360DigitalInfluence

Wow. Pat and I just had a great time learning from Chris Graves, President & CEO, Asia Pacific, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. That’s a pretty big role, if you consider that my position is somewhere really low in the food chain. But you know what’s the best thing? Chris doesn’t behave like that.. He embraces you and talks to you as a person, and that translates into the way he talks to his clients, journalists, bloggers and colleagues.

There’s just something about the way he engages you and tells you stories.

I think it’s a culture thing, and something within Ogilvy to embrace storytelling. Storytelling is a truly wonderful tool for any communicator. It allows you to paint beautiful pictures with words, and it conveys your ideas much clearer because the person you’re communicating with, sees it too.

Despite all the buzz about ’social media’, ‘analytics’, reports, trends, facts and figures.. they all feed into what we do in the communications industry. Whether you’re a journalist, blogger, advertiser, content producer or PR practitioner.. we’re in the communications business of distilling complex ideas and making them simpler so that more people can understand them.

Do you think you’re an effective communicator? If not, why not give storytelling a shot? Be curious, ask questions, find insightful nuggets that set your story apart from someone else. Even if you have no story to tell.. that’s a story to tell! Why are you so quiet? Did something make you feel this way? What happened?

It’s not fluff. You help people understand! That’s a truly remarkable skill when we’re talking about imparting knowledge, helping to shed light on problems and conveying great solutions that can help society.

I’ll leave it that today, but be on the lookout for the videos we interviewed of Chris today. He answered some great questions from the blogosphere.. and just pick out the way he says things, how he conveys his message. There’s so much to learn, and I hope you’ll get something out of it. Look out for it after the weekend -)