I love the tangible and the visual to help me fully understand and grasp an idea. Yes, I can best understand what’s on a mobile device, but the way I digest, and reread and re-watch news and best practices is to touch go back over and fully digest the best content I can find.
Maybe it’s because that’s the way I learned back in the day, maybe it’s because there is sensory overload from all the information that flows in on a daily, sometimes hourly, sometimes minute by minute basis, and I just miss things I don’t bookmark, even…gasp…print…and save for when I have more time to enjoy and embrace. It’s just the way I absorb and learn.
Case in point is The Athletic. My worry of missing something that is long form leads me to two places…a hope that the print edition of the New York Times lands some of the best of when I get the physical paper on weekends, and printing out longer form stories without pictures so I can get to them as I have digestible time.
How does this tie together? Tyler Kepner’s story in the weekend’s print edition of The Times led me to a great story on tangible learning. It was part of a story with Doug Glanville, who continues his evolution as a deep storyteller across every platform. There were lots of nuggets in the piece, but the best one was a teachable moment from my longtime friend Gerry Matalon, on how he gives clients in media a phenomenal visual leave behind that can grow their career.
Here is the excerpt…of Glanville’s message.
“The best advice I got was from Gerry Matalon, he was a talent officer at ESPN. You’d come in after (a show), almost (for) an autopsy of it. So, one day I walked in and he has both his hands in fists with his arms outstretched. I was like, ‘Well, what’s that?’ He’s like, ‘Just tap them.’ So I tap and he opens both hands and there’s Starbursts in each hand. One of them is pristine, it’s in the wrapper, and the other one looked like it’d been run over by a car, still in the wrapping. So he asked me, ‘Which one do you want?’ I was, like, ‘Well, obviously this one is all wrapped.’ And he’s like, ‘Same content, different packaging. It matters how you deliver. This is a communications job. This is not a baseball job. There’s a bunch of people that play baseball that can then talk about it. But can you communicate it? Can you deliver it? Can you sell it? Can you share it? That is where you need strategy, skills, practice, and I’m going to give it to you.’ That was how it went. From that day forward, I learned this is a communications job. I love baseball and I can talk about baseball, and I do, but it’s not enough for me to be like, ‘I played the big leagues.’ You have to convey information, you have to reach people, you have to be clear.”
Of course, I immediately texted my friend Gerry, also an old school soul but a curious learner and teacher of talent on how to tell their story, because he too realized the value of the tangible from the story. He called back, in an airport on the way to meet a client to talk through a Commencement speech, and was using the same visual tool to convey the message that Doug Glanville retained for years.
Now of course this is not the only trick that can be used to convey the message of storytelling, and we all learn in different ways. What this did do though, was to break down an idea that could be talked through, that could be shown in a presentation, that could be given to as a video, and made it very real to the recipient. He/she/they could always learn the concept, but to actually have a surprise and delight moment by touching the idea, now that’s special, and frankly, resulted in a tasty leave behind.
Reframing a message, same content, different packaging, lasting memories.
Well done Gerry. Very sweet way to convey an important lesson. Literally.
