Category Archives: TriSight News and Events

Five Tips for Telling Your Brand’s Story

Five Tips for Telling Your Brand's Story

 

All too often in the world of PR and communications, we get so consumed by the idea of putting out the right message, that we forget that the story itself is just as important as the actual points we’re trying to make. After all, brand loyalty is largely earned through an interesting, relatable and entertaining narrative. Despite all the technology that is constantly coming to market and the bevy of platforms available to us, humans will always be story driven. The art of storytelling is a part of our collective human history and as long as humans are around, this will always remain important. With that in mind, here are five tips to keep in mind when telling your brand’s story:

Be Relatable

There’s nothing worse than reading a story that fails to connect with you. When this happens, the “story” becomes just an assortment of words and the capacity for a message to be successfully transmitted flies out the window. Think about it, you’ve most likely never read something to completion that didn’t have at least one thing you could relate to. Even in academic writing, if at some point nothing sparks your interest, your ability to absorb any knowledge from the text becomes diminished. It’s why this type of literature relies so heavily on anecdote. They are simply trying to make that crucial connection with you. So for this reason, you should always strive to make your story relatable. Appeal to those moments that are culturally universal, to themes that everyone can understand, and to conversational tones that you all share. All it takes are a few small moments of connection with your reader to make sure that they remain engaged.

Be Dramatic

And this is meant in the most technical way possible. Before setting out to tell your story, spend some time learning about the themes, patterns and archetypes that have made for great stories. Although there are thousands of tales out there, they tend to follow arcs that have worked for other writers in the past. The most famous of these is the hero’s journey, which was the topic of Joseph Campbell’s book, “The Hero With a Thousand Faces.” In his book, Campbell explains that throughout mythology heroes have always embarked on the same trajectory. At its most basic, this involves the call to action, facing some sort of struggle, becoming lost on the way back home, and finally finding atonement. Although you probably won’t be tasked with creating an epic when writing for a brand, you can definitely use some of these widely accepted storytelling devices to make a better narrative.

Mind your Platform

Although storytelling will always be important, the constant emergence of new platforms means that brand writers will need to develop tactics for each one. The way you engage with audiences on Facebook, for example, is totally different than the way you would do so on Snapchat or Instagram. What this means is that in order to tell your story in the most engaging way possible, you need to understand your vehicle, including the details of how it operates and the demographic makeup of the people who use it most. Knowing all of this will make it easier to target your message and it will allow you to modify your stories to best fit that medium.

Make it Personal

If you think that this is the same as being relatable, you’re almost right, but there are a few distinctions. Being relatable means that you capture moments that are culturally relevant, meaning that even though the reader may have never lived through that moment, it’s still engrained into his/her psyche by virtue of where and when they are living. When you’re making your story personal, however, you are appealing to actual shared experiences. When you have a conversation with old friends, for example, part of what you’re doing is recollecting moments that you were both in. When you laugh at inside joke, you are able to do so because you were able to experience that moment and can draw on the memory of it. This is what making it personal means. Making it personal means incorporating the little details of a time and a place that bring you closer to your reader and allow you to connect on a deeper level.

Be the Hero of Your Story

Once you are able to bring dramatic elements into your story, to establish tension, climax and resolution, make sure to position yourself as the hero of your story. After all, no one wants to buy from a brand that they consider to be evil. No matter what your brand is, the products you make, or the reputation that you’ve had in the past, always work to position yourself as the protagonist. Create a problem early on, and make sure that by the end of the story you become the solution. That way, once it’s all said and done, you come out looking like the good guy.

Spring ’16 Welcome Message

A Welcome Message !

 

Hello everyone and welcome back to another semester at USC! We are very excited to begin another term with all of our wonderful members. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be welcoming new TriSighters and starting our account work. We thought that a good way to kick off the semester would be to introduce our client roster. We’re beginning the term with five accounts, all of which are varied in kind and in what they require from our wonderful teams. Now, let’s get to know our clients!

