Scott Dikkers, founding editor of The Onion, its longest serving editor-in-chief, winner of a Peabody award and New York Times Bestselling author of How To Write Funny joins the podcast to give his advice on how to best use humor as a tool in the workplace.

Humor can be an incredibly powerful tool in storytelling but it comes with a big risk. Dikkers gives his expert advice on how to employ his 11 funny filters to make your joke succeed, but also acknowledges that not all jokes will. He explains how all comedians tell jokes that don’t land, and gives advice on what to do when it happens.

Now more than ever, storytelling has become central to companies efforts to be heard and recognized by their customers. The art of telling multiple, yet consistent, stories is equally as critical.

We recently had AJ West, Branding and Communications team member at CP&Y, Inc. share her insight on how they effectively utilize storytelling to connect with and earn the business of their clients.

Our culture is searching for meaning.

Stories are our way of trying to find it.

Stories create an opportunity to empathize with a character who is on his own journey to find meaning, usually through some struggle or conflict.

Story, in a business context, creates an opportunity for us to emotionally appeal to and influence our employees, stakeholders, customers, and partners by providing a path to meaning.

It’s that emotional appeal that is so motivating and effective.

You’re a provider of goods for an ever-growing consumer base, but in this age of instant connection and communication, you find your customers demand things beyond just the goods you provide.

They want connection with their suppliers. They want to know the people behind the curtain who make their goods and services possible. Simply put: they want to know your story.

What do you do in the face of this? Fortunately, we have Aubry Fielding and Kristina Zepeda—both marketers at Swagelok—on The Narrative to explain how best to lay out your story to customers at trade shows.

Dave Marvit, Innovation Strategy Consultant from the Open Innovation Gateway at Fujitsu, discusses the most effective ways to use narrative in business. Marvit talks about his experience working with large corporations in their struggle to stay innovative and how to address their anxieties and concerns through the use of storytelling. He explains how he co-creates a story with these businesses to look at what their future may bring.

Marvit stresses that narrative can be used to both convince and motivate and explains how he utilizes prezi as a tool in this process.

Your product provides solutions, it increases value, so you share stories of success. But are those stories remembered?

In a world of intensely competing imagery, how do you tell engaging stories potential clients will remember when decisions are made and your product hangs in the balance?

Carmen Simon, a dual PhD in Cognitive Psychology and Instructional Technology, joins us today to connect science with practicality. She shows how to ensure your business stories “stick” with potential clients, so when decisions are made, your story is at the forefront.

Carmen is also the founder of Memzy, a company working with corporations to engage their consumers in memorable, effective ways.

In a mature industry such as Sharp’s, storytelling is everything.

Products in their industry have become almost commoditized. You can’t really rely on differentiating the product itself to drive interest and the sale. It’s all about the value you can bring to a company by packaging your product with an attractive set of additional ancillary products and services that a customer would be sourcing anyway.

In Sharp’s case, storytelling becomes the means of differentiation.

Listen in to hear Craig Hanson, Associate Director of Marketing at Sharp Business Systems, explain how storytelling helps the company present previous cases of success to prospects in a way that they want to hear.

One of the greatest tools a storyteller has in their possession is the ability to show, not tell.

A good storyteller can find a story anywhere, even in data and numbers. A great storyteller can show that story visually, without ever having to speak a word. And being great is easier than you think.

Our latest guest on The Narrative podcast is Mikko Järvenpää, CEO of Infogram. Infogram provides its customers with the tools to present data in a way that tells a visually compelling story, instead of presenting lifeless numbers.

Sales presentations can be the actual worst.

One minute into an hour full of bullet points, mismatched colors, and awkward transitions, most people have made their judgement about the presentation. Spoiler: it’s not good.

Our guest on The Narrative podcast this week was Ralph Barsi from ServiceNow. Ralph has more than 25 years experience in sales and learned that the one key to engaging any audience is through conversational storytelling. And an engaged audience is more likely to turn from prospect to customer.

Storytelling is a tradition as old as humanity itself. We tell stories to connect, to remember, to entertain, and, ultimately, to communicate. Stories unify us, draw us out of our worlds and into that of someone else--we are wired to engage. The better the story, the deeper the connection.

Our first guest on The Narrative podcast was Kelly Stoetzel from TED. Kelly is the Director of Content at TED, working with speakers to cultivate and refine the stories, ideas, and content of their talks. Whether you realize it or not, storytelling is backbone of every great TED talk you’ve heard and it’s not by coincidence.