Storytelling for Engagement – Details, episodes & analysis

At the heart of every product, every interaction, every sale is a person, are people, and as humans, we are wired to connect with others.  Today we talk to Trevor Stooke from Agenda Marketing about people-based marketing, people-based design and what it means for authenticity and brand storytelling.

Connect with Trevor: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevorstooke/

Connect with Miranda: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirandaoconnor-mba/

Learn more about The Art of Storytelling: https://www.theartofstorytelling.com/

In this episode of Storytelling for Engagement, host Miranda O’Connor speaks with Brian Gencher, a brand and marketing consultant and fractional CMO. Brian explains how storytelling humanizes a brand, builds emotional connections, and strengthens relationships with customers. The conversation dives into the critical role of brand positioning - why it’s the foundation of all marketing strategy, how it helps companies differentiate themselves, create clarity, drive customer loyalty, and attract the right talent. Brian outlines six key benefits of strong brand positioning, from influencing perceptions and simplifying decision-making to enhancing communication and long-term business success. 

Connect with Brian Gencher https://www.linkedin.com/in/briangencher/

Connect with Miranda: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirandaoconnor-mba/

Learn more about The Art of Storytelling: https://www.theartofstorytelling.com/

Welcome back. This is a recording of the panel discussion from the online premiere of Between Worlds. You'll hear from surfer, life coach and Aloha Award recipient Chris Dennis, Director of the film James O'Connor and Kacie Gonzalez and Duane Kenny, who were part of the dedicated team of brave people who brought Chris's story to the big screen and really opened the door on his journey into mentorship, philanthropy and surf therapy.

This is one of the most lively discussions you'll hear about content and the power it has to engage people and transform communities - video storytelling for community engagement. If you haven't watched Between Worlds or any of the other great productions our team has put out, head over to our website - https://www.theartofstorytelling.com/aos-films/

For video versions of these podcasts, go to our YouTube channel and hit Subscribe.

Join us as we explore the power of content with our special guest and friend Andrew James, co-founder of STREAMS Community Hub in Shelburne Ontario.

Well, at the end of the day, whether you're selling a product or providing a service, real connects to real, heart connects to heart. And if you can just open your heart and share truth, it will connect with somebody. It will resonate with somebody.

And if that honesty and truth coming from a sincere and honest place can connect with somebody else, that's going to make them move, that's going to make them respond.

Hello and welcome again to Video Storytelling for Community Engagement, a podcast for content creators. I'm Miranda O'Connor, co-founder of The Art of Storytelling. And in this episode, you'll hear from our director, James O'Connor, as he talks with Andrew James the co-founder of STREAMS Community Hub, a nonprofit organization focused on youth development in the creative arts in Shelburne, Ontario. Andrew shares their vision and contemplates the impact that content has had on their organization. And I want to urge everyone to please have a look at our social channels - in particular our YouTube channel has been flying under the radar, and there's a bunch of really great productions there, including two beautiful documentaries. The Edge and Between Worlds, as well as some insights into content marketing, including video versions of these podcasts. Now, let me get out of the way and hand you over to Andrew and James

so I’ll let you introduce yourself...

Yeah. Okay. Andrew James. So in high school the arts was my thing. I had two different directions that I could have gone. I was really good in graphic design and I was great in theater. So I think both of those passions is exactly like what I'm doing right now. Right? So fast forward and will probably go back and unpack some of that stuff, but Town Tees is our apparel decoration company, and that's where I get to be creative and do my graphic design side of things and printing the designs on T-shirts pretty much. And then STREAMS Community Hub is our registered charity where I could be that dramatic arts and other side of creativity and just allowing young people to have creative arts experiences and doing things like dramatic arts, circus arts, culinary arts painting and things like that.

So, right, basically the stuff that you don't do, if you do normal school or like - I know that schools these days offer more programs like that, but it's kind of like this is the stuff that's not being catered to?

Yeah, I think so. I think so. I think maybe some of the schools dabble in some of the things and where we take  

Yeah, you know, my kids are new to the Ontario school system, and one of the criticisms that we have or that they have, because they come home and they tell us you know, the facilities are great, like they have everything, you know, the makerspace is awesome and they get to go in there but like you said, diving deep, you know, they don't really have the time or the quality time, I should say, to really, you know, get into it. Some of these things take a long time, as you know to get the reward out it. You know, you can spend 8 hours doing something. My son does music production, as you know, and he's, in this room and, I’ll be like “get off the screen”. But he will spend four or five, six hours on one music track. Right.

Yeah.

School's not the environment for that, right? So I applaud what you do. And you do this with your wife, right?

Yes. Yes. She is one of the best partners ever. I kind of had a big dream. You know, I want to do this creative arts program school. And then she says, okay, so step one...

Listen to the panel discussion from the online Premiere of The Edge | Bruce Anderson - Natural Humanship. This project quickly evolved from a short video promo to an award winning documentary on humans as stewards of the earth.