 

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Dream Team Directors: The “Dream Team Directors” are Bayou Bennett and Daniel Lir, an award-winning husband and wife writer/director team. They create original content, commercials and documentaries for the highest profile and most influential companies and celebrities in the industry including Adidas, MTV, Coldplay, P. Diddy, Paris Hilton, Oscar De La Renta, Carolina Herrera and have helped discover stars such as Lea Michele of Fox’s               “Glee.” Students working on this account will have the opportunity to explore branding with work including awareness campaigns, press kits and social media strategies.

Los Angeles Sustainability Collective

Los Angeles Sustainability Collaborative (LASC): Founded in 2009, LASC is a non-profit organization that aims to advance sustainability by facilitating research, informing stakeholders, and providing solutions to emerging environmental challenges. TriSight is excited to announce a new partnership with LASC, where account members will have the opportunity to work in branding. There will also be many chances for members to work on awareness campaigns, events and social media strategy.

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Annenberg Digital Lounge: The Digital Lounge is a burgeoning space of creativity and technology on the third floor of the new Annenberg building. Account members will have the opportunity to advance Annenberg’s digital literacy initiative by creating social media and marketing campaigns to grow awareness of the tools and technology assistance found in the Digital Lounge.

H.A.T.S.

Human Autonomy Teaming Solutions (H.A.T.S.): This is an opportunity to explore the field of tech PR, where you can work alongside the experts that are taking the tech industry to the next level. HATS’ expertise is in designing and developing automation and software for complex systems in a number of domains, including aviation and healthcare. Their signature product is the Human Automation Teaming Testbed developed for NASA as a research tool to enable the integration of drones into the national airspace system.  Students will be creating information kits and building social media strategies for this client.

SCA

USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA): SCA is one the nation’s leading film schools. A great many spectacular cinematic talents have graduated from this school and it is renowned for the quality of work it produces. Students who work on this account help to promote films made in the graduate studies program to prospective students, alums, festival programmers, and trade media. Over the course of the semester, TriSight members create press materials, pitch media, and reach out to the community on behalf of these spectacular student films.

 

We can’t wait to start working with you all and are excited to see what lies ahead for TriSight!

 

– Irene Bischofberger and Amy Li

Co-Presidents of TriSight Communications

The Proof is in the Reading

THE PROOF

 There’s a time and a place for everything, the old idiom reads.

Well, that time should be always, and that place should be everywhere.

I’m talking about grammar and its nauseating misuse among our generation.

Now, I’ll admit I’m a bit of a grammar policeman. Proofreading is legitimately one of my favorite PR-related tasks. One might even say I have a flair for the … grammatic. (Sorry, I’ll stop with the terrible puns.)

Regardless of your passion level for accurate grammar, however, you must understand its importance, especially in the PR/marketing/communication industry.

I’m not going to use this space to walk through correct punctuation or discuss my opinions on controversial usage like the Oxford comma (which I vehemently oppose). You’re all bright students who have constructed enough sentences correctly to perform at the college level.

Instead, I want to emphasize the significance of proofreading and hopefully inspire you to re-read your next written assignment just one more time.

Here are some reasons to #checkyourgrammar:

Credibility: Probably the most consequential reason to #checkyourgrammar is to establish trust between you and your audience. In many of your PR classes, you’ll hear professors preach about recognizing a brand’s audiences and prioritizing stakeholders. What’s great about sharp grammar is that it’s effective for any and all audiences. Sure, slang will prove to be useful on social media to attract the younger generation, but even then, conscious grammar decisions go a long way in supporting a brand’s communication efforts.

Resume building: Wondering why you’re not receiving calls from potential employers after submitting an application? Take a harder look at your resume. Multiple HR directors have told me that grammar mistakes are just about the easiest way to have your resume end up in the trash. If you can’t find the time to polish one of the most valuable documents in your life, how can an organization expect you to professionally organize your thoughts on behalf of their brand?

