We have been keeping track of the traffic associated with Google + and it is clear that companies and marketing firms are taking it very seriously.  Marketing bloggers like Chris Brogan have even gone to the trouble of outlining some steps to get you and your efforts up to speed.  Take a look at Chris’ post on getting started with what is shaping up as a powerful tool.

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/get-started-with-google/

BY: JONATHAN GOTTSCHALL

Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal, says science backs up the long-held belief that story is the most powerful means of communicating a message.

In business, storytelling is all the rage. Without a compelling story, we are told, our product, idea, or personal brand, is dead on arrival. In his book, Tell to Win, Peter Guber joins writers like Annette Simmons and Stephen Denning in evangelizing for the power of story in human affairs generally, and business in particular. Guber argues that humans simply aren’t moved to action by “data dumps,” dense PowerPoint slides, or spreadsheets packed with figures. People are moved by emotion. The best way to emotionally connect other people to our agenda begins with “Once upon a time…”

Plausible enough. But claims for the power of business storytelling are usually supported only with more story. Guber, for example, backs up his bold claims with accounts of how he, or one of his famous friends, told a good story and achieved a triumph of persuasion. But anecdotes don’t make a science. Is “telling to win” just the latest fashion in a business world that is continually swept with new fads and new gurus pitching the newest can’t-miss secret to success? Or does it represent a real and deep insight into communications strategy?

Check out this VIDEO on storytelling.

I think it’s a real insight. I’m a literary scholar who uses science to try to understand the vast, witchy power of story in human life. Guber and his allies have arrived through experience at the same conclusions science has reached through experiment.

Until recently we’ve only been able to speculate about story’s persuasive effects. But over the last several decades psychology has begun a serious study of how story affects the human mind. Results repeatedly show that our attitudes, fears, hopes, and values are strongly influenced by story. In fact, fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than writing that is specifically designed to persuade through argument and evidence.

What is going on here? Why are we putty in a storyteller’s hands? The psychologists Melanie Green and Tim Brock argue that entering fictional worlds “radically alters the way information is processed.” Green and Brock’s studies shows that the more absorbed readers are in a story, the more the story changes them. Highly absorbed readers also detected significantly fewer “false notes” in stories–inaccuracies, missteps–than less transported readers. Importantly, it is not just that highly absorbed readers detected the false notes and didn’t care about them (as when we watch a pleasurably idiotic action film). They were unable to detect the false notes in the first place.

And, in this, there is an important lesson about the molding power of story. When we read dry, factual arguments, we read with our dukes up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally and this seems to leave us defenseless.

This is exactly Guber’s point. The central metaphor of Tell to Win is the Trojan Horse. You know the back story: After a decade of gory stalemate at Troy, the ancient Greeks decided they would never take Troy by force, so they would take it by guile. They pretended to sail home, leaving behind a massive wooden horse, ostensibly as an offering to the gods. The happy Trojans dragged the gift inside the city walls. But the horse was full of Greek warriors, who emerged in the night to kill, burn, and rape.

Guber tells us that stories can also function as Trojan Horses. The audience accepts the story because, for a human, a good story always seems like a gift. But the story is actually just a delivery system for the teller’s agenda. A story is a trick for sneaking a message into the fortified citadel of the human mind.

Guber’s book is relentlessly optimistic about the power of story to persuade. But as the bloody metaphor of the Trojan Horse suggests, story is a tool that can be used for good or ill. Like fire, it can be used to warm a city or to burn it down. Guber understands this, but he emphasizes story’s ability to bring on change for the better. His book is about people who tell good stories to overcome resistance, usually for laudable reasons. But, approached from a slightly different angle, Tell to Win is a book is about highly capable, experienced professionals suckering for story over and over (and over) again.

So there are two big lessons to take from Guber’s book and from the new science of storytelling. First, storytelling is a uniquely powerful form of persuasive jujitsu. Second, in a world full of black belt storytellers, we had all better start training our defenses. Master storytellers want us drunk on emotion so we will lose track of rational considerations, relax our skepticism, and yield to their agenda. Yes, we need to tell to win, but it’s just as important to learn to see the tell coming–and to steel ourselves against it.

The new gospel of business storytelling offers a challenge to common views of human nature. When we call ourselves Homo sapiens, we are arguing that it is human sapience–wisdom, intelligence–that really sets our species apart. And when we think we can best persuade with dispassionate presentation of costs and benefits, we are implicitly endorsing this view. But we are beasts of emotion more than logic. We are creatures of story, and the process of changing one mind or the whole world must begin with “Once upon a time.”

Jonathan Gottschall teaches English at Washington and Jefferson College and is the author The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. His work has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, among others.

Ever wondered just how many crazy things you could do with your camera? Finnish artist Janne Parviainen is constantly stretching those limits using a technique called light painting. The result is wonderfully eerie and like nothing you’d expect to see coming out of a camera. Definitely a treat for the eyes – and mind!

