Total Acuity With Shlomi Ron

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Have you ever seen an ad campaign that just grips you right from the start and won’t let go? It touches on your emotions and it makes you feel special and you relate to the product. It’s almost as if the product isn’t trying to sell to you but instead it’s telling a story. This is what the CEO of Visual Storytelling Institute and author of the book Total Acuity, Shlomi Ron does for a living. Join your host, John Livesay, as he sits down with Shlomi Ron to talk about how he takes full advantage of visual storytelling in order to market a product. Learn how Shlomi’s clients make more sales by making the customer the main character of the story.

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Listen to the podcast here

Total Acuity With Shlomi Ron

Our guest is Shlomi Ron who’s the Founder of the Visual Storytelling Institute and the author of Total Acuity. We talk about how important it is to place your customer at the heart of a story and that when you hit people’s emotions, it allows them to see themselves in the story. When your brand story becomes a customer story then you’ve hit the secret sauce. Enjoy the episode.

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Our guest is Shlomi Ron who’s the CEO of the Visual Storytelling Institute that’s based in Miami, Florida. He helps brands connect better with their audiences through visual storytelling, consulting, training, production and thought leadership. He’s also the author of Total Acuity. Over the years, he’s worked in various digital marketing roles on the agency and brand side with Fortune 100 and 500 companies like IBM, Nokia and American Express.

He was also nourishing his side passion for visual stories because he has a huge interest that we both share in classic Italian cinema and video art. He kept wondering, “How can businesses rise above this growing information overload and break through the clutter?” He has created the Visual Storytelling Institute, which is primarily a think tank that brings the gospel of visual storytelling from the world of art into marketing. Welcome to the show.

Thank you, John, for a nice introduction.

I am such a fan of your work and some of these great quotes about the magic that happens the moment your brand story mirrors your customer’s personal story. The alliteration of the three M’s, Magic, Moment and Mirror. I’m always talking about how important it is to tell a story that people see themselves in and then they want to go on the journey with you so you’re not a pushy salesperson. Before we get into all your expertise with storytelling, visuals and the combination of them, can you take us back to your own story of origin? You can go back to childhood. Did someone give you a camera and you were hooked? Did you say, “This is for me.” How did you start your journey? Was it your parents?

I grew up in Tel Aviv by the beach, fun Mediterranean climate and great food. I’ve been interested in advertising and marketing. I’ve worked for a few publications, newspapers, agencies in Israel and then the internet started. I needed to get the proper training. I started grad school at the University of Florida in the communications department. I got myself into my first startup and helping the largest Israeli newspaper get their paper online, which was a novelty back then. Since then, I have spent many years of digital marketing experience in Corporate America with major brands like Nokia, American Express and others.

Throughout my journey, I was always fascinated by visual stories. I’m a great believer that in this day and age, sometimes you need to put different cultural lenses and see the world differently. I chose to do it by taking the town language classes for fun every Saturday. It happened when I lived in New York then in San Diego and back in New York. It was my fun experience on Saturday. I did this for a few years.

[bctt tweet=”Place your customer at the heart of the story.” username=”John_Livesay”]

As I moved up the levels with digital textbooks and start watching these black and white films in the ‘40s and ‘50s, that pushed me to Italian classic cinema. I started my own, CafePellicola.com. I would write film reviews around festivals. That was a lot of fun. The other aspect of my interest in digital stories was video art. My father-in-law is Buky Schwartz, one of the early pioneers of video art. He started in the mid-‘70s. His video installations are collected in major museums like Guggenheim, Whitney and the Smithsonian. Since then, we’ve been managing his estate working with different galleries and museums to preserve his legacy.

What a story that is. It’s in your genes and now you’re continuing the legacy, which is the ultimate impact of a story in your life.

When you think about it, classic Italian cinema and video arts are two different ways of telling a story visually in different artistic expressions. That’s what got me interested. I had another experience working on a serious decision, it’s a research advisory firm that got acquired by Forrester. Every year, they have this annual summit. I was responsible for the digital strategy. We did something peculiar there. We mounted this giant interactive social media wall that I was curating and the effect it had on people, almost like a digital altar experience, made me realize there’s something going on with visuals that you need to pay attention to. That is another trigger. It’s what we call an inciting incident in my story. That spiked it a little bit. Years ago, when I moved to Miami, I felt like I paid my corporate dues and I wanted to do something on my own. I connected my interest in visual stories with marketing and started the Visual Storytelling Institute.