Satisfaction: Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t it feel fantastic when you turn in an assignment and have no qualms about getting dinged for sloppy work? Conversely, I loathe that feeling of knowing I made sound arguments, but nothing in life matters anymore because I left a dangling modifier in the second paragraph.

The knowledge is there: It’s not as if this is a skill set you don’t already have. You already understand the difference between a dependent and independent clause. You know when to use lay and when to use lie. You’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t take advantage of your understanding of the language.

You can’t rely solely on spell check: I hate to break it to you, but Microsoft Word’s spell check function doesn’t catch it all. Spell check is the Google Maps of grammar fixers. It’ll get you close to where you want to go, but sometimes it’ll leave you hanging around the corner from your destination. Before you hit submit, you need to give it one final read. Put yourself in the shoes of a word like affect. Affect is a verb (except for its psychology-based definition), an emotional one at that, and people hurt its feelings when they use it as a noun. You wouldn’t want to be called Jack if your name was Jake, would you? Think about that the next time you don’t think you need to proofread.

If not for yourself, then proofread for the sake of the beautiful English language!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Data-driven storytelling and resources you can use

 

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Written by Lukia Yuanshu Xu

Storytelling has always been a center of PR and marketing, in fact, it is sometimes more important to a business than the product or service. A well-crafted and visually appealing story could help your business catch the attention of customers, but to further convince your audience, you will need to build some credibility with data.

Being a data-driven storyteller is not just for content marketers, but for nearly everyone who needs to present to clients, superiors and even just in class. The numbers always speak for themselves.

To be a data-driven storyteller you don’t need a degree in statistics or be a maven in data analytics, as someone whose job is to tell the story, you just need to know how to interpret and present the data in a right way. So here are some tips of becoming a savvy data-driven storyteller and some resources you can use, mostly free.

  1. Think about your audience.

Like all marketing/PR campaigns, you always want to keep audience on the top of your mind. Make sure you know what their “pain points” are and how your products/services could speak to their needs. Your goal at this stage is to come up with a question that your story will address. If your question has a quantifiable dimension, it is more likely to make up for a good data-driven story.

  1. Find the right data.

By “right data” I’m not just talking about the data that make your story compelling, but the data that are credible and solid enough to convince your toughest client. That means you need to be careful about the sources of data, Wikipedia is not allowed as data source in thesis for a reason.

If you want credible data, here is a list of some common sources:

  • Public data sites: government databases, state agency databases, WTO/IMF databases etc.
  • Research institutes: Pew Research Center, Forrester Research etc.
  • Reports from large consulting firms: McKinsey, BCG, PwC, KPMG etc.
  • Publications: Academic journals etc.
  1. Present your data.

If good data make up 40% of a successful story, then visualization is 60%. Human beings are visual animals, especially in this world full of distractions, people will only pay attention to the catchy ones.

Using infographics is a good way to convey your message. The longer layout allows one to actually tell a story from the beginning to the end, keeping your audience on hook before getting bored of all the numbers.

Some tools to generate infographics are: Adobe Illustrator, Powerpoint/Keynote, and online websites like infogr.am. If you like design or holds very high standard to your work, Illustrator would work to your best interest, it just takes more time to learn. If you don’t mind using other people’s design, online websites would be your go-to place. Personally I like Powerpoint, because it’s just so easy to use and also allows great room for creativity. A lot of designers actually use Powerpoint frequently. You can get Illustrator for free if you are from Annenberg, and most of the templates on infogr.am are free while some do cost a bit money.

An interesting way to present the data would be interactive, this works well for audiences who like to explore a bit, and honestly who wouldn’t like to play a little game? A software to help you realize this would be Tableau. I call it a “fancy Excel” because all you need to do is put your data in and choose a chart/graph. It works well even on large quantity of data, like thousands of tuples. And you can get a free student version on their website, otherwise it’s very expensive for entreprises.

With your USC account, you can take the courses on Lynda.com for free to learn these tools.

