Ripple100 Stories, Movements

"Congratulations! Ripple100 has been designated a Connecticut Technology Council 2010 Company to..."

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 18:05:27 -0400

“Congratulations! Ripple100 has been designated a Connecticut Technology Council 2010 Company to Watch.”

- Received via email from the CT Technology Council

We’re excited about launching a Story World for patients...

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:59:45 -0400

We’re excited about launching a Story World for patients and doctors. All the healing permutations, all through storytelling:

Patients help themselves.
Patients help other patients.
Patients help doctors.
Doctors help patients.
Doctors help themselves.
Doctors help other doctors.

Here’s some science (and stories) about the power of stories to heal:

In this New York Times article, Dr. Pauline Chen, M.D. cites a provocative new study by The Annals of Internal Medicine in suggesting that When Patients Tell Stories, Health May Improve.

In health care, storytelling may have its greatest impact on patients who distrust the medical system or who have difficulty understanding or acting on health information because they may find personal narratives easier to digest. Stories may also help those patients who struggle with more “silent” chronic diseases, like diabetes or high blood pressure. In these cases, stories can help patients realize the importance of addressing a disease that has few obvious or immediate symptoms.

There’s a separate thread that’s already triggered more than 60 comments - we’re learning so much from these crowd contributors.

Rachel Naomi Remen, MD is a goddess of this area–for patients and healers alike. She has found not only that storytelling by patients is restorative, but storytelling by health care professionals mitigates burnout and helps find more meaning in the work we do.

She started an elective course called “The Healer’s Art” at UCSF medical school that has now spread to more than 64 schools–half the country’s medical schools–as a means of helping medical students re-connect with the emotions and ideals that brought them to medical school in the first place.

In a Boston Globe article, Dr. Annie Brewster, an urgent care doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital, said she has become a better doctor by listening to patient stories.

“I’ve realized that the illness process is just so much more than the physical process. It affects us all emotionally, spiritually, and in all our relationships,’’ said Brewster, who has launched a storytelling project in which she records stories of patients and their families and posts them online on WBUR’s CommonHealth blog.

In a hospital study funded by the Robert Johnson Wood Foundation, 150 patients with uncontrolled blood pressure who watched personal stories ended up with blood pressure about 11 points lower than the 150 control group members, who watched generic health-related DVDs.

“Part of the storytelling theory is the philosophy of homophily, which is that people identify with people who look like them, act like them and come from a similar culture, so we felt that was really important,” he said. “The spread of the people in the videos was such that most people in our patient population would be likely to identify with one or two of the people in there, so they’d be more likely to watch the video.”

"Assuming that all ARG players have large blocks of time to dedicate to your game is a dangerous..."

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:01:23 -0400

“Assuming that all ARG players have large blocks of time to dedicate to your game is a dangerous assumption that limits your audience.”

- Alternate Reality Games, rather than requiring an alternate life with lots of free time, should fit into daily life. Sine qua non if ARGs are ever to make it from our Storytelling lab to our Story World.

Here’s more from Michael Anderson’s call to arms to ARG developers.

Every ARG should have actionable and entertaining elements that can be enjoyed with relatively little knowledge of the game’s intricacies. And the best ARGs tend to provide these opportunities at regular intervals. In Must Love Robots, players were given the opportunity to save (or destroy) robot-kind by mixing up a suicide soda at Subway by pressing 8335 (or 5338) and posting the video on YouTube. In Chain Factor, players could uncover error message puzzles and control the fate of the world by playing the highly addictive flash game, Drop7. And in Repo Men, players were provided a steady stream of photographs and videos to parse for clues that might lead to capturing the four runners. All of these opportunities involved negligible time commitments on the part of players, with the potential for substantial rewards with regards to advancing the plot.

Sneak peek: Vanished ARG with MIT and Smithsonian, c/o...

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:46:39 -0400

Sneak peek: Vanished ARG with MIT and Smithsonian, c/o ARGNet

Vanished is science-fiction themed alternate reality game launching on April 4^th, created and run by MIT’s Education Arcade and the Smithsonian Institution. Vanished invites kids and teens 11-14 to participate in the role of scientific detectives, although older participants can also follow along with special “watcher” accounts. Players will uncover clues, form and test scientific hypotheses, collaborate with their peers, engage online with scientists, and learn about a broad range of scientific fields. Over the course of eight weeks, they will encounter multiple scientific mysteries that require real scientific methods to solve.

