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In this podcast Carla Johnson, founder of Type A Communications, speaks with us about the art of storytelling for professional services marketers, the challenges of innovation within professional services firms, and how digital transformation has impacted the client experience. View the full show notes here.
Minter Dialogue Episode #265 Carla Johnson is an author, speaker and expert in storytelling, content marketing strategies and brand building, working with such blue chip companies as American Express, Dell, Motorola, VMWare, as well as the US Army Corps of Engineers. She runs the Type A Communications consultancy and is Chair of the Board of Advisors for Business-to-Business for the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). In this conversation, we discuss the challenges of making content marketing and brand come alive within organisations, the gap between promise makers and promise keepers, as well as some keen insights on how to improve brand storytelling and bring empathy into the workplace. Meanwhile, please send me your questions as an audio file (or normal email) to nminterdial@gmail.com; or you can find the show notes and comment on minterdial.com. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to go over to iTunes to rate/review the podcast. Otherwise, you can find me @mdial on Twitter. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/minterdial)
Carla Johnson Show Notes A world-renowned storyteller, an entertaining speaker, and a prolific author of seven books, Carla Johnson is the Chief Experience Officer for Type A Communications. Her last book, Experiences: The 7th Era of Marketing sets the benchmark for a powerful new way for marketing to create value for businesses. Named one of the top 50 women in marketing, one of the top 25 women in digital marketing, and one of the top 10 influencers in marketing technology worldwide, Carla challenges conventional thinking. Most passionate about In the last 18 months I’ve been passionate about the idea of innovation outside of the product for companies. Today, I’m helping employees outside of the innovation groups of the organizations to become the spark for innovation. I started in university as an engineering major, but ended up as a history major. Along the way, I worked with architects on how to blend the technological side with the storytelling side, and that’s what really brought me into marketing; focusing on telling the story of something that is very technical in a way that is inviting to an audience. What I learned from the architects is to understand what emotion you want to evoke from your audience, what do you want them to feel when they interact with your brand and products, and then reverse engineer that into what you actually make. The next step The fun part is that I don’t have one specific picture of how I want it to look, but mainly being open to opportunities and to the people who coming to my path that this idea of connecting anyone to innovation resonate to them. I believe in this idea that innovation and creativity is so much bigger than only marketing and I exited to see where it goes. Carla’s customers Mostly B2B organizations, like Motorola solutions or Dell. I help them understand the idea that is unique to them and how to tell their story to invite their audience. A VP or above or a business owner, if it’s a startup or a smaller company; someone that is looking to be unique, to differentiate themselves, and stand out from the crowed. Carla’s best advice about approaching customers In the world we are in today, you can talk with anybody around the world, and we have access to so much information and so many people at once and we realize how many people are demanding attention. What makes the difference today is, instead of banging the drums and say “look at me”to ask what can I do to help my customers? Where are the information gaps and what should we, as a company, do to fill those gaps? Biggest failure with a customer Actually, it’s really embarrassing to admit because I talk about it with my customers all the time, and that is continually maintain the relationships with not only your customers and prospects but also with your audience. We can’t always pursue what looks like the next sale. We know that the one that will be in mind is the one they will come to look for answers. And by maintaining the relationships the audience learns to know, like, and trust us. The ability to maintain these relationships over a long period is so important, startup and solopreneurs we think we don’t have time for this. But that’s where technology comes in and helps us be where we can’t be. My failure was when I didn’t maintain the relationships with one of my customers, and I found out they started to work with my biggest competitors and that was purely because they maintained the relationships and I didn’t. Biggest success due to the right customer approach That goes back to focus on educating my industry and audience and I started to breaking down the content to small guiding pieces because we want people to do so many things and they can’t get it all at once. And when I started to have these small guiding tips, people started to talk with me about what they need; this was the foundation for my new book, Experiences:
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Carla Johnson is a well-known keynote speaker, author and Chief Experience Officer at Type A Communications. She helps companies tell better stories in order to build stronger brand awareness, better customer engagement, and increase revenue. She is a consultant to the Content Marketing Institute and has worked with brands like American Express, Dell, and Motorola. More recently, Carla co-authored the book Experiences: The 7th Era of Marketing with Robert Rose which teaches marketers how to develop, manage, and lead the creation of valuable experiences for their organization. We wanted to have Carla on this week's show to talk about branding - and more specifically innovative branding. She has worked with some of the world's biggest brands and has some great insight into how to keep that innovative culture in your company. If you enjoyed our conversation with Carla, be sure to check out her presentation at Content Marketing World in a few weeks. If you haven't bought your tickets for the event yet, use Carla's discount code to save $100. Use code SPKR100 at checkout.
