Visual Storytelling Today

As we’re all locked down at home for a couple of weeks now to slow down the expansion of the coronavirus pandemic, I realized there is a unique storytelling dynamic at play here that begs the question:

How do you adapt your personal and brand story in uncertain times? You see, if you let your personal worries take over and the story you tell yourself is negative, how can you expect to tell an inspiring brand story to your employees and customers? And this is the topic for our show today.

To unpack this topic and discuss the threads that connect the personal and brand stories we tell, I am excited to have Natalie Kusturic, a Licensed Marriage And Family Therapist, and Jennifer Hudson, corporate communications strategist at Think Beyond Public Relations.

Watch this episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/C8CFSNPPXT8

Learn more about our guest on VSI blog: https://www.visualstorytell.com/blog/how-to-adapt-your-personal-brand-stories-in-uncertain-times

This podcast is brought to you by the Visual Storytelling Institute (VSI) from Miami, FL. Learn more at VisualStorytell.com

Order Shlomi Ron's new book: 
Total Acuity: Tales with Marketing Morals to Help You Create Richer Visual Brand Stories

In this episode, I chat with William Warren, Founder & CEO of The Sketch Effect. His company is harnessing the power of visual communication to make their clients’ ideas understandable, memorable, and shareable. The art of live sketching at events is a fantastic example of visual storytelling at its best. 

What you will learn?

• What is live sketching? Are there several types? What benefits does it provide? And in what contexts?
• How do you define Visual Storytelling from a live sketching perspective?
• Can you share a few examples and discuss how the visual story was created? Particular surprising elements you include? Target emotions? And what was the audience's response?
• Visual grammar or vocabulary means a) basic narrative elements and b) branded elements, right? How are you customizing a visual vocabulary for your clients?
• Live sketching is in essence real-time translation of the spoken word in events into a visual story. Can you talk more about the process of Active Listening your artists apply?
• Can you share your top 3 tips on how to bring to life ideas at events with live sketching?

And much more!

Watch this episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/Jgo0nlE0mtI

Learn more about our guest on VSI blog: hhttps://www.visualstorytell.com/blog/the-art-of-live-sketching-at-events

This podcast is brought to you by the Visual Storytelling Institute (VSI) from Miami, FL. Learn more at VisualStorytell.com

Order Shlomi Ron's new book: 
Total Acuity: Tales with Marketing Morals to Help You Create Richer Visual Brand Stories

In this episode, I chat with Stephanie Paterik, an Executive Editor at Adweek. With the growing popularity of content marketing in recent years, we’ve started seeing more and more brands like Marriott, Verizon or Amex that instead of outsourcing their visual storytelling programs, bring them in-house and in essence operate like media companies. With this mind, I had a great time chatting with Stephanie about How to Tell Visual Stories Like A Media Company and this way have her share tips and best practices for you, the marketer who plans to start or revamp your in-house visual storytelling operations. 

What you will learn?

- How do you define Visual Storytelling as a media executive?

- What was your journey starting the Visual Newsroom at Adweek?

- What storytelling tactics do you use to emotionally connect with your audience?

- Can you share 1-2 success stories and how do you measure success?

- Where do you see the future of visual storytelling is headed? Any particular trends marketers should pay attention to?

- What are your top 3 tips for telling visual stories like a media company?

And much more!

Watch this episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/Jgo0nlE0mtI

Learn more about our guest on VSI blog: https://www.visualstorytell.com/blog/how-to-tell-visual-stories-like-a-media-company

This podcast is brought to you by the Visual Storytelling Institute (VSI) from Miami, FL. Learn more at VisualStorytell.com

Order Shlomi Ron's new book: 
Total Acuity: Tales with Marketing Morals to Help You Create Richer Visual Brand Stories

In this podcast episode, I chat with Natalie Kusturic, a Licensed Marriage And Family Therapist, based in Ft Lauderdale, FL to discuss How do Stories Shape Reality? We talked about the incredible parallels between how visual storytellers rewrite stories of their customers to drive product sales and enhance brand narratives, whereas therapists rewrite painful stories their clients tell themselves in order to achieve self-awareness and joy. You'll find a ton of inspiration and fresh perspectives.

