When it comes to storytelling for your audience, I bet there’s only one point to your message; communicating success, followed by a bit more success and rounded off with a huge dollop of success.

While everyone is embracing digital communications with the desire to connect more with their audience, how can we really connect and build trust when we don’t dare talk about the really engaging stuff, failure? It’s like going to a party and listening to someone who goes on and on about how peachy her job, partner, kids, house, pets, and in-laws all are. I mean, yawn!

Interestingly, we spend a lot of our personal time talking, listening and sharing the latest failures, be it our own or someone else’s! A story is far more stimulating and memorable when there’s a bit of drama. And isn’t that why we head off to the cinema, read a book or clock into our favorite TV series? We want those nail-biting moments when we really don’t know which way it’s going to go.

So, my battle cry to all you communicators out there, add a twist of tension in your content!

But hey, if you're already doing it, prove me wrong! I’m willing to eat humble pie if you can send me a healthy amount of links to organizations proactively talking about their own problems, failures, dramas or accidents before they become public knowledge. It could be an event where things went horribly wrong behind the scenes or a company talking about a learning experience when they introduced cost cutting measures that actually increased costs. And they can still have happy endings.

So, go on, I dare you to make me apologize!

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