“Brands that we look to, that are charismatic, know their audience. They know who they are.” Stories, personality, and experiences are the building blocks of modern brands of all shapes and sizes. This week, Carla Johnson of Type A Communications and co-author of Experiences: The 7th Era of Marketing stopped by the On Brand podcast to discuss all of this. About Carla Johnson Carla Johnson helps marketers unlock, nurture and strengthen their storytelling muscle so they can create delightful experiences for audiences. She works as a trusted advisor at the highest level of blue-chip brands to establish open conversations, instill creative confidence and inspire an environment of receptivity that develops highly prized teams and stellar business results. Carla has worked with companies that include American Express, Dell, Emerson, Motorola Solutions, VMware, Western Union and Smurfit Kappa on how to tap into a wellspring of ideas and unveil new ways to bring their brand stories alive in fun and captivating ways. Named one of the top 20 most influential content marketers, one of top 25 business-to-business marketers, and one of the top 50 women in marketing, Carla is the co-author of Experiences: The 7th Era of Marketing, which teaches marketers how to develop, manage and lead the creation of valuable experiences for their organizations. She serves on the Executive Committee and as the Vice Chair on the Board of Directors for the Association for National Advertisers Business Marketing Association, an instructor for the Content Marketing Institute and the Digital Analytics Association, is a frequent speaker and writes about creativity and innovation, the power of brand storytelling, and customer experience for numerous media outlets. Dig deeper at Type A Communications and follow her on Twitter. Episode Highlights "When you tell a story driven by empathy, you’ll always see results.” Understanding your customers is a cornerstone of effective brand building. Yet with our focus on quantitative analysis and data, we often know too little about our customers and what they want. How can we fix this? Carla reminds us to “Just talk with them.” Conversations can yield powerful results. After talking with your customers, don’t forget your employees. Internal brand communication is key. Carla cited a study from Gallup noting that less than 40% of employees understand what their company stands for. If properly educated, your employees can be a powerful marketing engine. “If you get the internal right, you can reallocate your external resources." “Experience and story are tied together. Hand in hand.” As Carla notes, you have to ask yourself, “What are we going to be known for.” She then shared a great example from Big Ass Fans on how a simple brand touch point can inform an entire brand experience. As we head into the new year, what’s one thing brand builders and marketers should do more of? Look for ways to be “more creative, interesting, and different. Look at brands from outside your bubble.” What are they doing? How can you do more of that? What brand has made Carla smile recently? Carla pointed us to HP and their recent rebranding. “They spent us much time (communicating that) internally as they did externally." To learn more, go to the Type A Communications website and check out the site for her book with past On Brand guest Robert Rose, Experiences: The 7th Era of Marketing. As We Wrap ... Before we go, I want to flip the microphone around to our community …Recently Mike Smith from AWeber gave us a shout for our 100th episode featuring Seth Godin. Thanks for listening! Did you hear something you liked on this episode or another? Do you have a question you’d like our guests to answer? Let me know on Twitter using the hashtag #OnBrandPodcast and you may just hear your thoughts here on the show. Subscribe to the podcast – You can subscribe to the show via iTunes, Stitcher, and RSS. Rate and review the show – If you like what you’re hearing, head over to iTunes and click that 5-star button to rate the show. And if you have a few extra seconds, write a couple of sentences and submit a review. This helps others find the podcast. OK. How do you rate and review a podcast? Need a quick tutorial on leaving a rating/review in iTunes? Check this out. Remember – On Brand is brought to you by my new book — Get Scrappy: Smarter Digital Marketing for Businesses Big and Small. Order now at Amazon and check out GetScrappyBook.com for special offers and extras. Until next week, I’ll see you on the Internet!
Carla Johnson, Type A Communications, came from a science family so she studied electrical engineering. After two years, she opted to become a history major and learned the value of storytelling, a skill that has taken her far in her career. In this episode of The Pivot, host Todd Wheatland sits down with Carla to learn more about her journey and why she co-authored the book Experiences: The 7th Era of Marketing with Robert Rose.