What you will learn?

- What is the most common roadblock clients need help rewriting painful stories?

- How does the end-to-end story-rewriting process work?

- What is the visual storytelling strategy to change the story’s meanings or resolution from negative to positive? What are the mental and physical reminders you use?

- In marriage therapy, there are naturally two conflicting stories that create a gap where a negative reality is born. How do you meld distinct stories from “my story” to “our story”?

- Can you share success stories to illustrate your process?

- What are your top 3 tips marketers could take to improve their reality and their customers’?

And much more!

Watch this episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/91kdQDbKTLU

Learn more about our guest on VSI blog: https://www.visualstorytell.com/blog/how-do-stories-shape-reality

This podcast is brought to you by the Visual Storytelling Institute (VSI) from Miami, FL.

Order Shlomi Ron's new book: 
Total Acuity: Tales with Marketing Morals to Help You Create Richer Visual Brand Stories

In this episode, I chat with Jaime Permuth, an award-winning photographer and professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York. With the tremendous growth in photo sharing (people share 95 million photos on Instagram every day!), I am often asked how can you tell a story in a single photo? With video, it's much easier as it's, in essence, a sequence of images where you can tell a complete story with different characters and scenes. But what you do when you need to compress an entire story into a single scene? I discussed with Jaime about his storytelling approach, the key narrative elements he uses. Jaime also presented a few photos and discussed their backstories and the visual storytelling technique the photographer used. Fascinating discussion!

• What was the journey that led you to be involved in photography?

• What are the key elements that constitute a visual grammar of a photo?

• How can you use these visual grammar elements to tell a compelling story in a single photo?

• How do you create an emotional connection between a photo and the audience?

And much more.

To see the photo examples, Jaime discusses watch this episode video recording on Youtube: https://youtu.be/zkT2D_GbW_c

Learn more about our guest on VSI blog: https://www.visualstorytell.com/blog/how-to-personalize-visual-stories-without-creeping-out-your-audience

This podcast is brought to you by the Visual Storytelling Institute (VSI) from Miami, FL.

Order Shlomi Ron's new book: 
Total Acuity: Tales with Marketing Morals to Help You Create Richer Visual Brand Stories

In this episode, I chat with Vince Jeffs, Senior Director, Product Strategy, Marketing AI & Decisioning at Pegasystems. We talked about what is hyper-personalization in the age of AI and what are the implications for visual storytellers.

A bit about Vince, he is Senior Director, Product Strategy, Marketing AI & Decisioning, at Pegasystems, where he’s responsible for Product Strategy, positioning, messaging, and thought leadership for Pega’s Decision Hub – “Always-On Customer Engagement Brain”, which uses artificial intelligence & machine learning to optimize customer engagement. Vince has over 25 years of experience in Marketing Technology (Martech) and CX / CRM systems, working for IBM, Unica, and Saas to name a few.

I especially like the two mind-boggling examples of hyper-personalization Vince shares: the first brand got it wrong and annoyed its audience, while the second brand even though got it right, crossed into the creepiness zone and created an uproar. Watch the full stories.

• What are the definitions of hyper-personalization and creepiness marketers should watch for?
• How does hyper-personalization affect visual stories (e.g., videos, images, infographics, etc)?
• What are the key examples of hyper-personalization that are in the creepiness zone?
• What are simple tips visual storytellers could take to avoid hyper-personalization and annoying audiences?
• And much more.

Learn more about our guest on VSI blog:https://www.visualstorytell.com/blog/how-to-personalize-visual-stories-without-creeping-out-your-audience

This podcast is brought to you by the Visual Storytelling Institute (VSI) from Miami, FL.

Order Shlomi Ron's new book: 
Total Acuity: Tales with Marketing Morals to Help You Create Richer Visual Brand Stories

In this episode, I chat with Sanjay Sarathy, VP Marketing at Cloudinary, a global powerhouse in providing comprehensive media asset management and automation for some of the world’s most recognizable and engaging brands.

Throughout our discussion, we homed in on the opportunities that visual media – both images and video – present for capturing and retaining consumer attention. We discuss actionable best practices for managing visual assets in a fast-moving and hyper-complex digital environment, including a framework for evaluating the tradeoff between time spent manually curating assets and automating most of the workflow.