Check out Janne’s gallery on Flickr to view over 4 years’ worth of images!

We think of design and engineering as two very different things, but sometimes it’s possible to combine the two. Liquor giant Pernod Ricard has done this with their new Absolut Unique Edition vodka, re-engineering their bottling machines to create almost 4 million unique bottle designs right, down to numbered labels. Although the company is known for being an innovator in packaging design, this is the first time that they have made a series in which each item is completely unique. Are they innovative, or just crazy? That’s for you to decide.

Via creativity online.

Ever wondered what the internet thinks of you? Compare yourself to more than 6.5 million online users with the National Media Museum’s Life Online Mirror and find out what your social media sites have to say about your personality, friendships, and how these sites affect your life.

Read more or check out the mirror here!

Just how epic can a commercial for public transportation really be? Danish advertising firm M2Film cranks it up to 11 with this deliciously over-the-top ad for public transportation company Midtraffik. You have to see it to believe it.

Find out more at good.is

Did you know that in the UK, the only art ever considered “public” is architecture or works that have been specifically commissioned? When is street art truly art, and when is it a crime or a nuisance? Alfie Dennen, British creative and founder of Big Art Mob, says society needs to take a different look at street art and learn to expand its awareness and appreciation of this very public medium.

Read the full article at good.is

Studies now show that the average American looks at upwards of 4,000 advertisements every single day. With the constant demand to keep up with their competition, sometimes companies forget to focus on making their ads good. Doug Pray, director of the 2009 film Art & Copy, talks about how this media saturation effects advertisers’ creativity.

Read the full article at Good.is

Yeah, your logo and company name are important, but a good tagline can do wonders for your brand. Sometimes the biggest thing you can do is to narrow your brand down to a single sentence. Check out this article on the importance of the tagline and ten brands that totally nailed it!

Read the full article at Hubspot

Brands are moving further away from direct advertising, whose metrics that are hard to calculate, and into original video content–content that is created not to sell but to engage. Here’s how to tell a story and create brand loyalty.

Read the full article at Fastcompany

In the past two weeks, Bozeman-based production company CHISEL Industries has been honored with two prestigious awards, nationally and internationally.

Earlier this month, CHISEL was named First Place International GOLD Winner 2012 Circle of Excellence at the Annual CASE AWARDS (Council for Advancement and Support of Excellence). CASE is the standard of excellence for marketing in higher education. The campaign for recruitment of new students was for Sweet Briar College, a private, liberal arts women’s college in Virginia. Nearly all CHISEL’s production crew for the ad spot were Montana State University alumni, and featured a soundtrack performed by Bozeman native, and HATCH Festival groundbreaker, Stephanie Quayle, and composed by Deej Hofer of Bozeman-based SNAP Music, The campaign’s effectiveness has been proven by a measurable increase in applications to the school, and its capacity for sparking alumni / booster support. See the video here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qRlmG69u38

This past week, CHISEL’s campaign for Bozeman-based Music Villa received top honors at NAMM’s (National Association of Music Merchants) Annual Top 100 Dealers Awards. The spot was created to raise awareness for Music Villa’s new “School of Music” lessons program, and has grown the business by reaching a new audience. Music Villa is owned by Bozeman High graduate Paul Decker, whose team was also awarded a top honor for innovation in their social media campaigns. You can see the spot here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIcxikxUmds
On August 23rd, CHISEL will be releasing the premiere of their multi-platform campaign for Montana-based HuntingGPSmaps Technologies. The collaboration of several Montana-based partner companies, including Schnee’s Boots, Shoes & Hunting Gear, Sitka Gear, Mystery Ranch Backpacks, Sweetgrass Rods, as well as internationally renowned GPS technology company Garmin, means the video will have an immediate audience reach in the millions at its launch. You can learn more about this evolved GPS mapping technology that allows you to see defined and layered land ownership at huntinggpsmaps.com.
Due to the dynamic nature of their productions and their contributions to innovation in Montana’s media arts market, CHISEL has also been tapped to create the video introductions for the Governor’s Innovative Business Awards, being held Tuesday, August 28th in the Strand Union Building on the MSU Campus. The awards will highlight the significant advances made in Montana’s innovation economy over the past several years, and Montana companies that have made an impact in the global market. Details on the awards event can be found at http://www.innovatemontana.com/.

Founded by Yarrow Kraner, a Montana State University graduate, CHISEL has been a constant launching pad and incubator for students and graduates from Montana State University, and has employed and housed internships for over 50 MSU students from the film, graphic design, and business school departments. Kraner’s next directing project is for Virgin Atlantic during the upcoming 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

Welcome back to Chisel Industries!

We’ve been in a state of transition with the site for about a week now. Please bear with us as we restructure and rebuild our content. This post might even disappear!

We want to ensure that you have the best experience possible while browsing through our mountain of past work, and couldn’t be more excited that you are interested in us. Your patronage is greatly appreciated.

Lots of projects on the way! Stay tuned.