Digital is an incredible medium, an enabler of businesses that previously wouldn’t have had a chance of succeeding without a factory and huge investment. But it’s not mastering the medium—understanding how the technology works—that matters; it’s how and why you use it.
You don’t have to become the best in the world at Twitter to be the best business in the world at what you do. The opportunity here is far greater than mastering the tools so that we have replacements for the old ways of broadcasting. Digital gives us opportunities to see our customers and to be more responsive to their wants.

The gift of the digital world

Brands, businesses, movements, products, and services succeed by bringing meaningful change to people. There is a life and a way of being before the product or service existed, and a life and a way of being after it. Can you remember life before Google, with paper maps, telephone directories, bricks-and-mortar everything, and keeping information in your head?Every successful business creates a new kind of customer. That customer’s story changes because the business exists. There is a before-the-product story and an after-the-product story.

Before-the-product and after-the-product story

<ul><li>They start with a purpose and a small problem, rather than a big idea. </li><li>They're based on what people do, not what they say they do. </li><li>They leverage data to get closer to users, customers, or fans.</li><li>They can be more responsive to customers’ behaviors and needs. </li><li>They tap into consumers’ latent desires. </li><li>They connect the disconnected. </li><li>They create value where none existed. </li><li>They disrupt people’s lives, not industries—aligning with the user’s worldview and often changing what people believe is possible for them, thus changing their behavior. </li><li>They begin by facilitating or creating change for a small group of people at the edges. </li><li>They seem obvious only after the fact.</li></ul>

Disruptive innovations: characteristics

No story lives unless someone wants to listen.

Awareness and attention were the holy grails of every marketing strategy, so the way you became successful was to pay for more of both. But there’s a subtle change taking place. People are choosing to spend their money with companies that take the time to get to know them and whose actions resonate with their values—companies that thrive by doing the right thing and by making things customers love, instead of by trying to get customers to love their things.

Awareness and attention 

Every business today, no matter its size or legacy, faces four massive challenges.<ul><li>Clutter </li><li>Competition </li><li>Commoditization </li><li>Consumer consciousness.</li></ul>

Business challenges

The best — maybe the only? — real, direct measure of “innovation” is change in human behaviour.

<ul><li>Before self-service shopping, online stores, social networks, and recommendation platforms, the consumer’s role was limited to buying what was on offer. </li><li>Today, customers are more than just passive consumers of products and services. They are partners, co-creators, patrons, advocates, evangelists, collaborators, and community members. </li></ul>People no longer just want to buy things from us without thinking—they want to become invested in the businesses and brands that they choose to support.

Customers: from passive buyers to co-creators

They don't disrupt industries, but they disrupt people’s lives for the better. Any innovation that is adopted or idea that spreads succeeds because enough people want the change that happens as a result. Success doesn’t come from simply making things that work —it is born from changing the story of the user or customer for the better.

Disruptive innovations 

What customers crave, more than the commodity they think they are paying for is to be understood. What they want more than a reliable ride to their destination, a comfortable bed for the night, or even a book, is to really be seen. What they want more than responsive organizations is personal relevance. The value isn’t just in the data that businesses collect. What counts is how they use it to make their lives better.

Users want to be undersood

It ensures that the needs and wants of your customer remain front and center as you develop products and services and make plans to bring those ideas to life. <ul><li>Step 1: Story: Think about who the customer is beyond the basic demographic information. Describe a day in their life.</li><li>Step 2. Insight: What do they want to do, but can’t? What can you do to help them? </li><li>Step 3: Product: What features and benefits will help solve your customers’ problem? How will using your product make the customer feel?</li><li>Step 4: Experience: What has changed for the customer once they use your product? How do you want the customer to experience your product?</li></ul>

The Story Strategy Blueprint 

It’s easier than ever to spam whomever you want to reach because most people are just an email address and a click away. If your goal is to get and leverage someone’s attention for a split second, then, of course, you can.The kind of attention everyone seeks though isn’t this meaningless interaction. It’s based on mutual respect and trust. And the best way to get attention, then, is to give it unconditionally first. To start whispering ‘I see you’ instead of screeching ‘LOOK AT ME’.

The best way to get attention

Old rules of brand awareness:<ol><li>Make something for everyone. </li><li>Tell our story. </li><li>Attract customers. </li><li>Build brand awareness. </li></ol>The brands that succeed today have flipped things around. New rules of brand awareness: <ol><li>Understand the customers' stories.</li><li>Make something they want. </li><li>Give them a story to tell. </li><li>Create brand affinity.</li></ol>

Old and new rules of brand awareness

Sustainable businesses have long been built on understanding the importance of how people decide, as much as on knowing what they buy. And great innovations are born from believing that the way people use a product is just as important as how it works.It has never been more crucial for the innovator and marketer to pay attention to how the user or customer wants to experience a product or service.

