Derek Yarbrough

First, and most obvious, there should be an identified "ring leader" for crisis. This will usually be a Head of PR/Communications. If your business does not have this role, work with your CEO to identify. Second, know who the immediate circle of key stakeholders are so if/when a crisis does hit internal communications and coordination is tight. This is likely the CEO and heads of brand, legal, HR, and ops. Within this circle it should be crystal clear who communicates with the board -- most likely the CEO. Third, consider quarterly risk management sessions with this crew to identify greatest risks to the brand (and ways to mitigate), but also come up with a few "wild card" crises and talk through what you would do if they happened.

Yes to all of the above on knowing the purpose of your storytelling tactics and measuring KPIs such as engagement story by story. Looking at the bigger picture, storytelling is first and foremost about telling consumers the story of your brand, your product's value proposition, and how your brand is relevant to your consumer. Think of storytelling like an onion—it's not just one story but rather many, many layers of the same story but still all connected back to your brand purpose. Using this framework, different stories have different purposes but can be measured both by their individual performance as well as their ability to link back to the larger brand purpose and create multi-faceted layers to your brand.

Sometimes the best way to be memorable is to find something you share in common with the other person. You find this by being genuinely curious about the other person and asking a lot of questions. If/when you find something you share in common, point it out and use that as a jumping-off point to go deeper. When following-up with the individual, consider reminding them of that thing you have in common—perhaps it's even an excuse to meet again to discuss that shared interest.

As an advertising or marketing professional, we should be the best at marketing communication and storytelling. Typically, I find that we marketers fall short in communication when we rely on "marketing speak" (aka jargon) to sound smarter. Sure, when speaking to your team or a fellow marketer, you can get into the weeds of funnels, KPIs, and campaign tactics. But generally, avoid marketing jargon and learn how to communicate concepts, goals, and results in clear, plain, and direct language. Think about how you would explain it to your grandmother—most people are consumers and have seen enough advertising in their lives that they could understand if you can apply your storytelling ability to your communication.

Know your audience DEEPLY. Map out the top 3-5 customer segments of your customer base. Ideally these would be consumer personas or archetypes that shop your brand. Get to know these personas deeply via regular quantitative and qualitative surveying. In addition to understanding these persona segments, also map out the "universal truths" that cut across all these segments--these are the things that connect your audience at the most fundamental level and connect to your product's or service's value proposition. As long as you stay true to your brand and these universal truths, you can experiment with all kinds of creative messaging and campaigns. If something feels like you are pushing too hard, perhaps test it first on a small scale.

Think about personalization in two key buckets: 1) "personal profile" such as name, gender, membership status, user preferences, past transactions, etc.; 2) "contextual profile" focused entirely on the user's current session regardless of personal data—what are they browsing and engaging with, where did they click from to land on your site, how much intent to convert are they showing, what is their geographic location. For the first bucket "personal" consider tying more of that to the account and give control to the user (google "zero party data"). For the second bucket, I believe users are way less creeped out by this type of personalization, and contextual typically performs better anyway.