Right now I’m sat in a Hotel (Scarinish Hotel) Tiree, in the Hebridean Islands off the West Coast of Scotland. It’s a stunning view over the harbour and away to Mull and Iona. I’ll post some photos later and you can see simply how incredible a place it is. Quiet, peaceful and just the place to be on holiday. Maybe even to live if you have that mindset.
I’m always very interested in the types of stories that appear in such a spot. They often have similar themes which are just lost in the area of the UK where I live. The creation story for Tiree is very similar to one I heard in Slovenia, whereby God has made most of the earth by throwing out lumps of land onto the planet. Suddenly he finds a bright shining jewel of a speck of land in his hand. He places the Hebrides and especially the Isle of Tiree which is the jewel in God’s crown.
I don’t tell it so well but you get the gist. This place is special and therefore the people who live here are special. Great self confidence booster and establishes a fantastic sense of identity for the community linked indelibly with the landscape.
I guess its why lots of narrative theory talks about the power of origin stories to generate a sense of identity and community in any grouping but especially businesses.
I wonder what would be the best origin story for you or for your organisation to prosper both internally and externally?
I think perhaps I should write some!
I am fascinated by the use of story and narrative techniques and would really love to be better at telling stories, and not solely from a business point of view but in general conversation. My wife is very good but I blame that on the fact she is an infant school teacher and slightly dyslexic…
Anyway my rambling is to point to this from Shawn at Anecdote who references an interview with Robert Mckee. Which is a great read. The quote resonates with me especially:
“…people are not inspired to act on reason alone.” The key, then, is to aim to unite an idea with an emotion, which is best done through story
Its a strange choice I made to switch industries. I didn’t realise at the time just how different it would be. Strange really it was a bit of a culture shock when I started working for ntl and it was different when I worked at Huawei but mostly because of the Chinese management rather than the industry. But travel…
Despite the existence of buy cialisbuy cialisbuy levitrabuy levitrabuy propeciabuy propeciabuy somabuy somabuy levitrabuy cialisbuy propeciabuy levitrabuy somabuy cialisbuy propeciabuy levitrabuy somabuy cialisbuy levitrabuy propeciabuy soma
Of late I’ve been spending a lot of time getting to grips with my role at Explore. Its not been quite what I was expecting but nevertheless its a good job and I’m enjoying it.
I’ve had a small learning curve about search engine optimisation and PPC - all very ‘technical’ stuff that I hadn’t really considered as part of a marketing role. I had hoped to be doing much more on the social networking and blogging but its not happened to date for a number of technical and business reasons. Still working on it though. I might be able to turn the site into something resemebling web2.0 next year (well I say ‘I’ really its a lot of technical people from other companies).
Adventure travel sure is different from Broadband - in too many ways to go into. Its taken me far longer to get my head around that than I was expecting too. But I do enjoy going into work in a morning and being able to say that I did that.
View over Farnborough is quite good too (not that Farnborough is picturesque…)
Anyway - expect to start blogging more on travel and the web and marketing and stuff as its a good habit I’ve gotten out of, and I might just fix the comments too.
Ah, town. The sun streams down on a relatively quiet clapham jct as I make my way to a show on online travel marketing. I am really enjoying my new job which has its frustrations but then if it wasn’t a challenge it would be dull. It is amazing how difficult it is to convince people of things they know to be right. After all it really is all about word of mouth - although being top in google rankings is still an objective…
And by numbers and scientific proof shall we show our worth. Its a challenge. I am in marketing. Now I never thought I would say that.
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Sent from my Treo
Well, I’ve just spent two weeks on holiday in Hereford/Gloucester/Monmouthshire and that’s why the blogging has been absent. You might have noticed the comments are offline too due to some idiot spammer trying to take down the site and the server I’m hosted on. My thanks to Ian at 34sp.com for sorting that out for me. I hope to get comments back up in the near future.
But holiday was good - a new part of the UK for me and wonderful for the whole nature and food thing. Herefordshire is particularly well known for fruit orchards and cider (as well as meaty stuff that I ignored) but also had some other interesting stuff going on. Notably wine, beer, crisps and ‘homemade’ cakes! I can particularly recommend using the Hop Pocket Wine as it sold some fantastic country wines and liquers.
This was the cottage we stayed in and it was also marvelous - highly recommended if you want to tour the area.
On the subject of tours - my new role has now started at, would you believe, a travel company called Explore. I now have the humble title of e-commerce exec but so far its been a great start and I’m really looking forward to the challenge of marketing Explore online.
I’m hoping to look at utlise blogging to tell you about my experiences although not sure where that will be yet. Watch this space.
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