from their customers. But if the only art that businesses such as Delta and Bank of America are willing to support is bland to the point of meaninglessness, their timidity merely reinf

Source: In dumping the Public Theater’s ‘Julius Caesar’ over Trump, Bank of America and Delta are making us angrier and dumber – The Washington Post

Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax – The New York Times

A good read for thinking about accelerated lives and how they are shared. Deliberation — the idea of a process based on respect and a healthy skepticism but conducted with respect — is the missing ingredient in most facets of public conversation these days. Shouting down the others isn’t advancing anyone’s cause.

Some have suggested Twitter is a sort of crowdsourced poetry, but how many millions of miles is it from Auden: a cacophony of voices, endlessly shouting over each other, splintering what’s left of a “national discussion” into millions of tiny shards.

Source: Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax – The New York Times

Data Point of the Week: Where are VR/AR Investment Dollars Flowing? – ARTILLRY: A PUBLICATION AND INTELLIGENCE FIRM FOR AR & VR

Our friends at ARtillry are tracking  Augmented Reality investments, which we agree will eclipse Virtual Reality investment in the short term. The world is waiting to be annotated with AR experience.

Superdata has recently plotted the trajectory of funding levels so far, as a baseline for predicting what’s to come. Its biggest prediction is similar to one that we’ve made: AR investments will eclipse VR investments and accelerate faster.

Source: Data Point of the Week: Where are VR/AR Investment Dollars Flowing? – ARTILLRY: A PUBLICATION AND INTELLIGENCE FIRM FOR AR & VR