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Mythic Strategies for Modern Storytelling

Joshua Johnson@Joshywashington

Content Creator, Content Marketing Consultant

editor-at-large

My Story1986

Italy 2003500+ person travel story email chain

1000+ travel blogs150+ videosAudience of millions

Aruba 2013

In 10 years of Travel I’ve Discovered 2 Core Truths

•Everyone has a journey to undertake, but you have to own it.

•The story of that journey - the lessons and morals -are very important personally and culturally.

•Founded 2006

•2MM monthly visitors

•14,000+ pieces of content

•100’s of contributors

•Community of 1000’s of active travelers

•500,000+ following daily on social and RSS

•Working with top brands to create original travel content

Matador tells stories that connect people to the world (and brands to people)

Matador has gained the audience it has because it is a brand of storytellers for storytellers that, through the connectedness of digital media, has create a rock solid brand culture.

5 Reasons why your Brand should be

Creating Content (telling stories)

NOW

Text

#1 Real Engagement

#2 the gift that keeps on giving

Text

Published 2009 - still #1 Google search

Text

#3 connect your platforms

#4 content is social currency

#5 you can create content NOW

+ + +

+ = WINNING!

But how?

that’s easy...

Tell a STORY!

‘The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories

it loves and believes in.’ - Harold Goddard

STORY IS EVERYTHING

•Storytelling was a quantum leap in information technology.

•Story describes the world and how you should behave in it.

•Stories build our culture, morals, national and personal identity.

STORY IS EVERYTHING•Stories are vehicles for values.

•Stories break through receptivity barriers with metaphor and emotional language that can be repeated.

•The best stories self replicate - go viral.

Stories Create our Cultural DNA

The Edge of the Knife•I had to find a way to progress professionally but not

compromise my authenticity. Dealing with travel brands, hotel chains and corporate messages can be creative suicide. The travel industry (as a whole) DOES NOT know how to tell authentic stories - and a professional travel storyteller can be led astray quickly...and wither...and die.

•The following tools gave me a new way of thinking about what I do - so that regardless of where I am or who the client is, I can tell authentic and meaningful stories.

‘Winning the Story Wars’ by Jonah Sachs

Value Statements

Human Needs and Values

•In the 1940’s the psychologist Abraham Maslow studied top achievers who were living out their life’s purpose to chart what makes exceptional people stand apart.

•Maslow discovered a structure of human needs that seem to follow a basic progression - we call this ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’.

•Bottom of the pyramid = deficiency needs•Top of the pyramid = self actualizing VALUES

Travel is a Self Actualizing EventRecreational travel is a top-of-the-

pyramid activity...

...and people love to broadcast that!

The Values found in our location’s culture:

The Values expressed in our products and services:

The Values that we feel resonate with our customers:

Exercise: Identifying Core Brand Values

• WHOLENESS the need to feel connected to others and apart of something larger.

• PERFECTION the need to seek mastery of a skill or vocation, often through hard work.

• JUSTICE the need to live by high moral values and to see the world ordered by morality.

• RICHNESS the need to examine life in all its complexity and diversity, to seek new experience.

• SIMPLICITY the need to understand the underlying essence of things.

• BEAUTY the need to create and experience aesthetic pleasure.

• TRUTH the need to experience and express reality without distortion, to tear down falsehood.

• UNIQUENESS the need to express personal gifts, creativity and nonconformity.

• PLAYFULNESS the need for a joyful experience.

from ‘Winning the Story Wars’ by Jonah Sachs

Broadcasting your Core Values

•Are you recognizing/connecting to the Values of your customers?

•Are your Values represented in your marketing and website copy?

•Are your Values apparent in your facilities and amenities?

Look for your Values in ActionLook at your brand’s social media accounts and

identify how/if your CORE VALUES are being broadcast to your intended audience.

What do your Values look like on Facebook? .... Twitter? ...your website? ...your blog?

Heros Wanted

Joseph Campbell

HJ for Travel Storytellers•Each traveler is a HERO.

•The Journey is a transformative act.

•The ‘Elixir’ or moral outcome of the Journey is of great personal and collective importance.

•Each act of travel contains a HERO’S JOURNEY.

THE MENTOR: The embodiment of your brand. You are not the Hero, you are the force that puts the hero in motion.

ALLIES: Secondary characters that aid the Mentor and the Hero.

THE HERO: The embodiment of your core audience that you seek to reach. Your ‘ideal’ customer.

Your Brand’s Hero’s Journey from ‘Winning the Story Wars’ by Jonah Sachs

THE SPECIAL WORLD: The ‘World’ of travel that your storytelling takes place in. This place is ‘Special’ in that it is foreign and exotic.

MENTOR’S GIFT: That special something that you give your Brand Hero that makes their journey possible, i.e. inspiration, information - giving the Hero the Brand Gift is your most important function as Mentor.

THE ELIXIR: How, ultimately, life is changed for the better.

The Hero

The Ordinary World

The Mentor

The Mentor’s Gift

The Special World

Allies, Helpers

The Treasure

The Elixir

most liked FB pic

742 likes439 likes

1.5k likes

The SPECIAL WORLD wins!

My Marriott Marquis : The Ordinary World

Marquis: Call to Adventure

Marquis: Brand Gift

Marquis: Special World

Thou Shalt Create Content

10 Commandments of Digital Storytelling

#1 Create a Process

We aim to share/engage x5 social media daily.We aim to create x3 original content a week.We aim to publish x2 blogs a week.We aim to create and publish x2 videos a month.

#2 think outside the box

#3 explore your culture

#4 inspire wonder

#5 use your cell phone...a lot

Food and Beverage Manager updates with his cell constantly & gets great engagement.

• Juxtapose contrasting images• Create a before-and-after sequence• Produce a photographic series

#6 Use Smart Phone Apps for Visual Storytelling

Instafood Instaplace Instaweather

Colorsplash

#7 be human

#8 announce your values

#9 be (extremely) visual

#10 outsource your storytelling•court photographers / videographers.

•host cross-brand events with a strong social components.

•incentivize content with employees and guests.

•host bloggers / create a blogger event.

•curate content

•UGC contests and promotions

Tell Value-based Stories that Empower

your Brand Hero’s Journey

Thank You!JOSHUA JOHNSON

Content Creator, Content Marketing Consultant and Storyteller...for HIRE!

@joshywashingtonjosh@matadornetwork.com