You have a wonderful little formula that the story with the visuals leads to the emotion which leads to the experience that creates those wow moments that people see themselves mirrored in it. Do you have a story of a client you did with this whole journey from story to visual to the emotion and the experience that you could share with us?

Yes. To preface what I do is I operate in three areas and one is training. I developed my Visual Storytelling training framework. I also teach in the business school at the University of Miami Brand Storytelling course. I do consulting, which could be on the brand strategy side or clients looking for the high polish visual storytelling experience like a presentation or animated video and so forth. The last part is thought leadership like yourself, spreading the gospel of visual storytelling to the audience through my podcast, book, webinars, blog and other formats.

To answer your question, I had a client, Cable & Wireless, for example. It’s a major telecom carrier like Verizon that operates in the Caribbean and South America. The VP of customers and the CEO of the company along with the customer experience leadership wanted to bring to life their business strategy vision for the following year. They needed our help in creating a wow effect presentation. I had a collaboration with a production studio in Colombia for many years. We created this visual storytelling presentation that positions their CEO as a captain of a cruise ship that’s hopping from island to island, conquering different challenges and their plans on how to remedy that in the following year.

Visual Storytelling: One reason that 70% of startups fail is because they don’t have a vetted story.

We used a group of amazingly talented illustrators that could create this original work from scratch including characters that looks like the presenters on the stage. It was another emotional affinity with the audience. It was super successful. That’s an example of one client that was focused on the consulting part. There are other clients that are looking to train their teams and get them to the next level. In this case, I used my visual story framework, which is a three-phase framework that I go through them.

The problem you’re solving is huge. Statistics and researches show that 70% of startups are failing because there’s no need in the marketplace and they don’t have a vetted story. First of all, let’s describe for people how do you decide or define what a vetted story is so that you can break through the clutter, which is what stories are doing. It’s bypassing all the logical analytical stuff and going to the emotional center. You probably agree with me that people buy emotionally and then back it up with logic.

Exactly. People get all the galore of startups. I don’t think everybody has an exit strategy the next day. Thirty percent of them, according to CB Insights, are failing. The reason for that is they got maybe a bunch of engineers, a founding team that fell in love with their widget. They went to market without varying and making sure that the solution to bring it to the market is a must-have and not a nice to have. What I do in my training especially in the first phase which is story making, the goal is to create your brand narrative statement. We go through a thorough validation process that can dig deeper into what your customer wants or the hero of your story because the customer is positioned as the hero of your story. You need to get into this character deeply. Pick any product, John, that we can use for this example.

Let’s pick lawyers that defend people who have been arrested for drunk driving. That’s a product. They have to figure out a way to stand out against all that clutter.

If I had a client base who’s a lawyer that needs to sell the products and services, they have to realize that what happens here is an interesting dance. Your client or potential prospect comes already with a brand narrative about a story they tell themselves about lawyers. This narrative is comprised of a whole bag of past experiences they carry. Those past experiences are individual stories that either they experience directly or they inherit through a third-party through the news or a friend.

Over time, all these little stories accumulated into a narrative and that narrative about their stand about that law firm services could be either good, neutral or bad. Your job as the law firm’s marketing director is to rewrite that narrative to align with the narrative that the law firm is trying to communicate. The magic happens when you are able to tell a story that can address both what the law firm wants and what your customer wants. That sweet spot that overlaps, I call it the total eclipse area.

[bctt tweet=”Get the brand story to become the customer’s story.” username=”John_Livesay”]

The customer can see themselves mirrored in the message of the brand and that’s where the magic happens. At that point, when your customer can see themselves in your story, your story starts becoming a brand story and becomes their story. That’s the genius of it. If you present a customer story that shows the drinking problem that a lawyer was able to solve and you tell it in a storytelling format, it doesn’t feel salesy. The most important thing is to get rid of all the patterns of the advertising component. You need to tell it as if you’re telling a Netflix short film. It’s neat to feel like you’re tailoring it to your best-trusted friend. That’s the level of communication it needs to be.

Once you communicate a well-thought-out story, in it are meaningful details. That goes back to the title of my book, Total Acuity, the importance of the meaningful details in your story. They’re going to trigger that emotional effects and empathy with your audience because they already lived that experience. Those details you’re talking about happened in their lives or means a lot to them. You can elevate all this to them and then they can say, “You’re talking about my life. This is me you’re talking about.” It then becomes powerful.