Each of the eight weeks of Vanished comprises a chapter with its own activities, scientific content, and another layer of a larger mystery. Online, players will engage with scientists from the Smithsonian via video conferences, play games that will help to illustrate concepts, and unlock clues and hidden messages. Offline, players need to explore their own neighborhoods for scientific data. Journal entries from in-game characters will lead players to visit Smithsonian-affiliated museums for exhibits to gather clues and learn more about each scientific field.

ARGs & Story Worlds

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:38:32 -0400

Not a gamer? Don’t let the G in ARG fool you. Alternate Reality Games aren’t just about play. They’re about bringing narrative to life by making stories - their discovery, shaping and telling - part of everyday life. Now in the R&D pipeline at our Storytelling lab.

We’ll let wikipedia take it from here:

An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants’ ideas or actions.

The form is defined by intense player involvement with a story that takes place in real-time and evolves according to participants’ responses, and characters that are actively controlled by the game’s designers, as opposed to being controlled by artificial intelligence as in a computer or console video game. Players interact directly with characters in the game, solve plot-based challenges and puzzles, and often work together with a community to analyze the story and coordinate real-life and online activities. ARGs generally use multimedia, such as telephones, email and mail but rely on the Internet as the central binding medium.

Story World 2.0 - For Good! Been 4 months since we concluded our...

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:50:00 -0500

Story World 2.0 - For Good!

Been 4 months since we concluded our storytelling campaign for John Mertens’ US Senate run. Our political campaign fed a diverse spectrum of R&D pods, right alongside Story World betas in nonprofit, the arts, government, civic and grassroots, and of course, business. Call them Story World 1.0.

Hunkered down in our newly opened Storytelling lab in Manila, we’re weeks away from unveiling Ripple100 Story World 2.0. Dubbed Story Worlds for Good, 2.0 is a software and services platform that engages leading organizations in a global campaign, deployed country-by-country, to advance a singular narrative: Business as a Force for Good.

I’m bursting about Q1 2011 - Ripple100 Asia has been nothing short of a searing breakthrough. Look forward to being back in the US, Story World 2.0 in tow.

-Andre Yap, Founder + CEO

"The soul of a business is its contribution to society, of culture its contribution to purpose, of..."

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 02:00:00 -0500

“The soul of a business is its contribution to society, of culture its contribution to purpose, of brand its contribution to meaning. Why fake, script, sloganize, message, or market any of it when you can capture the narrative as it unfolds - real stories, real people, real outcomes. Storytelling can change the world, enable communities of action, movements where organizations and stakeholders mobilize to make the world a better place. This is the future not just of business, culture, and brand - but of our human race. Movementing, not marketing.”

- Ripple100 Storytelling Lab, Manila Feb 2011

WHY WE'RE GOING ASIA

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 02:21:00 -0500

Straight from The Economist Magazine’s Economist Intelligence Unit, here’s 1/2 of why we’re bringing Ripple100’s Storytelling App | Agency to Asia. You’ll see the other half of our strategy as we roll out Ripple100 Manila through Q1 2011.

While emerging Asian nations such as China, India and Indonesia have recorded impressive growth in recent years, they have not built impressive brands. And yet, as the region’s companies grow ever more ambitious and push out onto the world stage, the need for strong brands will grow significantly. Just as important, the shifting business landscape within Asia itself will also demand the use of stronger brands.

Against this backdrop Brand and Deliver, a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, examines the current state of branding in emerging Asia. It looks at how companies are tackling the next — critical — stage of their evolution by harnessing the power of brands. And it assesses the lessons that can be learnt from pioneering firms in Japan and South Korea that have already succeeded in building global brands.

You can download the 37-page PDF here. Or scan key takeaways excerpted below:

