Employer Brands for Home Care, Healthcare and Staffing

By David Mills
on June 30, 2017

What your employees say about your company matters. If a brand is the sum total of customer experiences with a company or organization, then what is an employer brand?  It’s the total experience of an individual as an employee.  The employer brand sums up their experience beginning from the first moment they learn about your company, through the process of applying for work, and then their experiences within the company culture.  Just like a customer, employees have a story to tell about the company. Your customers are telling your brand story, but so are your employees. 

5 Steps to Sync Up Your Brand Story and Brand Platform

By David Mills
on June 02, 2017

You might know about brand platforms and even have one that you use, how about a brand story?

It’s easy to get confused about brand stories, so it helps to define what they are not. Brand stories are not the historical version of how your organization got started, nor are they the collection of marketing lines and images that you use in your marketing mix.

4 Ways to Make Your Brand Story Count (Start with Employees)

By David Mills
on August 03, 2016

If you listen to what Jeff Bezos of Amazon says about our brands, you’ll probably agree: “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

Your Brand Story

The story part of the brand is important too because the impressions that people have and share about our companies aren’t just fleeting observations-- they are stories that get told over and over again, woven into the broader life narratives that people remember and take with them into all of their relationships.

The Do's and Don'ts of Brand Guidelines

By Amy Alexander
on February 17, 2016

Writing a great set of brand guidelines is well worth the effort. Guidelines surrounding your identity are unique because they provide an opportunity for employees, designers, writers, stakeholders, and outsiders to interact with your brand. Suddenly, an employee can be your greatest promoter, catching the vision of your organization.

Better Marketing - Who is Your Brand Storyteller?

By David Mills
on September 15, 2015

No matter how much effort or money we invest in building our brand, there are two groups of people who ultimately decide how a brand story is shared. Employees and customers are the real brand storytellers. They define the value, reach, and impact of a brand. Success is achieved when we understand the role they play in our company narrative.

The Internet called your website. But, no one answered.

By David Mills
on July 15, 2015

Yes, the Internet called. And it got smarter.

It wasn't really the internet, as a whole. It was web browsers -- namely Google, Bing, and Yahoo -- that were looking for real content on your website.  As you know, these powerful search engines "crawl" your website on a regular basis. They are constantly indexing its content and structure. Since the end of 2013 search engines have learned something new, they want content that looks a lot more like a real conversation (its called "semantic search").

The Brand Story Your Website Is Telling

By David Mills
on May 15, 2015

Your website is telling stories about you.

Digital storytelling reaches beyond the news and content that you post, to the web technology that delivers your brand.  A web or social encounter is often the first experience your customer has with your business or nonprofit.   Visitors to your digital properties are not just reading or seeing your story, they are experiencing it through the medium of your web properties.

How to Make Your Brand a Story

By David Mills
on March 05, 2015

Culture Shift

You don't have to look far to see the shift toward story-based marketing. A quick glance through a magazine, prime-time television, even the latest Super Bowl ads makes it clear – stories are working as a way to tell brand stories. This is an important change in marketing trends, part of it due to the power of social marketing.  Significant industry experts report that multiple corporate brands – ExxonMobil, Dow, Google, and IBM to name a few – have all upped the messaging related to their corporate story.

Insights into Story-Based Marketing

By David Mills
on November 25, 2014

Story-based marketing is a primary focus of the Story Collaborative.   Story-based marketing includes skills, practices and technology, but more than anything else it moves us toward a new way of thinking.  As we undergo a story paradigm shift, we can transition from antiquated and ineffective approaches of marketing, based in a rapidly expiring perspective about people and communication, toward a viral and powerful approach that places our goods, service-- our value-- into the lives of consumers directly through their story.

Demystifying brand Stories

By David Mills
on November 25, 2014

The word "story" has become a buzz-word in the last couple of years. Everyone seems to be using the vague concept of story in reference to marketing strategy and brand equity. But, what is story in a professional context?