So Apple has apologised for its “crush” iPad ad. The big question is, how on earth did they think it was a good idea in the first place. Anybody with the slightest sense of storytelling would’ve realised how dramatically misguided and totally offbrand the ad is. Keep it simple The simple StoryWorks approach to storytelling, […]
We’re all Celebrity Squares now Who remembers the ITV quiz show Celebrity Squares? Nine kinda well known people stuck in boxes on top of each other, who’d turn into giant noughts and crosses if they got the answer to a question right. Totally dignified. And who’d have thought that in 2020 we’d ALL have turned […]
Brace yourself. Prepare to be outraged. Boris Johnson is right: it’s the Surrender Act. Why? Because he’s called it that and, crucially, in a country actively bored with politics, it’s cutting through in focus groups. What is Johnson’s opponents’ response? They are trying to reframe the debate. They claim, with some justification, that calling it […]
Is ‘The Deck’ killing your presentations? Everyone’s heard of ‘Death By Powerpoint’, but ‘The Deck’ is its insidious, secret, lurking in the shadows younger sister. Rosa Kleb’s and Villanelle’s more lethal daughter. The global killer? And ‘The Deck’ has been making an appearance a lot recently in all sizes of organisations. Although I’d say the […]
Bill Gates thought it so important, he gave it away free to all US students who graduated in 2018. What was it? Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund’s Factfulness. It’s a great read with a great contradiction at its heart. Read it and you come away with, possibly perversely, both a more positive […]
We are bewitched by reason. The spell it casts is so powerful it blinds us to the evidence. It means that – whether we’re trying, for example, to pitch for business, make a sale, inspire our team or educate our students – we place our faith in reason and facts. Whereas all the research shows […]
How do you get your (true) story heard? It turns out Mulder and Scully were wrong. It’s not the truth that’s out there, but the lies. Soroush Vosoughi, a data scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was so fired up by the lies he found on social media after the Boston Marathon bombing he […]