  1. Seek feedback before launch.

This sounds like cliche but a lot people will forget when they actually start working. You get excited about your beautiful masterpiece and you can’t wait to show it off to everyone. But before you do anything, be aware that you are too small a sample and your opinion is highly biased. Ask someone else for their thoughts, especially those similar to your audience, have a keen eye for design or have done this before, they might tell you this color should be lighter, that portions on the pie chart don’t match with the numbers, or it’s just not that interesting to catch attention. They will save you a lot of trouble and frustration.

 

Welcome Back Message from the Co-Presidents

Welcome Back TriSighters!

Hello everyone and welcome, or welcome back, to another semester at USC! We, your TriSight Communications Co-Presidents, are excited to begin another semester with all of our wonderful members. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be welcoming a wave of new TriSighters and kicking off our account work. We’re also planning some great members-only events and other exclusive opportunities.

We thought that a good way to reactivate our blog would be to introduce our client roster for the semester. We’re beginning the term with five accounts, all of which are varied in kind and in what they require from our wonderful teams. Let’s get to know our clients!

Annenberg Media Center: Now a year old, the Annenberg Media Center is a state-of-the-art, one-of-a-kind focal point for ASCJ. Inside it’s doors, students of all Annenberg areas of study are able to work collaboratively to produce professional-caliber work. This account provides TriSighters with opportunities to work in branding. Since it has only been open a year, there will be many chances for members to work on awareness campaigns, events and social media strategy.

USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA): SCA is one the nation’s leading film schools. A great many spectacular cinematic talents have graduated from this school, and it is renowned for the quality of work it produces. Students who work on this account help to promote films made in the graduate studies program to prospective students, alums, festival programmers and trade media. Over the course the semester, TriSight members create press materials, pitch media, and reach out to the community on behalf of these spectacular student films.

Kid’s Ocean Day: This is an established, renowned non-profit. Its proprietor has worked for twenty years to educate primary school students about the importance of preserving and protecting the oceans. Affiliated with the Malibu Foundation for Environmental Education, Kid’s Ocean Day culminates in an eponymous event where hundreds of children are brought to the beach for a day of cleaning up the shore. TriSighters who work on this account get the opportunity to explore social media strategy and non-profit public relations.

Annenberg Digital Lounge: One of TriSight’s newest clients, the Annenberg Digital Lounge is a burgeoning space of creativity and technology on the third floor of the new Annenberg building. TriSight is excited to announce a new partnership with the Digital Lounge, where account members will have the opportunity to advance Annenberg’s digital literacy initiative by creating social media and marketing campaigns to grow awareness of the tools and technology assistance found in the Digital Lounge.

Viterbi School of Engineering: TriSight continues its strong relationship with USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering this fall. Members on this account will support the school’s marketing team to highlight the exciting research its students produce through written profiles and social media content. This type of work is frequently asked of entry-level PR professionals and thus provides TriSight members great portfolio material. 

The reason TriSight runs effectively is because our members work hard to ensure tasks are completed, deadlines are met and clients remain happy. So we’d like to thank you in advance for providing that same effort throughout the fall semester and into the future.

Now that you have a better idea of the organizations we’ll be servicing this semester, it’s time to get (or stay) involved! Find us on Facebook, LinkedIn and email (trisight.communications@gmail.com) to stay up-to-date with all things TriSight.

 

Member of The Month: Meet Christina Lo!

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TriSight Communication’s third Member of the Month is Kids Ocean Day team member Christina Lo. Christina is a full-time student majoring in Communications at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, Christina’s uniqueness comes from her purple hair! Her peers and classmates instantly recognize and remember her, which always serves as a plus. Get to know Christina with our short interview below and help us congratulate her for being TriSight’s Member of the Month! Congratulations Christina!

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Meet Aaron Wong- TriSight’s latest Member of the Month

TriSight Communication’s second Member of the Month is AISMS team member Aaron Wong. Majoring in Communications and set to graduate in Fall 2015, Aaron’s favorite part about going to school in Los Angeles is the weather. In addition to working on the AISMS account, Aaron has also been a referee for Intramural Sports at USC.  Congratulations Aaron!

 

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