That trend can only grow, because as we continue to automate not only physical production but also more and more sophisticated information management, what’s increasingly left for us to do is to “spin” what we have, to play with our imaginations and evoke emotions. That is not bad, because most people love to tell - as well as to listen to - stories. If it wasn’t so, Facebook and other social media wouldn’t have worked. Nor radio and television.

Natural storytelling business

Some businesses have inherently good stories to tell. There is an easy way to figure out which: Look in the newspapers. If you have a company in that produces construction materials, say, roof tiles, the only way you can get mentioned in the paper is by paying for an advertisement (or perhaps going bankrupt in a spectacular way). So roof tiles are not obvious for story-telling. But newspapers and other media do write a lot about sports, which is a giant story-telling business. And they cover luxury and leisure, including fashion, travel destinations and restaurants. They also write about health and nutrition.

Generally the businesses operating within these areas are good at telling their stories, since they know that this is largely what they are selling. Cab you imagine a perfume without a story? A sports car? Nutritional aid?

Perhaps none does it better than sports, where you not only see the live events in media, but where you also get backgrounders, analysis, and news, etc. The media will typically cover a team or a player when they succeed, but also when they fail, and it is understood by the audience that what the sportsmen- and women do isn’t easy at all, and that you may win one day and fail another and still be a great player. The coverage creates empathy, so when the stars lose, their fans sympathize with them, because they understand through the media coverage how hard they try.

Sports companies hire professional media people to ensure that what they have to tell reach the public in compelling ways in any format, on any device, and in any place, at any time, and in real time. In many ways, they set the benchmark.

Banks: The missing story

There is actually another business sector which is widely covered in the media: Finance. Most general media provide fairly substantial coverage of happens in financial markets. Why? - Because it effects almost everyone, it’s constantly evolving and often so in dramatic ways. Finally, to many the process of investment is a fun game. It can be fascinating and enjoyable. Never a dull moment here!

But most banks are in my opinion not particularly good at story-telling, mainly, I guess, for not really trying. Their research may be released as PDFs which may or may not be discovered by the clients who would be interested. Their website may seem like a brochure with a token coverage of a few markets plus perhaps a log-in if you want to move your money.

If the client is really interested in financial markets, he is more likely to use public sites like Yahoo Finance or Onvista than the site provided by their own bank, as if the Yahoo team know more about finance than a major bank.

Does Yahoo really know better?

Of course Yahoo doesn’t know more about finance than a major bank, but media packaging is what they do, and that they do rather well. Well enough to get more financial mindspace than the banks.

Among banks there are of course some who embrace alternative media more actively. For instance, the Danish institution Jyske Bank has hired journalists and makes financial television: http://en.jyskebank.tv/. And Morgan Stanley recently released an iPad application http://www.morganstanley.com/about/press/articles/0ebf6d0b-ae5a-11df-aefa-6d394f25e73a.html. But those are some of the exceptions; not the rule. The rule is that banks generally are sitting on an as-yet unused opportunity to reach their clients – existing and prospective – effectively and compellingly via smartphones, iPads, and on the web.

What would the benefits of changing that be? - I think it falls in three categories:

• Get the mind space. A bank wishes to share ideas and information with its clients, because the clients like it. SOP why not do it as professionally as possible?
• Smarter clients are better clients. The more the clients knows, the less likely he is to make disastrous investments that in the best case make him a smaller and frustrated investor and in the worst case leads to write-offs for the bank
• An institution with a human face is likely to have a more understanding clientele. Would have been useful latterly
• Ability to communicate with clients through modern media is motivating for staff. And ultimately great banking is about attracting great staff

Be that home page, be that icon...

Electronic media have very strong first-mover advantages. Once a website is chosen as home page by many people, it basically has their mindshare many times every day and can continuously build on that. Home pages are sticky.

But wait a minute, whereas websites have home pages, iPads don’t. NO, but it has icons, and there are limits to how many of those anyone would like to have. So most people will have just one or two icons relating to a given information area. Once they get in the habit of using those, they will stay in that habit for years on end.

And smartphones? Now here the electronic real estate gets really small, so what I just mentioned about iPads applies even more to smartphones. Getting there early with a great app is really not a bad idea.

Global sales of smartphones in 2010 is likely to be approx. 250 million. The iPad sells twice aa fast as the iPhone did. And the number of Internet-connected PCs keep rising and rising.

This opportunity is not small.