What I get you saying is the details paint the picture and the exposition and then you dig deep into the emotions. In the case of being arrested for drunk driving, there’s a lot of stress, shame and guilt. The more you can describe those details then it’s no longer, “We’re pitching you why our law firm is better than another one.” It’s more about, “We understand your pain. We know you.” As opposed to pushing out a bunch of facts and figures about how long you’ve been in business or something like that, that people may not connect to or even realize why that matters to them. “What makes us unique is we understand you better than anyone else,” as opposed to, “We’ve been in business longer than anyone else.” That’s a big shift for most people when they’re thinking of what makes us unique.

You also talked about an origin story, a point of view story and a higher purpose story. Let’s stay in the same genre of an example. There’s an origin story of the founder of the firm and what made them get into this specific niche. The point of view story is what I call the case story, which is where you’re showing that you understand someone’s experience. What I love about what you have here is the higher-purpose story. This is when we tug at the heartstrings and say, “You’re not just another client to us. We want to help you with more than a transactional experience.”

I have a perfect example of this. If you think about the Dove Sketches commercial from 2013, it was the police illustrator that took the profiles of the women. The genius of this commercial or visual story I call it is because there was no product mentioned or anything. The Ogilvy Toronto team did an amazing job researching before they did it. They found that 98% of the target audience for this product had low self-esteem. Meaning, only 2% thought they’re looking great. They came up with this whole story but the big message out of it was that you’re much more beautiful than you think you are. This is a high-purpose message to bring in this context and a lot of people were able to relate to it, “Maybe I’m too hard on me.”

There was no brand mentioned. It’s all only focusing on that high-end, high-purpose message. Before they did their research with focus groups, they found out that this is the most dominant pattern they came across and they use that in that story and that’s why it worked not only in terms of exposure but also in terms of doubling their sales in the following year. This is a classic example I always use in my programs.

Visual Storytelling: Sometimes you’re sitting on a gold mine by just the fact that you are creating original content.

I’ve seen that amazing campaign where the women are looking in the mirror and they’re not pushing the product of Dove at all but more about self-esteem, love yourself at any size and age. You emotionally connect to the brand in that way. Let’s take a little deep dive in here about Total Acuity. It’s filled with tales of marketing morals to help you create richer visual brand stories. You talked a little bit about how important it is to have meaningful details and get people to see themselves in there. The thing I want to ask you about is you have actionable lessons from the stories. Can you pick one of the lessons from a story that we could learn about and get us incentivized to want to do a deeper dive into the book?

A little background about this book, I chose a different approach from the typical business book that has interviews with the experts and tons of stats. What I tried to do is walk the walk of the original storytelling. The format of this book is a collection of short stories and personal stories that happened to me in real life. Anybody can relate to them. Every short story had a clear visual storytelling principle. It was supported by a photo and a visual. It’s digestible and easy to read. If you look at the book cover, it’s following the tradition of the medieval illuminated scripts that are known and famed for their attention to detail. That’s another aspect to complete the theme of the Total Acuity, the importance of details.

You got the foreword written by the head of Brand Studio at Microsoft. That’s great social proof. A big company like Microsoft using and endorsing this mindset certainly says a lot about the importance of what you’re doing.

I appreciate that. The origin of this book came from my weekly newsletter where I would share stories and things that happened to me with the connecting the principal. Over time, I accumulated lots of stories like that. I figured, “Why not create a book out of it?” That’s how it came about. Also, the lesson here for the readers is sometimes you’re sitting on a goldmine by the fact that you are creating original content. If you can repackage it in a new format, you can create a whole different audience for it.

The takeaway here is repurposing your content allows you to reach a different audience who prefers to consume content in a different format. Within the book, you have these actionable things that people can do. Is crafting the story one of the takeaways?

It’s a variety of things, things that you want to pay attention to, dialogues with different characters on mundane things. “I had to replicate my key for my house.” I’m telling that story. It’s mundane and ordinary stories that anybody can relate to but each one has this trigger that you can apply to the marketing company.

[bctt tweet=”In marketing, your customer is the hero of the story.” username=”John_Livesay”]

One of your latest blogs that is important to take a look at is the importance of regional marketing and dialing into the local nuances. For example, even within the state of California, different lifestyles, types of personalities, even attire between Northern and Southern California. Your company may not have a huge budget to adapt a campaign and be running the same radio campaign across the whole state. Is there anything you would recommend that they maybe do tweak?

