Earlier this week AdAge published a piece by Jack Neff highlighting remarks made by Unilever’s CMO Simon Clift at Ad Age Digital Conference.  Here are a few thoughts I scribbled down:

Unilever is moving on.  The corporation feels they are unlikely to be successful in the social media arena.  Why? Unilever has a scale problem when it comes to launching social marketing initiatives.  Think about it. People don’t wake up and share what brand of toilet cleaner they used this morning to make the toilet shine.  Even if a few people do are you really going to care? I think Simon Clift, CMO of Unilever, has already answered that question for us by noting, “social media is not a strategy” for his company.  Unilever can’t amplify and syndicate enough dialogs to achieve business growth using social media. So what do you do if you’re Simon Clift and you want to harness a little word of mouth power?  Leverage the existing relationships you already have and innovate PR and ad agencies strategies around storytelling media.  Perhaps even introduce a few well-timed Cause Campaigns that can leverage social media distribution to reach new consumers so that they can stimulate unaided dialogs with new audiences.   Short bursts.  Easy to implement.  Pull at our heart stings.  But don’t be broken hearted.  Social media may not be a strategy option for Unilever but for your business who knows…

When Dana Todd talks about the future of communication  strategies you can hear a distinct level of comfort in her voice.  It’s the voice of experience.

As a well-known pioneer in the search marketing area, Dana Todd is trailblazing again.

Dana’s recently launched - Newsforce — with a team of heavy-duty overachievers with a mission to expand the communication and monetization offerings of the news industry.

The company is not wasting any time.

Ms. Todd who is the firm’s CMO and co-founder is on a whirlwind tour delivering 100 demonstrations in 100 days sharing her own story about how Newsforce’s storytelling tools will revolutionize the online media industry.  The tool suite is

1.    Self-service search optimization tool for story and press releases
2.    The Newsforce Network

How will Newsforce expand the communication and monetization offerings of the news industry?

According to Ms. Todd, it starts with deconstructing press releases into editorial content so that advertisers can build-in longevity into the distribution of corporate communications.  Ms. Todd noted, “Newsforce’s storytelling media network compliments traditional PR initiatives, media buys and organic search objectives.”   And, according to Ms. Todd your campaign can be up and running in as little as an hour.

I think Newsforce’s storytelling media will also serve to enrich and renew the value of article marketing efforts.  In fact, a storytelling media network is likely to be great matches for the publishing industry as well as authors even if the platform is geared more toward supporting branding than a straight out performance buy.

One thing that is attractive about Newsforce is the simplicity of their model.

The ingredients for making a storytelling campaign are assets and processes that are already being used in the ad and PR industry that have been combined to create a new media offering:

Storytelling media starts with a simple persuasive story. Write for consumers rather than editors.  Create an editorial experience rather than an advertising vehicle.  Then, plug in non-traditional sources of content.  When you’re ready, syndicate your “advertorial story” content across 283 premium news platforms including Yahoo News and Los Angeles Times among many others into a “storyboard” module that appears on these sites.  Optimize content for search indexing.  Enable your content for social network distribution via tagging.  Set your budget.  Now sit back and measure the results.

And the results are compelling.

Eye tracking engagement studies have proven the Newsforce storyboard unit is nearly 3 times more effective at capturing attention over Google Adwords units and 8 to 12 times more effective than banner ads.

The Newsforce storyboard is also redefining our understanding of what an ad unit is online. The offering reminds me of YellowBrix’s content distribution model from 1999 that was based on the integration of contextual ad units into site content.

Newsforce has also productized part of the brand storytelling and constituent relations processes developed by storyteller practitioners like Michael Margolis of Thirsty-Fish among others.  It will be interesting to see how storyteller practitioners and media product vendors partner to expand revenue opportunities.

Let the storytelling begin.

To learn more about storytelling media opportunities visit Newsforce Network or follow Newsforce on Twitter #newsforce.

PHOTO CREDITS: thewebmama