In the past, Asia’s emerging multinationals could thrive without strong brands. In the future, they will need brands just to survive. Companies in emerging Asia have grown quickly into large businesses without using brands because they have been in the right place at the right time. This is particularly true of China. Construction companies have benefitted from urbanisation. Car companies have benefitted from rapid motorisation. Banks have benefitted from protected markets. Many others have benefitted from Western multinationals’ search for low-cost production. But this “brandless success” will not continue. Cost advantages are eroding, markets are opening and competition for customers is intensifying. Many of these competitors will be Western companies that have honed their branding skills over many years. At least one interviewee for this report estimates that Chinese companies have less than ten years in which to change their business models.
Branding isn’t only about succeeding in local markets, it’s critical to going global. Today, businesses in emerging Asia have vaulting ambition. The soaring volume of outbound M&A deals from India and China, for example, is testament to big aspirations. But Asian companies will find it difficult to succeed in “going global” without a strong brand. Chinalco and CNOOC from China were rebuffed in their attempts to buy assets in Australia and the US in large part because, in the absence of a clear identity of their own, they were viewed as merely extensions of the Chinese government. Indian Hotels Company was rejected in its attempt to associate more closely with Orient Express Hotels, in which it was the largest shareholder, because management worried that association with an Indian business would diminish the value of its own brand. Indian automakers found similar resistance when they announced plans to acquire Jaguar from Ford.
Branding strategy, as practised in the West, is not well understood in Asia. While the benefits of brands — to both customers and companies — are easy to grasp, the science of creating and managing them is far from straightforward. In emerging Asia, that science is a work in progress. According to leading branding consultants in the region, many companies regard brands as their reward for building a successful business. They often confuse branding with advertising. But a brand is more than just a name or a logo, and while marketing is an important part of branding, it is only one part. Companies need to think about quality, as well as design, style and all other aspects of a customer experience that together make up the brand. Most importantly, they need to think about what will differentiate them from the competition.
The transition to managing a branded business demands major changes in corporate thinking, organisation and staffing. Historically, companies in Asia have competed on price, trying to be the cheapest at what they do. They have operated with a trading mentality, pursuing numerous opportunities, often diverse and short-term. Many companies are run by engineers or finance professionals with little understanding of the softer aspects of business. The transition to building a brand requires changing this behaviour. For a start, it requires a longer-term, more focused approach. Just as important, brands must be managed from the very top. Too often in Asia, branding is considered something to be delegated to a junior team. Building and guarding a brand requires specific expertise — and companies will need to obtain this, wherever it may come from. LG Electronics, for example, in 2007 hired its first ever chief marketing officer and first ever c-level executive from outside South Korea.
There are many routes to going global with a brand — but targeting emerging markets first offers the best chance of success. Building a global brand almost always requires building a strong presence in a domestic market and then using that as a platform to push onto the world stage. As Asian brands make that push, they are typically focused first on getting into other emerging markets. Not only do these places offer less competition from Western brands, but Chinese and Indian firms are often considered premium in places like Nigeria and Vietnam. When emerging market brands push into Western markets, they typically position themselves as value-for-money, and over time try to push up-market into richer customer segments. That transition requires a laser-like focus on things like quality and reliability.
The experience of Japanese and South Korean firms shows that quality and safety are critical to brand success. Many lessons can be drawn from the rise of Japanese and South Korean brands. Paramount is the need for product quality and reliability. While it is often necessary for emerging multinationals to start off by competing on price as a “low-end” brand (as, indeed, many Japanese and Korean firms did), this strategy is not sustainable over the longer term. Iconic Japanese firms realised this from the outset. In the 1950s, Sony’s goal was to “become the company most known for changing the worldwide poor-quality image of Japanese products”. Its long-term mission was that in 50 years, “our brand name will be as well known as any in the world … and will signify innovation and quality … ‘Made in Japan’ will mean something fine, not something shoddy.”
To build successful brands, emerging multinationals will need to increase significantly their investments in R&D, marketing and design. This will require them to get over their traditional aversion to investment in intangible assets as opposed to more tangible investments like factories and property. Among the toughest challenges for companies trying to make the transition to branded goods is fostering innovation. Many Asian firms have relied on copying what other businesses do. But truly great brands lead the field with their own innovation.
Asian brands must recognise both the positive and negative aspects of their origin and heritage. One of the biggest challenges facing Asia’s emerging multinationals is the “country of origin effect”, whereby Asian brands are perceived as inferior because they come from an emerging market. In the case of China, the recent string of scandals involving products such as milk powder has made the problem worse. Branding experts believe this is a temporary problem. But it is one that will need to be considered carefully in devising branding strategy. This is perhaps doubly true for brands acquired abroad. The Tata brand is one of the best known in India and one of the best regarded. But although it has made headlines for its high-profile global acquisitions, Tata has wisely decided to avoid any thought of rebranding these assets. “Tata means nothing to Mrs Robinson in Bedfordshire, but Tetley means a great deal,” says R Gopalakrishnan, executive director of Tata Sons. Instead, the conglomerate has launched a more subtle campaign to win foreign friends, bringing young graduates from Europe and America’s leading universities to India to see Tata’s much admired CSR programmes at work.
The pressure to manage brands well will only intensify. Many branding experts believe the time needed to build a global brand is shortening, thanks to a more globalised world, faster communications, more pervasive media and the internet. While Japanese companies took 40 years, and South Korean companies took 25 years, Chinese and Indian companies might only need 10 to 15 years. This shortening timeframe will add further pressure on firms to manage brands competently.

