Most Outstanding Growth Marketing Consultancy 2021: We are Honored!

By Chad Alexander
on April 29, 2021

Story Collaborative was named the "Most Outstanding  Growth Marketing Consultancy 2021" by Corporate Vision.

We're honored to make this distinction, and we relish what this means for the company this year and beyond!

Part of the reason we were chosen for this distinction is because of a belief that we hold. And we aren't the most outstanding growth marketing consultancy because of what we do, but what other agencies do, or rather, don't do:

We believe that the current marketing agency model is unfair, and we believe there is a different way.

And here's where we stop talking about us, and start talking about the problems we have encountered with traditional agencies and even inbound agencies.

What is story-based marketing? Plus, four best practices.

By David Mills
on August 12, 2020

Story-based marketing is a growing, dramatic change in the way that brands are connecting and building loyal relationships with their customers. This approach is more powerful than you might think. It's developed beyond simply including stories in the engagement process. Four characteristics help define the difference between traditional and story-based marketing.

A common (but outdated) definition of story-based marketing goes something like this:

Values on Display: the Affect of COVID-19 on Your Brand Story

By Amy Alexander
on March 23, 2020

Values.
For many organizations, this is a concept passed around during high-level board meetings, or developed in the strategic planning or story brand process, but quickly forgotten. Even in a workplace that has their values displayed and posted for frequent employee review, company values still often feel dusty and inanimate -- not active verbs as much as required reading once or twice a year.

But now, more than ever, your corporate values are on display.

COVID-19 is boiling your Brand Story down to values.

Stories are the Ultimate Human Technology

By David Mills
on January 29, 2020

It's easy to get excited about the latest "shiny object." We're excited about robotics, machine learning and creating computers that will be doing a variety of human tasks. We're even making quantum particles work for us in computing, and hopefully, they'll deliver value in the future. Software is making it possible for us to take what was available previously only to the mega-corporation into even the smallest start-up or to the individual home.

What Communities Can Learn from Dia de los Muertos

Understanding the Customer Journey & Home Care Marketing

By David Mills
on November 14, 2017

Both customers and employees go through a journey before they contact a home care or home health organization. Like a good story, the customer journey in home care marketing begins with a challenge or a need that has to be overcome. The presence of that need is what sets the journey in motion.

Millennials Want Stories Not Just Ads

By David Mills
on August 17, 2016

Story Collaborative recently completed a series of focus groups on millennial with the assistance of Honestly Magazine and the team at Workforce & Community Education from Germanna Community College. Focus group participants provided insights into their habits, preferences and life challenges which we combined with other research to shed light on strategies for effective business communication. This is the first of several articles.

Working Well with Your Designer

By David Mills
on May 12, 2016

We live in a visually demanding world -- we need graphics for almost everything in marketing. That means involvement with designers is a part of daily life. It's especially true if you're committed to keeping on-brand web content, emails, and social posts. I've learned a few things about working with designers in the last 10 years. (At least they don't laugh at me quite as often.) In this short video, Amy Alexander, our brand guru (not self proclaimed), shares some of the common questions that she gets working with business and organizational leaders.

A Powerful Sales Pipeline is Driven by Brand Stories

By David Mills
on March 28, 2016

We need marketing that truly connects in order to deliver qualified customers. An effective sales funnel that doesn’t feel like sales at all comes from the warmth of an engaging story. In turn, those story-based activities deliver customers who are engaged with the experience - engaged with you. With so many media choices, allowing customers to experience your brand story from the beginning—while still ensuring the greatest number of qualified leads from our marketing investment—can be a challenge.