act3 is a communication strategy and design firm that specializes in telling stories.

This blog is our story laboratory, a way to poke, prod, and take a closer look at the stories we see, the stories we tell, and our own assumptions and knowledge about why stories work (or don't). The goal is to better understand what makes a story connect with people, and how to tell better stories.

Like any blog, it's an evolving concept. We hope you'll follow along.

March 3

Yeah, What's Your Story?

We have used the question/tagline “What’s Your Story?” in various capacities over the last few years; it once was featured prominently on our website, but it is less prominent on the site now.

Lately, though, “What’s Your Story?” seems to be popping up everywhere.

Certainly, act3 can’t take credit for pioneering the use of “What’s Your Story?” as a tagline, but it nevertheless seems blogworthy to catalog uses of it as we see them, and assess their effectiveness.

So, here are two:

Medill, What's Your Story?The first, seen at right, was spied today as an ad on Facebook for the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Strangely, in a quick cruise around the Medill site, I found no mention or use of “What’s Your Story” at all.

The image is interesting, though I don’t know how much it would’ve caught my eye if my antennae weren’t up for uses of “What’s Your Story.” Certainly, journalism is all about story, and when it comes to “J School,” Medill is universally recognized as among the best — but I don’t know that journalism is really about the story of the journalist, which makes me question whether “What’s Your Story” really fits here, since the ad is trying to entice people to learn more about going to journalism school at Medill. “What Stories Will You Tell?” might have been better, although admittedly that’s not as simple as “What’s Your Story,” and also not quite as interested in you, self-absorbed Facebook user. (I don’t mean to demean the self-absorbed Facebook user, of course — after all, I’m one too. I’m just saying.)

The next one is an ad spotted on Flickr, which I saw the first time back in December:

Flickr, What's Your Story

The link sends you to the What’s Your Story? - Sponsored by Kodak group page on Flickr. As the page explains:

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Kodak’s “What’s Your Story” group gives you the opportunity to not only show the flickr community your photos, but also share the stories behind them.

Tell us who’s behind that Halloween costume. Let everyone know exactly where your stunning vacation shots were taken. And show everyone how you were feeling when you took your favorite holiday shot, and what it means to look at it now. You’ll soon discover the powerful effect your favorite photos can have on other Flickr users.

To participate, simply add your photos to the ongoing discussion threads and tag them accordingly. Or by all means, start your own thread. Here’s your opportunity to discover what it means to tell stories through photography.

So tell us. What’s your story?

Clearly, Kodak has invested some thought into this whole “What’s Your Story?” thing. And they are truly asking for us to tell our story — or rather, you to tell your story. As a bonus, they’ve joined forces with a logical partner — Flickr.

If numbers are any indication, people are responding to this effort: as of today, the pool has 1,368 members and 8,116 items. Whether they’re all using Kodak products is impossible to say, but every time they upload new photos to the pool, Kodak gets a little face time, and an opportunity to develop and strengthen a relationship with those group members, a pool of likely advocates.

So, in the style of Facebook’s thumbs up/thumbs down review of their ads, Medill’s “What’s Your Story” banner ad gets the thumbs down, but Kodak’s “What’s Your Story?” ad and group page gets the thumbs up.

Watch this space for future “What’s Your Story” sightings, and if you see some you think we should review, drop us a line.

:: Posted by Eric Ratinoff ::