The Magic of the Mash-Up: When Brand Meets Storytelling
Last week, my teammate Ian Strawn, Michael, Geertsma, Sarah Voorhees, Ben Arendt, and I had the honor of leading a daylong storytelling workshop for a university client that is doing something radical: they brought everyone into the room.
We gathered nearly 20 creative professionals from across the enterprise—photographers, videographers, and social media specialists who shape the university’s story every day. Remarkably, many of them had never met in person before.
The goal was twofold: to train participants in developing highly branded communications and, more importantly, to foster long-term collaboration between the different areas of practice.
The Methodology: Depth Meets Speed
This workshop marked a special milestone for my own team. It was the first time we truly mashed up the classic mStoner approach (focused on rigorous narrative development and asset maximization) with Carnegie’s creative blitz (legendary for ensuring brand alignment and speeding up decision-making).
The result? Magic. By combining depth with velocity, we covered an incredible amount of ground in just seven hours:
The eight universal roles of story.
Moving from "technician" to "storyteller."
Finding the story vs. just shooting the event.
A deep dive into the university's brand platform (which we helped develop five years ago).
The "Aha" Moments
Midday, our multimedia experts Jenna Tormanen and Evan Brace joined us for a masterclass on video production. The conversation shifted from the conceptual to the tactical, with participants asking questions about how to execute high-concept work in a resource-constrained environment.
But the real value wasn't in the presentation slides. It was in the conversations. We spent hours discussing the joys and challenges of the work—the time constraints, the competing demands of a service operation, and the universal desire to do greater things more regularly.
Three Lessons Learned
I learned as much from this group as they learned from me. Reflecting on the day, three principles stood out:
The Era of Visual-First Storytelling When I began my career, the written word was king. Today, the image holds sway. In fact, MIT neuroscientists have found that the human brain can identify images in as little as 13 milliseconds—proving that we process visuals orders of magnitude faster than text. In an age of immersive, digital-forward storytelling, highly trained visual storytellers aren't just "support staff"—they are the primary architects of your brand.
Intent is the Scarcest Resource I have never met a new digital camera I didn’t love. But technology isn't the barrier to great work; time is. For most higher ed creatives, the bandwidth to research, plan, and refine a story is a luxury. The winning strategy in a world of volume? Do less, better. Fewer stories, better told.
Community Begins with Conversation You can’t build a "community of practice" primarily via email. Sharing information, learning from peers, and maximizing assets starts with simply being in the same room. It starts by finding common ground in our love of the craft and our belief in the institutions we serve.
So let’s begin.