never hire a banana
...interesting world of consultancy
I don’t believe being funny is something you can learn. There are natural habits, characteristics and tendencies we all uniquely possess. This doesn’t mean you can’t have funny moments or savor the inherent humor in life writ large. You just might be wired differently.
I think of storytelling similarly but with a giant caveat. Don’t follow templates or tried and true methods. If I see one more person fake smiling at a camera while holding their hands in view of the camera (to model sincerity) I will … well…likely do nothing. And isn’t that the problem? What is your call to action? I will guess it isn’t to simply have viewers sit endlessly staring at a screen.
The perfect lighting, sparkly teeth and well rehearsed delivery is so common place and might I add, easily mirrored by AI.
Create your unique presentation or storytelling career by being you. Think about the cinematic arc of storytelling. If you think about the Hollywood method you are also going to have to wrestle with the good and the bad.
We have the brilliance of Perfect Days …
but don’t forget about Space Jam lol.
There is a time and a place for it all. I don’t like country music (a few exceptions), romantic comedies or stabby movies — the award shows prove me to be wrong.
You are a brand. Your story explains the culture of your brand — it is your marketing. I was lucky to listen to Clay Christensen live at a Qualtrics conference. The link is a mini-course in his brand mastery.
What job are you trying to get done that cause you to come to McDonald’s to hire a milkshake at 6:30 in the morning? And the they would struggle to answer the question, we said, I’m sorry for a tough question. Try this. Think about the last time you were in the same situation where you needed to do the same job, but you didn’t come here to hire a milkshake from McDonald’s. What did you hire?
This works if you are trying to figure out what job a client is hiring you to do. Or maybe it is your boss.
And it turned out, that they all had the same job to do. That is, they had a long and boring drive to work. And they just needed something to have while they were driving to stay engaged with life and not fall asleep. One hand had to be on the wheel, but geez, somebody gave me another hand, and there’s nothing in it. And I just needed something to do while I’m driving.
Think about the specifics. Nobody only wants to hear your pitch, read your ad or scroll through your content. They want a reason to believe. They need something.
Take my word for it– never hire bananas. They’re gone in less than a minute, you’re hungry by 7:30. Yeah, as you can say, I hire donuts a lot. I can never hire just one. But that creates problems on their own.
The brilliance of pivoting from “here is a 5 GB capacity device” to “hold 1000 songs in your pocket” seems to have been forgotten in today’s world of everyone is an influencer.
What are you being hired to do?
Something special in the works…
