Jonah Sachs On Creating A "Coherent And Compelling Story" – TrackMaven

Jonah Sachs On Creating A “Coherent And Compelling Story”

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“We are programmed through our evolutionary biology to be both consumers and creators of story.”

That was Jonah Sachs, CEO of Free Range Studios and author of Winning The Story Wars, as quoted in the recent Harvard Business Review blog, “How To Tell A Great Story.”

We connected with Jonah for his take on the evolving role of storytelling in today’s digitally-driven marketing landscape. Read on for Jonah’s take on what we can expect from content marketing, and what it takes to stay ahead of the curve.

  • How did you get to where you are in your career today?

At 22, I was terrified of getting a job and not being noticed or appreciated. I thought my odd ways of thinking would get me in trouble. It actually just felt safer for me to start my own thing than face the rejection of the system. So that fear was step 1.

The next big decision was to work only for clients that I 100% believed in. I thought, “If I’m going to reach millions of people, can I bear to lie to them?” So when we launched and had no clients we still said that we would only serve mission-based, world-changing thinkers. If we hadn’t done that, we would have been swallowed before we got started.

And finally, the last thing that’s brought me here is learning from my successes and failures. I’ve learned that things travel and change minds when they’re embedded in powerful stories. Realizing it was all about the story and learning what that meant has defined my career.

  • Content Marketing means a lot of things to a lot of people. How do you define it?

Marketing that delivers valuable ideas and experiences to the customer — so valuable that they want to share it with others.

  • How do you see the strategic role of storytelling evolving for marketers?

It’s no longer about crafting a perfect story and then encapsulating it in a piece of media once or twice a year. It’s now about seeing your entire brand (or your client’s brand) as a story unfolding in the minds of your customers.

Every one of the thousands of touchpoints you engage with them on needs to be a chapter of that coherent and compelling story.

  • What’s your bold prediction for how digital marketing will change in the next five years?

I think the greatest successes will be harder and harder to spot. You’ll see less high production value websites that ask for user-generated content and polish it up into fancy brand-created communications. You’ll see fewer custom apps that are novel but not that useful.

The great successes will look much more like people just having conversations organically. The media that sparks these conversations will be lo-fi and unassuming. The opportunities to engage will feel less like marketing come-ons and more like fluid extensions of what you’re already doing.

Marketing will blend into the background — hopefully in ways that actually help people.

  • What is the most common mistake you see companies make with content?

It’s still all about themselves. When they tell their story they make themselves the heroes. But they’re not the hero — their customers are.

  • What does it take to be a great marketer today?

The ability to understand the science and data that surrounds us but not let it overwhelm the spark of creative inspiration. Combining magic and science has always taken a very special kind of thinker and it’s becoming harder and harder to balance with the increase of volume and demands.

  • Digital innovation has given brands the opportunity to interact with various audiences in creative new ways. Which brands do you admire as digital marketing innovators?

I’ve really enjoyed following Chipotle’s successes and occasional failures when it comes to creating values-based, story-driven content that people are so compelled to engage with. Everything they do reflects their brand story from the in-store experience to the online videos. It’s hard to hold a story together like that but they do it very well.

  • What’s your 2nd favorite breed of dog? (Besides Corgis, of course!)

I’ve always admired those Bernese Mountain Dogs.

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If you liked this interview, you might like our Maven-on-the-Spot Q&A’s with Walmart’s Donata Maggipinto On Serving The Customer With Content or GE’s Katrina Craigwell On “Content As Currency.”