Photo

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 02:19:46 -0500

Asian Brands And Story Worlds

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 02:03:00 -0500

Excerpted from Economist Intelligence Unit’s Brand & Deliver: Emerging Asia’s New Corporate Imperative.

Fourteen lines of advice for brand-builders in emerging Asia. Or, in a word: Storytelling. How many of these lend themselves to Story Worlds? I’d say 14 of 14.

Manage from the top. Branding is not something to be delegated to junior teams. Leading brands both reflect and influence everything that a company does.
Manage over the long term. While traditional businesses in Asia have often operated with a trading mentality, exploiting short-term opportunities, brand-building requires a longer-term commitment to a narrower set of opportunities or customers.
Understand how your business delivers value. Traditionally, many Asian firms have competed on price, aiming to win business by being the cheapest. Having a brand requires different thinking, with firms shifting from competing on price to competing on value. Companies must think more deeply about issues such as style, design, safety, service levels and reliability.
Don’t forget your staff. Brand-building is about more than external customers. For a brand to come alive, internal staff must know what the brand stands for.
Act on quality. When emerging nations embark on the path to brand-building, quality is often low. To become a well-respected brand, companies need a constant, tireless effort to raise standards. The Japanese car and electronics industries did it in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s. Then it was the turn of the South Koreans in the 1990s and 2000s. Brands from China, India and other nations must do the same.
Focus on innovation. World-leading brands are based on innovation. Companies will never create winning brands by copying the intellectual property of others.
Create an emotional connection. In a world where it is ever harder for companies to stay ahead of their competitors on a consistent basis, brands must build an emotional connection to customers. All the best brands do this. When rival sports shoes are all of equal quality, the difference comes from how customers perceive themselves when they wear a particular shoe.
Be brutally consistent. If a brand’s character is constantly shifting, if its look and feel are always changing, if its service levels vary, then customers become alienated. They feel the brand’s promise has been broken.
Manage the country-of-origin effect. Companies must decide how to balance the positive attributes of their home country with negative perceptions. While certain cultural characteristics can enhance a brand, other perceptions about quality may be less positive. Over time, the positive aspects of emerging Asia are likely to rise and the negative perceptions are likely to decline.
Use domestic markets to build strong brands. It is possible to build an international brand without first conquering a domestic market, but it’s far easier to go global from a strong domestic base.
Pick new markets carefully. Companies from emerging Asia have big ambitions, but it doesn’t always make sense to push a brand into wealthy Western markets first. Emerging markets in Asia, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe are less crowded, offer rapid growth and are likely to be less prone to country-of-origin prejudices.
Allow 30% of the brand to vary according to different tastes. While brands must be consistent, they also need to be brought to life locally. A good rule of thumb is that 70% of a brand must be consistent across the world, but 30% should vary to reflect different tastes in different markets.
Consider all the customer touch points. Brands deliver tremendous value, but they can also be damaged if mismanaged. For example, product recalls or breakdowns can damage a brand, but only if mishandled. Conversely, a finely tuned repair service can enhance a brand’s perception among customers.
Monitor brand strength continuously. It’s often argued that businesses can’t manage what they don’t measure. Companies should set up systems that enable them to measure the strength, loyalty and position of their brands relative to the market.

Phil Collins said you can’t hurry love; same with Story...

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 15:17:00 -0500

Phil Collins said you can’t hurry love; same with Story Worlds. This is Day 5 of ournewhaven.org , 46 stories and counting, with narrative, cast, and plot open for everyone to shape. With so much already told and a lifetime still to unfold, we spend Day 5 re-framing around the bigger picture dubbed 1 New Haven Promise, 24 Ways to Transformation.

Day 4 of 5, Stories 33-38 of 46 (and counting), for our latest Story World

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 15:09:00 -0500

Day 4 of 5, Stories 33-38 of 46 (and counting), for our latest Story World:

Our first 3 days of serial stories gave the stage to the narrative’s leading characters: students, parents, teachers. Day 4 segues the narrative into the rest of the community, the supporting cast without whom a happy ending is impossible.

