September 2009
6 posts
4 tags
The Ken Burns effect
This week marks the debut of the Ken Burns’ The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, airing on PBS. While the series features stunning footage of the titular parks, there’s much more to it than just “nature porn” — in his signature style, Burns tells the unlikely stories behind how the parks came to be.
In “10 Questions for Ken Burns,” the filmmaker...
2 tags
A story to calm their fears
Last night was Parents Night in my mom’s second-grade classroom, and as usual, the parents who have never had a second-grader before were nervous about homework.
What if my child doesn’t know how to do it? What if my child won’t do it? How do I deal with this traumatic new development in my child’s life?
You think I’m being sarcastic, particularly with that last...
5 tags
Overcoming too big and too vague
A couple recent Seth Godin posts have story implications worth exploring.
In Enormity, Seth writes:
The problem with enormity in marketing is that it doesn’t work. Enormity should pull at our heartstrings, but it usually shuts us down.
Show us too many sick kids, unfair imprisonments or burned bodies and you won’t get a bigger donation, you’ll just get averted eyes.
If...
4 tags
Every angle tells a piece of its story
Stumbled across this cool quote from Vicki Karp on True/Slant, which is “an original content news network tailored to both the ‘Entrepreneurial Journalist’ and marketers who want a more effective way to engage with digital audiences,” currently in Beta.
Anyway, the quote:
Best thing ever said to me by a sculptor — walk around it, look up and down and through it; every...
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A story geek's dream
I am so geeked.
While doing a bit of procrastinating this morning on ESPN.com, I wandered into the Sports Guy’s World — always a great place to get lost, and a dangerous place to go if you have something you need to get done — and the headline “The Sports Guy on 30 for 30” caught my eye, so I clicked.
What I found was the Sports Guy, Bill Simmons, telling the story...
4 tags
Walgreens flips the script on flu shots
I don’t like shots, and I’m generally healthy, so I have never seen a need for a flu shot. I suspect I’m exactly the kind of person Walgreens is targeting with this poster, which I spied in the waiting room of the Walgreens pharmacy:
The poster banks on the understanding that while many people don’t take good care of themselves — and like me, can probably convince...