How the user wants to experience a product

The best inventions are never finished. Great inventors don’t just stand there, rub their hands together, and say ‘My work is done here’. They keep working furiously to create something even better. It’s part love, part necessity. Because if they don’t reinvent their ideas time and again, someone else will—rendering their life’s work irrelevant, or worse still, extinct!

"The most important book for your boss to read this year." -SETH GODIN "Empathy, relevance, and affinity-three great concepts to help you make a dent in the universe. Jiwa explains a whole new way to innovate and change the world." -GUY KAWASAKI "A must read for any entrepreneur or marketer. It's full of lots of "aha" moments with a concrete tool that you can implement immediately. This book should be added to every marketer's toolkit!" -DIANE DIAZ, Instructor Digital Storytelling & Branding, FULL SAIL UNIVERSITY "This book and the Story Strategy Blueprint inside are invaluable for anyone who wants to disrupt their industry and to know and genuinely matter to their customers. Bernadette's unique views and teachings will give you the most important, empathetic tools to know the consumer and be a successful storyteller." -ANTONIO ZEA, Global Director, Football Footwear, UNDER ARMOUR "As marketers our future value and success relies on using our customers as our compass. Through inspiring case studies, learn about the Innovation Trifecta and how affinity that is earned, rather than attention that is bought can power your business growth. Bernadette digs deep to explain why brands that give a damn make a difference and win in terms of profits, people and the planet." -LEE TONITTO, CEO, AUSTRALIAN MARKETING INSTITUTE One of Inc Magazine's Top Business Books of 2015. Our new digital landscape has spawned an entrepreneurial culture and the belief that anyone with a laptop and an Internet connection has the power to change the world-to create an idea that flies. But for every groundbreaking business that started this way, a thousand others have stalled or failed. Why? What's the secret to success? What do Khan Academy, the GoPro camera, the Dyson vacuum cleaner and Kickstarter have in common? After years of consulting with hundreds of innovators, creatives, entrepreneurs and business leaders to help them tell the stories of their ideas, I have discovered something: every business that flies starts not with the best idea, the biggest budget or better marketing, but with the story of someone who wants to do something-and can't. We don't change the world by starting with our brilliant ideas, our dreams; we change the world by helping others to live their dreams. The story of ideas that fly is the story of the people who embrace them, love them, adopt them, care about them and share them. Successful ideas are the ones that become meaningful to others-helping them to see what's possible for them. Our ideas fly when we show others their wings.

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"The most important book for your boss to read this year."-SETH GODIN "Empathy, relevance, and affinity-three great concepts to help you make a dent in the universe. Jiwa explains a whole new way to innovate and change the world."-GUY KAWASAKI"A must read for any entrepreneur or marketer. It's full of lots of "aha" moments with a concrete tool that you can implement immediately. This book should be added to every marketer's toolkit!"-DIANE DIAZ, Instructor Digital Storytelling & Branding, FULL SAIL UNIVERSITY"This book and the Story Strategy Blueprint inside are invaluable for anyone who wants to disrupt their industry and to know and genuinely matter to their customers. Bernadette's unique views and teachings will give you the most important, empathetic tools to know the consumer and be a successful storyteller."-ANTONIO ZEA, Global Director, Football Footwear, UNDER ARMOUR"As marketers our future value and success relies on using our customers as our compass. Through inspiring case studies, learn about the Innovation Trifecta and how affinity that is earned, rather than attention that is bought can power your business growth. Bernadette digs deep to explain why brands that give a damn make a difference and win in terms of profits, people and the planet."-LEE TONITTO, CEO, AUSTRALIAN MARKETING INSTITUTEOne of Inc Magazine's Top Business Books of 2015.Our new digital landscape has spawned an entrepreneurial culture and the belief that anyone with a laptop and an Internet connection has the power to change the world-to create an idea that flies. But for every groundbreaking business that started this way, a thousand others have stalled or failed. Why? What's the secret to success? What do Khan Academy, the GoPro camera, the Dyson vacuum cleaner and Kickstarter have in common? After years of consulting with hundreds of innovators, creatives, entrepreneurs and business leaders to help them tell the stories of their ideas, I have discovered something: every business that flies starts not with the best idea, the biggest budget or better marketing, but with the story of someone who wants to do something-and can't.We don't change the world by starting with our brilliant ideas, our dreams; we change the world by helping others to live their dreams. The story of ideas that fly is the story of the people who embrace them, love them, adopt them, care about them and share them. Successful ideas are the ones that become meaningful to others-helping them to see what's possible for them.Our ideas fly when we show others their wings.

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