• From Video Promos to...
• Award-Winning Films
• Content Strategy
• Natural Humanship

Featuring:
Hugh Blanc
James O’Connor
Bruce Anderson
Hosted by Julianne Neal

I met Bruce once briefly in Trinidad working. I was actually now taking a look at the film which was actually filming and so on before my time. Just put in perspective, I've worked with AOS as a video editor, so I was just taking a look at it and Bruce happened to be in the country - he popped by and I'm not sure what you're waiting for, James to do something. And because we were all waiting, you had a brief chat with us, and in that brief moment you shared a little bit about your philosophy and the thing that I remember you telling me in in that time 'cause we only had a brief time…

It was in discussing the idea of of how we how we form at a young age, we form reactions to things. And our mind, almost like an energy saver... our mind doesn't necessarily create brand new reactions for every scenario, but rather will reference. Similar incidents and sometimes those reference reactions don't match the current scenario. And so we don't even realize that we're sort of reacting with a pre-programmed response to something, when in fact the scenario doesn't call for that response, but we are actually just being sort of triggered to an old response to something which may have been inappropriate response that we developed in the 1st place.

So this was in about probably I would say 15 to 20 minute conversation that I had with Bruce the one time we met and the one conversation I had with Bruce, and that's a takeaway that that stuck with me so well. You know, just to put in perspective my viewpoint of Bruce is somebody that you you can speak to for a brief time and learn a hell of a lot that you can take away from it. You know it's kind of... You take away what you can. You can hold on to that type of stuff so

Thanks, it was a pleasure and I'll ask you a question: So here's my question: in sharing that with you - Did that information help you, any? At anytime along your journey from then to now? 

I think certainly... I can be honest, I can't necessarily tell you a specific example of overnight, and then I thought this at that point in time, but I think that it's... I won't say either that I think it wasn't something that I wasn't aware of on some level, but by bringing it to the forefront it makes it that much more impactful. And yes, it does make you It does make you take a second to consider your responses even in terms of how you feel about something, and I liken it as a writer. I liken it to credit to when you do a can you get criticism on your writing. Your instinct is to get defensive about it. Or for some people, their instinct is to automatically change what they've done, when in fact what you need to do is you need to listen to the criticism... Understand where it's coming from... Examine what you've done, and then you make the decision whether that is right for you to do that or not.

Meeting Bruce and hearing this is one thing, but Bruce doing the work with the horses, I think, is the is the key. And I like you had an awareness of these things, you know, and having awareness and and could say, yeah, I know where Bruce is coming from, but I sort of secondhand did this work in the round pen. Because I was in it with the subject that we would work with. You know, some amazing. I mean, I've made so many friends on this on this journey. But what Bruce talks about muscle memory, and and the horse, really is such an imposing way to have that muscle memory taught to you...

Join the AOS team to begin exploring the world of content strategy - and where stakeholder storytelling fits in to the plan.

Introduction to Content Strategy
Stakeholder Storytelling
Community Voices and Endorsements

Featuring:
Hugh Blanc
James O'Connor

Hosted by Julianne Neal

I said to somebody the other day. Content strategy is basically just like a business plan. People say "yes, content... but noise!" and the answer to that really is looking at your values and looking at what you really stand for and finding voices within your community of relevance that can support that message and can kind of echo it back and talk about their own life experiences and how you and your service or product has affected them and those life experiences, creating content and creating a story around it that's relevant that impacts you much more than just you know... content for content's sake or telling me about the product or service.

Gotcha, good morning guys - morning James, morning Hugh, it's so good to speak with both of you again today for our second episode of the podcast and we're going to be talking today about stakeholder storytelling and content strategy. Doesn't that sound exciting?

Yeah it does, if you work in the in the field we do!

So according to market muse, I will give you the strict definition from them. Content strategy is the ongoing process of transforming business objectives and goals into a plan that uses content as a primary means of achieving those goals. That's pretty wordy, right? So in your words, what is content strategy to you?

I wanted to firstly is take issue with that definition you read there because they used the term they were defining in the definition, which is like, you know, the number one rule. Don't do that. I'm just kidding, but we have to accept it the way we engage is as people is different than the way we used to engage. We went through a phase where we were struggling. People were adopting to the idea of we just need to create content. We need to constantly have new stuff coming to work with the algorithms and I think we've moved to the next step now where OK, we established that we understand the importance of content and now it comes back to sort of becoming more sophisticated and saying OK, it's not just about making sure I have something to post. It's about understanding what I'm going to post, towards what end and a sort of a business plan as James said, which I think he stole from Miranda... But having that that sort of business plan of of these things - creating this content, engaging with the with the public in a certain way in a certain way with the strategic end in mind.

