Book giveaway: StoryBranding by Jim Signorelli

"StoryBranding: Creating Standout Brands Through the Power of Story" by Jim Signorelli (Greenleaf Book Group Press, January 2012, $24.95, 228 pp.) could land a place on your bookshelf, if you want it (keep reading).

So, what the heck is "StoryBranding"? According to the author, "StoryBranding is a process designed to help us know brands the way stories help us know characters. It's a process that also helps us know a brand's prospects in ways that will foster lasting relationship, immune from any competitive claim or coupon."

It's something we all already to every day, according to Signorelli, whose writing style includes anecdotes from his advertising career, charts, graphs and yes, cartoons.

There's a process to Signorelli's concept of StoryBranding, and learning about it may appeal to the "Mad Men" types of today: those in the advertising, marketing or sales fields.

"StoryBranding is very different from the typical brand planning processes that help marketers promote a brand's unique functional differences," states the author. "StoryBranding shows how to excavate a brand's unique values. In so doing, it will show how brand marketers can replace message resistance with message resonance."

About the book (from the publisher):

Until this book was written, the phrase “brands are stories” was merely a marketing cliché. Having delved into how stories influence our behavior, however, Jim Signorelli asserts that the association between stories and brands deserves far more than that stock phrase.

Among the many books about branding directed toward marketing and advertising practitioners and students, none is like StoryBranding. Modeled after the way stories work, this book provides a unique planning process for creating authentic brand identities. It also reveals a number of concealed traps that other branding approaches often overlook. Drawing on the persuasive power of stories, Jim Signorelli argues that a great deal of wasted effort is put into creating advertising messages that do too much “telling” and too little “showing.”

To help brands resonate with their audiences, Jim Signorelli takes you step-by-step through StoryBranding’s six C’s — a process that shows how to approach the development of all brand communications the way story writers approach their characters, plots, and themes. He includes sample “Story Briefs” and “I AM” statements that help brands achieve a greater degree of authenticity than traditional creative or brand briefs have. He includes sample “Story Briefs” and “I AM” statements that show how StoryBranding principles can be put to work.

Learn more, download an excerpt (PDF) or order the book directly from ESW Partners by clicking here.

AUTHOR JIM SIGNORELLI

About the author:

Jim Signorelli is an advertising executive whose career has been spent at major national advertising agencies, including N. W. Ayer, W. B. Doner, Marsteller, Lois/USA, and Frankel & Co. His clients have included Citibank, General Electric, Toshiba, Burger King, Arby’s, KFC, International Harvester, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, McDonald’s, the American Marketing Association, and many others. He is the cofounder and CEO of ESW StoryLab, a Chicago-based full-portfolio marketing firm. Signorelli resides in Evanston, Ill., with his wife.

Check out Signorelli's blog, Storyati.
 
Want to win it? 

If you would like to "win" my brand new hardcover review copy of the book, simply comment on this post with your email address. If you're selected as winner (at random, of course), I'll contact you to find out where to mail the book. If no one comments or otherwise claims the book it will be donated to the Pottstown Regional Public Library.