We talked about what is visual storytelling in today's fragmented communication landscape, how marketers can manage their visual content on cloud-based platforms, how the end-to-end process looks like, key industry examples, AI and content personalization, common misconceptions about visual content platforms, how to measure success criteria of your visual content, the future for cloud-based visual content platforms and much more.

• How can marketers manage their visual content on cloud-based platforms?
• Key industry examples
• How do AI and content personalization help to manage and customize visual stories at scale?
• What are the common misconceptions about cloud-based visual content platforms?
• And much more

Learn more about our guest on VSI blog: https://www.visualstorytell.com/blog/how-to-manage-visual-stories-at-scale

This podcast is brought to you by the Visual Storytelling Institute (VSI) from Miami, FL.

Ready to emotionally move your audience into action?
Learn more about how VSI’s Production Studio could help elevate your visual storytelling game.

In this episode, I chat with the crypto artist, also known as FractalEncrypt, Founder at ShamanicHarmonics.com. 
I met this fascinating artist at a local networking event in Miami where he along with other speakers shared the wonders of blockchain and in particular cryptoart. Since we typically hear about blockchain in the context of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the fintech space, I decided to cover a new angle. This episode is all about the nascent space of narrative cryptoart that leverages the blockchain to run global transactions of digital art, including early experiments in marketing.

• What is blockchain?
• What is cryptoart in the context of visual storytelling?
• What is the end-to-end process of creating stories using cryptoart?
• What are the early marketing applications?
• And much more

 Learn more about our guest on his blog post: https://www.visualstorytell.com/blog/how-to-tell-stories-using-cryptoart

This podcast is brought to you by the Visual Storytelling Institute (VSI) from Miami, FL.

Ready to emotionally move your audience into action?
Learn more about how VSI’s Production Studio could help elevate your visual storytelling game.

In this episode, I chat with Steve Dutton, Founder at Avenue 3 Miami an urban movement that aims to reduce the problem of homelessness using technology and a clever loyalty value exchange model. We talked about his dramatic journey of becoming a non-profit organization founder, his experience going through our visual storytelling framework, lessons her learned down the road and much more.

In memory of my husband, Thomas Lang, I am focused on increasing housing opportunities and support services for homeless residing in Fort Worth TX and Miami FL, helping local nonprofits expand and enhance their existing resources.

• How to transform a personal story into an urban movement?
• How does the end-to-end process look like going through VSI's My Visual Story 9-step framework as part of developing his visual storytelling strategy for his non-profit, Avenue 3 Miami?
• What are some of his lessons and successes he learned along the way?
• What are the most important tips any founder or business leader could use for when starting a business?
• And much more

Learn more about our guest on his blog post: https://www.visualstorytell.com/blog/how-to-transform-a-true-story-into-an-urban-movement

This podcast is brought to you by the Visual Storytelling Institute (VSI) from Miami, FL.

Need help developing your visual storytelling strategy?
Schedule a FREE conversation to inquire about our Story Making program.

In this episode, I chat with Kirk Francis, Portrait Photographer, and Artist. We talked about his journey of becoming an expert portrait photographer, his end-to-end process for maximizing first impression, tricks and tips, client examples and much more.

It's not about cameras, pixels or film, lenses or photoshop, it's the joy of capturing the human experience. Getting someone to understand they ARE a beautiful human, their message is important and capturing that in a portrait. Creating portraits that help people impact the difference they hope to make in the world is what gives me joy. Kirk's goal is to empower humans with Confidence - Personality - Approachability - and a serious dose of Lookability and help them accomplish the change they want to make!

• How does portrait photography relate to visual storytelling?
• What are the key visual storytelling techniques you could use in his photography?
• How does the end-to-end process look like for creating a winning portrait photo for your social media profiles?
• How to measure the success of your portrait photo?
• And much more

Learn more about our guest on his blog post: https://www.visualstorytell.com/blog/how-to-use-portrait-photography-to-maximize-first-impression

This podcast is brought to you by the Visual Storytelling Institute (VSI) from Miami, FL.

Need help extracting your business narrative?
Schedule a FREE conversation to inquire about our Story Making program.