The reason why we're still having this conversation now, why it's still important now, it's because it's 2021 and people are still doing content for content's sake and you can see it everyday you know, people just posting well it's Monday, what's my Monday meme? That's totally not the point. That's not what we're about. That's not what we're doing. We're about, you know, we might spend a little bit longer trying to identify who are the stakeholders and what can they bring to your story. Because we think that the results are far, far more impressive. Content is a funnel, you know that's the thing, it's just the first step in this huge funnel. Entertain everybody, trying to get everyone's attention, but it very quickly narrows down to be: "Oh well, that was fun. I've been entertained. But you know, this is not affecting me in any way, is not impacting me..." so you know I might engage with it, but what is the point for the brand? What's the point six months later, when they still haven't figured out what their values are and who they really want to talk to?

Explore 15 years at The Art of Storytelling Inc. helping businesses find and tell their stories. 

• Video and photography production
• Communications
• User generated content
• AOS Content Cloud App
• The future of storytelling
• Insights from AOS' founders

Featuring: Miranda O’Connor, James O’Connor
Hosted by: Julianne Neal

We’ve kind of settled on this niche because we know that this is what gives us our greatest joy is helping people to discover their stories, and I think a lot of video production companies trust that the client actually knows what their story really is and is able to verbalize it and explain it. 

But I do find that a lot of people rely on us to help them to discover what is it that they actually want to say, and what is it that makes them special.

Welcome all to the first episode of Video Storytelling for Community Engagement. A brand new podcast from the folks at AOS – the Art of Storytelling – which is run by my friends Miranda and James O’Connor. They are responsible for several award winning documentaries exploring such themes as youth development through sports and music, climate change, and equine therapy… but also for hundreds of videos for brands who want to leverage their story to make a greater impact. It’s been three years since they affectively moved their business and their lives from the Caribbean to Canada, six years since we last met at the Equus Film Festival in Camden, South Carolina, and an amazing 15 year journey for these two entrepreneurs, which I can’t wait to share with you right now.

You know we started this business on my mother’s dining room table many many years ago and we didn’t start off doing video stories. We started doing graphic design and then we started to do web design and we were doing web hosting at a point… so we really have done quite a lot of different things before we got to where we are today and what started as as photography then went into video. I do remember you know, the first time that we decided to invest in a digital camera. This is when digital cameras were becoming more available and it was so expensive we had to go to the bank and get a loan. And in those days we didn’t have any money we didn’t really know what we were doing and we kind of just like had faith that it was going to work and we went and borrowed money. We bought our first digital camera and I think it was like 3 or maybe 2 mega pixels like something ridiculous, you know and it cost it cost a huge amount of money in those days and I told him… I said, you know you, you better learn how to use this camera and make back this money. And he did, you know? And it just kind of went from there.

But you know, coming up to the point where we met you and Bruce, we were doing a lot of business videos, business stories, we were doing some social responsibility videos for some of the bigger companies. We had started doing a lot of oil and gas and financial work and government work. But you know, the business stories are kind of where it evolved from. That’s like that’s what we draw on mostly. A lot of it is in the editing, but a lot of it is also in who we bring into these stories. Who are the stakeholders that we bring in to interview to form a really good narrative about the brand.

People might take that for granted, but I wanted to say that a lot of the times we’re doing it in real time. So yes, we do put a lot of effort into the pre production side of it to make sure that we’re going to nail all of the objectives and everything. But because it’s a very organic process where… You don’t know what stakeholders are going to say. Ultimately, you don’t know what the what response you are going to get, and that’s what makes it so exciting and engaging because you’re literally discovering something as this thing unfolds, and so you you have to be on your toes. You have to be dynamic and you have to kind o

Today we are excited to share our conversation with photographer and visibility strategist, Bonnie Dickson. She speaks about using photography in your brand strategy and in your story, humanizing your content and using original photos to help tell your story in a way that truly stands out.

Connect with Bonnie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bdickson/
Connect with Miranda: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirandaoconnor-mba/
Learn more about The Art of Storytelling: https://www.theartofstorytelling.com/

Ruth Bay is a self-proclaimed branding geek. She joins Miranda to explore her perspective on brand storytelling, design, how it differs from marketing and how organizations bridge the gap between their intended brand identity goals and how are they actually perceived by audiences.

Connect with Ruth: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/ruthbay
Connect with Miranda: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirandaoconnor-mba/
Learn more about The Art of Storytelling: https://www.theartofstorytelling.com/

Our guest on this episode is David Gilbert, a professional voice over talent. David and Miranda discuss the importance of choosing the right voice for a project, how he embraces the character he portrays, and the impact of AI on the voice industry. As an experience and successful voice talent, David describes the amount of training and coaching required to create authentic and believable voice overs that connect the audience with the brand. Join us to explore some similarities in the strategy behind voice over and video storytelling.

Connect with David: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidgilbertvo/
Connect with Miranda: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirandaoconnor-mba/
Learn more about The Art of Storytelling: https://www.theartofstorytelling.com/