Joshua Johnson provides strategies for modern storytelling and content creation. He discusses using mythic story structures like the hero's journey and identifying core human values and needs. Johnson explains how travel brands can create engaging content by telling stories that follow customers on a hero's journey, with the brand acting as a mentor. He also provides 10 commandments for digital storytelling, such as being human, announcing your values, and using video and photography to bring stories to life.
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1. Mythic Strategies for
Modern Storytelling
Joshua Johnson
@Joshywashington
Content Creator, Content Marketing Consultant
editor-at-large
5. In 10 years of Travel I’ve
Discovered 2 Core Truths
• Everyone has a journey to undertake, but you have
to own it.
• The story of that journey - the lessons and morals
-are very important personally and culturally.
6. • Founded 2006
• 2MM monthly visitors
• 14,000+ pieces of content
• 100’s of contributors
• Community of 1000’s of active travelers
• 500,000+ following daily on social and RSS
• Working with top brands to create original travel content
7. Matador tells stories that connect people
to the world (and brands to people)
Matador has gained the
audience it has because it
is a brand of storytellers
for storytellers that,
through the
connectedness of digital
media, has create a rock
solid brand culture.
8. 5 Reasons why your
Brand should be
Creating Content
(telling stories)
NOW
15. ‘The destiny of the world is determined less
by the battles that are lost and won than by
the stories it loves and believes in.’
- Harold Goddard
16. STORY IS EVERYTHING
•Storytelling was a quantum leap in information
technology.
•Story describes the world and how you should
behave in it.
•Stories build our culture, morals, national and
personal identity.
17. STORY IS EVERYTHING
•Stories are vehicles for values.
•Stories break through receptivity barriers with
metaphor and emotional language that can be
repeated.
•The best stories self replicate - go viral.
19. The Edge of the Knife
• I had to find a way to progress professionally but not
compromise my authenticity. Dealing with travel brands,
hotel chains and corporate messages can be creative suicide.
The travel industry (as a whole) DOES NOT know how to
tell authentic stories - and a professional travel storyteller
can be led astray quickly...and wither...and die.
• The following tools gave me a new way of thinking about
what I do - so that regardless of where I am or who the
client is, I can tell authentic and meaningful stories.
22. Human Needs and Values
• In the 1940’s the psychologist Abraham Maslow studied
top achievers who were living out their life’s purpose to
chart what makes exceptional people stand apart.
• Maslow discovered a structure of human needs that seem
to follow a basic progression - we call this ‘Maslow’s
Hierarchy of Needs’.
24. • Bottom of the pyramid = deficiency needs
• Top of the pyramid = self actualizing VALUES
25. Travel is a Self Actualizing Event
Recreational travel is a top-of-the-pyramid activity...
27. The Values found in our location’s culture:
The Values expressed in our products and services:
The Values that we feel resonate with our customers:
Exercise: Identifying
Core Brand Values
28. • WHOLENESS the need to feel connected to others and apart of something larger.
• PERFECTION the need to seek mastery of a skill or vocation, often through hard work.
• JUSTICE the need to live by high moral values and to see the world ordered by morality.
• RICHNESS the need to examine life in all its complexity and diversity, to seek new
experience.
• SIMPLICITY the need to understand the underlying essence of things.
• BEAUTY the need to create and experience aesthetic pleasure.
• TRUTH the need to experience and express reality without distortion, to tear down
falsehood.
• UNIQUENESS the need to express personal gifts, creativity and nonconformity.
• PLAYFULNESS the need for a joyful experience. from ‘Winning the Story Wars’ by Jonah Sachs
29. Broadcasting your Core Values
•Are you recognizing/connecting to theValues of
your customers?
•Are yourValues represented in your marketing and
website copy?
•Are yourValues apparent in your facilities and
amenities?
30. Look for your Values in Action
Look at your brand’s social media accounts and identify
how/if your CORE VALUES are being broadcast to your
intended audience.
What do your Values look like on Facebook?
.... Twitter?
...your website?
...your blog?
34. HJ for Travel Storytellers
• Each traveler is a HERO.
• The Journey is a transformative act.
• The ‘Elixir’ or moral outcome of the Journey is of great
personal and collective importance.
• Each act of travel contains a HERO’S JOURNEY.
35. THE MENTOR: The embodiment of your brand. You are
not the Hero, you are the force that puts the hero in
motion.
ALLIES: Secondary characters that aid the Mentor and
the Hero.
THE HERO: The embodiment of your core audience
that you seek to reach. Your ‘ideal’ customer.
Your Brand’s Hero’s Journey
from ‘Winning the Story Wars’ by Jonah Sachs
36. THE SPECIAL WORLD: The ‘World’ of travel that
your storytelling takes place in. This place is ‘Special’
in that it is foreign and exotic.
MENTOR’S GIFT: That special something that you give
your Brand Hero that makes their journey possible, i.e.
inspiration, information - giving the Hero the Brand Gift
is your most important function as Mentor.
THE ELIXIR: How, ultimately, life is changed for the
better.
53. #1 Create a Process
We aim to share/engage x5 social media daily.
We aim to create x3 original content a week.
We aim to publish x2 blogs a week.
We aim to create and publish x2 videos a month.
57. #5 use your cell phone...a lot
Food and Beverage
Manager updates with
his cell constantly & gets
great engagement.
58. • Juxtapose contrasting images
• Create a before-and-after
sequence
• Produce a photographic series
#6 Use Smart Phone Apps for
Visual Storytelling
64. #10 outsource your storytelling
• court photographers / videographers.
• host cross-brand events with a strong social components.
• incentivize content with employees and guests.
• host bloggers / create a blogger event.
• curate content
• UGC contests and promotions