Abhorrent. That’s how this story kicks off, with a horrid...

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 15:00:56 -0500

Abhorrent. That’s how this story kicks off, with a horrid retelling of a choice no father should ever have to make. And how in New Haven, if we each do our part, we can truthfully say: Never again.

Note the Story World juxtaposition of before and after separated by one visionary program and a community’s response to it. That’s what we mean when we say stories that move us to action. One of 46 stories (and counting) marking our 5-day rollout for ournewhaven.org, this one debuted on Day 3.

Trainman is one of our favorites from 46 stories (and counting)...

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:51:09 -0500

Trainman is one of our favorites from 46 stories (and counting) currently unfolding in ournewhaven.org, a live Story World about promises in New Haven, CT.

Trainman debuted along with 3 other short stories on Day 2 of our 5-day rollout that started with the unveiling of New Haven Promise. How will this story end? That’s the point of Story Worlds - we are all authors and characters with the ability to shape how the story goes.

Sequel to previous story, this time from the client’s...

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:35:12 -0500

Sequel to previous story, this time from the client’s client’s perspective. Even an investment bank has a cast of characters, and boy, what compelling stories they can tell. Seriously, why advertise when you can tell stories?

Sell-Side M&A Advisory: it’s not something you...

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 14:31:28 -0500

Sell-Side M&A Advisory: it’s not something you necessarily understand, or or want or need to, while you’re running the company you started 20 years ago. Until it’s time for you to exit (retire, travel the world with your spouse, relocate and see the grandkids more often, or maybe even start your next thing).

If you’re an investment banker, how do you explain what you do to the growing universe of baby boomers who are going to need your services, oh, over the next 60 months…

See how storytelling can help explain something as weird as investment banking.

Transmedia Story World Live, Day 1

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 18:54:00 -0500

Finally Day 1, the historic moment came today at 9:30 am. From storytelling lab to Story World, live. Here’s what ournewhaven.org looked like. More soon. Busy…

Breaking Stories, Live Drama, Suspense

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 08:11:00 -0500

It’s Day Zero of our latest Story World. Day 1 is about to break, and we are, each of us both authors and characters. Click below to be there as greatness embraces a city, and vice versa. The point of Story World is meaningful participation: outcomes are entirely ours to win or lose.

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Same Story World unfolding a day later. As date and time of the historic announcement has just been made public, transmedia are on all cylinders via social media like Twitter.

Taking the transmedia touchpoints off and online, we teamed up with a group of trusted insiders to organize a meetup at The Grove New Haven, a local co-working space known for its collaborative culture. Expanding the cast of characters organically, with people who have an intrinsic stake in the narrative. Mayor DeStefano himself retweets the event:

Meanwhile at ournewhaven.org, the live stream format is now open, our counter is live and down to 19 hours and change.

Politics & Story World 2012

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 07:38:00 -0500

With the November 2 election, we wrapped up our Story World campaign for the U.S. Senate candidacy of John Mertens. Story World wasn’t a web strategy, social or (gulp) transmedia gimmick or sidebar initiative - it was the campaign, with all the elements of narrative, characters, rites, etc.

From the start we resolved to find and tell stories as the basis for genuine engagement That’s how the campaign ran everyday to the last. As we’ve sought and sat with people from all walks of CT, they’ve told us their stories much more than we’ve told them ours. On the last day John wrote a long letter and spoke on camera recapping the stories of so many others and thanking them because their stories changed his life.

So Mertens 2010 has ended, but it has birthed a broader Story World called Potlucks for Inspiration, which we’ll resume in a few weeks looking towards 2012 and beyond.

Stories Are Golden Eggs, And Story Worlds the Golden Goose

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 10:55:00 -0400

See comment stream for ongoing notes from Poptech - a week of brilliant accidents, necessary failures, improbable breakthroughs - seen through our Storytelling lens.

We spent the past week at Poptech 2010’s world-changing people, projects and ideas road-testing latest findings from our Storytelling Lab. We know how to tell stories, they’re golden eggs. But it’s these 5 variables (so far) of Story Worlds we fuss about. They’re the molecular DNA of the the golden goose that gives our brands, business, nonprofit, political, and civic campaigns stories, stories, never-ending stories.