In this particular podcast with the Regional Marketing Director of Alshaya Group based in Dubai, they are bringing major brands into different markets in the Middle East. They needed to adapt the brand positioning at each market because each market has its own sensibilities. It makes sense if you’re a global company with multiple markets that are completely different from each other. The golden rule still stands here. You got to do your own research about that particular community and understand what is going to surface up to the top as the main dominant trends.

In terms of concerns, doubts and culture, there’s more you need to take into account. Once you have that screening done, you can take your brand that has a global message and then find how you can adapt it to the new market while factoring in all the different things that you’ve heard from your research. It then becomes easier to comprehend. Sometimes you could have conflicting messages. In one market, you’re not allowed to say this or the other. You need to do your research and find out the differences so you’re not going to burn any brand equity by not considering these aspects.

A quick recap of all the different ways people can work with you, you’ve got your wonderful book, Total Acuity. You’ve got a course on visual storytelling. They can listen to your podcast, which is Visual Storytelling Today. The website is VisualStoryTell.com. The consulting is where you come in and do a deep dive with companies on how do we get your visuals to tell a story that matches the overall brand and make those visuals unique.

The speaking engagement is another fun part of my practice. I enjoy speaking about these and educating a new generation of marketers and mentoring them.

Especially when you’re speaking, you have all those fun visuals to show.

Visual Storytelling: The magic happens when you are able to tell a story that can address both what the client wants and what your customer wants. It’s called sweet spot the total eclipse.

I also show my original visuals that I had created. Now, we have such friendly visualization tools that anybody can pick up like Canva and others. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t try things yourself. There’s more authenticity value if you create your original work versus outsourcing it to something that looks super polished and impersonal. Here’s a simple example. I started using the Notes app on my iPad to do some simple sketching, colors, text, all with the stylists. I use that sometimes as real content to communicate principles. It’s me creating this. It’s not a graphic designer. It’s not high-end artists. Sometimes the personal voice that you can communicate through your creations has a much more powerful authenticity and humanity to it.

Going back to the law firm example, oftentimes we see sketches of people in a courtroom because they can’t take their picture. Giving people a sense of an illustration of what the experience might be if they’ve never been to court before can also pull them in a little bit going, “I’ve seen some of this on TV. Here’s their version of it.” Even maybe positioning yourself as the Sherpa for the clients.

It’s personalizing the experience. It also has an artistic value. To me, it looks like original work.

Any last thoughts you want to leave us with Shlomi?

When you think about your visual storytelling strategy, always do your homework first and the proper research. You’re a storytelling curator so you need to know how to craft your characters especially your hero, your customer. Get to know them and live in their world. Once you have that, start using a strong brand narrative that you vetted with the audience. There is confusion a lot in the market between the narrative and the story. The narrative is a short statement that spells out your brand promise and why people should care in the first place. It works like a GPS to guide all your supporting stories that you are going to communicate and to bring to life your brand narrative in essence.

Focus on stories that make sense to the specific platform you’re publishing, Facebook versus the webinar. Also, to your buyer persona but also the stage in the buyer’s journey. There are different stories at the top of the funnel on the first touch versus the mid-funnel. These are few basic tips that you might want to think about when you’re creating your visual storytelling strategy. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out at [email protected]. I’m also on LinkedIn. I’ll be more than happy to chat.

You’ve got many gems here and it generates one last question, which is different stories depending on where you are in the funnel. If you’re starting your story with some humor, let’s say a commercial or an ad to pull people in, I would think that person would expect that to be part of the culture, the conversation and the visuals so that it’s all one cohesive vibe. Otherwise, it seems like a big disconnect if you don’t have consistency across all of the messaging.

Part of the exercise is when you are reaching what I call the second phase in my framework story visualizing where you are developing your content strategy. You also want to think about what are the themes. What is the brand voice that you want to communicate to the outside world? That goes back to your comment about humor and about this type of vibe that people should feel. When you think about Nike or GoPro, for example, these are brands that no matter where you see their stories, you know this is them. It’s a recognizable experience. That type of overall content theme, you want to also instigate into your strategy.

Thanks. The book is Total Acuity. Visual Storytelling Institute, be sure to check it out and learn how to enhance your stories with visuals.

Thank you, John. It’s been great.

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Tags: Brand Narrative Statement, Classic Cinema, Higher-Purpose Story, Origin Story, POV Story, Video Art

Total Acuity With Shlomi Ron

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Total Acuity With Shlomi Ron

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