Thinking

Daunting Challenge, Fun and Empowerment Marketing

The Climate Ride fundraising event begins this weekend. I’m excited to be joining hundreds of cyclists to pedal in a 5-day, 320-mile ride from Eureka, CA through redwood groves and scenic coastal highways back to San Francisco. Our goal: to raise awareness and money for non-profit organizations, including Free Range clients, whose work focuses on sustainable energy and environmental solutions. As I prepare for the ride, three ideas are simultaneously spinning in my head like the wheels and sprocket of my bike: the relationship of a daunting challenge, fun and empowerment marketing.

Fearlessness & Creativity

Amber Rae recently wrote an article about structuring her day for maximum creativity (Thanks for sharing this, Ellen!). One thing that struck me while reading her thoughts is the fact that she schedules time every day to do something that scares her.

Participate in TechSoup’s Digital Storytelling Challenge!

Ready to change the world with a story?

Free Range is excited to be participating in and judging TechSoup’s 2013 Digital Storytelling Challenge – a month of intensive learning combined with a friendly, hands-on media-making competition.

One Great Idea: Business Leaders as Mythmakers

Jonah Sachs presents One Great Idea at the GreenBiz Forum conference: how business leaders can tell stories that matter and create new myths that transform our society within a generation.

Want to Go Viral? Channel your Inner Disney Princess.

As someone who spent far, far too much of my childhood learning how to perfectly imitate every single Disney princess of my generation, I am kicking myself for not creating this video. Jon Cozart, who must now be a shoe-in for a guest appearance on Glee, created (apparently single-handedly?) a video that has been blowing up my Facebook and Twitter feeds for the past 2 days, and which I finally sat down to watch today. And I loved it.

Of course, the video is funny. And most people are passing it around because it’s funny. And, as is so often the case with a piece of content that breaks through, I heard about it from my friends first. Then saw it on Huffington Post, then saw it on FastCo. It’s a textbook study in video virality. At Free Range, we’ve been lucky enough to make a number of successful videos ourselves and shared much of what we’ve learned in our recent book. But watching a young whippersnapper do it himself...we’re re-inspired!

The Decline and Fall of Product Placement

Jonah Sachs predicts three distinct changes that might drive the emerging practice of story placement over product placement.

GreenBiz Q&A: How to win the sustainability story wars

GreenBiz editor and reporter Kristine Wong interviews Jonah Sachs about how companies and organizations can use timeless archetypes and Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey" to shape storytelling about sustainability.

Now what?

It's the day after "The Day" in America.

Many of us are breathing a sigh of relief. Others are more concerned than ever.

In Washington, D.C., it’s business as usual. People committed to changing the government they work for, with, or against. People using the institution to change the institution — hopefully improving it — in ways that align with their values, out of a belief that it matters.

The Story of this Election, from the Narrow Vantage Point of my own Facebook Feed

(I write this from the end of a long line at my Ward 1, Washington, DC polling place. It's just above freezing, and hundreds of diverse Washingtonians are waiting to cast a vote in a city whose citizens are often forgotten.)

Yesterday, Jonah wrote about his disappointment that neither Obama nor Romney's campaigns really gave the American people a consistent, epic story to consider.

What I realized as I scrolled through my own Facebook feed this morning was that the American people don't need to be spoon-fed a story. If our candidates won’t give us epic stories to hold, shape, and share, we turn back to our foundational myths or create new stories ourselves.

Empowerment Marketing and the Dark Arts in Tonight’s Debate

Those of us who love a great story are hoping to hear one — ideally two — tonight. We’ve been waiting patiently throughout this interminable election cycle for something more compelling than “They’re beating us at fundraising!” or “He’s failed! I’ll do better but provide no details!“

A good campaign story doesn’t just have a hero and a villain, conflict and resolution; and it doesn’t just stir us emotionally to get us to the polls.