StoryTeller Media & Communications
Minneapolis/St. Paul Marketing and PR agency and video production company|StoryTeller
Video Services
How Long Should Your Online Video Be?
We’re asked this question quite a bit and the answer varies depending on the audience, but by and large, we think brevity is the key when posting online content. For example, this video is a speedy 28-seconds!
Ed Heil is the owner and president of StoryTeller Media & Communications an inbound marketing and public relations agency and video production company based in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Ed blogs on topics related to inbound marketing, social media, media relations, news media, video production and crisis communications.
Networking For You AND Your Clients
Every so often I get emails or calls from people saying they’ve heard great things about our agency and that they’d like to get together to see if there’s a networking opportunity between our companies. More times than not I feel like I’m being fluffed up for a pitch so that I might be inclined to send that person some business when, and if, there’s an opportunity. I used to go into these get-togethers with my guard up.
Need a New Year’s Eve recipe? Try Jerk Chicken Fondue
Chef Kevin from Redstone American Grill shared his recipe for Jerk Chicken Fondue with Jason Matheson on the FOX 9 Morning News. This is a fun, interactive dish - perfect for entertaining!
Tim Russert and Balanced News Reporting
I miss Tim Russert. What I liked most about “Meet the Press” in the Russert era is that I never could tell if Russert leaned to the left or right, politically. It seemed guests from both sides of the aisle equally appreciated the longtime moderator and if he ever showed his political allegiance, I never saw it. I only wish there were more journalists out there who were like him.
Are You Listening to Your Customers?
Last week, Kathy Heil posted a blog about a mishap with United Airlines on this site. She essentially pointed out what a terrific job UA did in handling the lost baggage. While inconvenienced, Kathy’s point was that the airline made a mistake, but their customer service did an exceptional job in handling the mistake. Yet, when she pointed out to them both in social media and through e-mail discussions, she received “canned” responses apologizing for their error. Huh?
Hirshfield’s Partners with Second Harvest Nov. 10-28
If you’ve got some pre-Thanksgiving painting projects to knock out this weekend, swing by Hirshfield’s and bring some food. Yes, food! Working in partnership with the Second Harvest Heartland, Hirshfield’s is taking your food donations between November 10-28 and helping to re-stock our local food shelves. When you bring in your donation, you’ll receive 20% of Hirshfield’s brand paint, which by the way, is locally manufactured so you’re also helping local business!
As you know, this is a difficult time for many families so please consider helping out Second Harvest Heartland, even if you don’t need to pick up any paint.
The Everlasting Christmas Shopping Season
I don’t watch much television these days and when I do it’s usually either a news show or a sporting event. Sorry, NBC, but “must see TV” doesn’t really get seen in our house. That said, I’ve noticed the surge of Christmas shopping advertisements on TV and frankly I find it a bit obnoxious. “Black Friday” hype wasn’t enough, now it has to be “Black Friday,” before Friday, just in case it’s red Friday instead of black! I get it, I understand and appreciate the challenges of retailers, but I wonder at times, where does it end? Will we some day start seeing “early Christmas shopping” specials in August? I can hear it now, “it’s not too early to get a jump on Christmas!”
When our kids were little we used to read to them a Sesame Street story called “Elmo Saves Christmas.”
In the story, Elmo, is granted a wish and he asks that every day be Christmas. Well, that was a great idea until the little red muppet realized that if every day is Christmas, the holiday is really not that special anymore. As I look at the growing Christmas shopping season I think about Elmo and wonder, “where does it end?” Will retailers extend the season so long that Christmas morning gets lost in the sales and deep discounts? Or have we already reached that point?
Who is Following You on Twitter?
It used to be that whenever I received a notification that someone was following me on Twitter that I would get a little excited thinking, “hey, I’m building a nice little group of followers.” However, as Twitter has grown and changed and become infiltrated by marketers and people schlepping product, I find myself asking more and more, “why does this person want to follow me?”
The I Generation
Has anyone labeled this current generation of teenagers? I mean, we have Gen Y, Gen-X, Boomers, etc. How about this: Gen-I? It would be fitting, wouldn’t it? This group has grown up with the iPod, iPod touch, iPod shuffle, iTunes, iPhone and iPad. Heck, if they have $100 a year, they can even have a me.com account. My question is, will this be a generation that has the ability to think of anyone but themselves first? You say, well, at least there’s YouTube, but even their moniker is “Broadcast Yourself.”
Broadcast News: The Movie and In Real Life
In the movie “Broadcast News” (1987), 
there is a part in which Albert Brooks character, “Aaron Altman,” says to Holly Hunter’s character “Jane Craig” the following about William Hurt’s character “Tom Granick,” “please don’t take it wrong when I tell you that I believe that Tom, while a very nice guy, is the Devil.” He goes on to explain that, of course the devil isn’t going to look like a devil, he’ll be attractive and nice and helpful and that he won’t really do anything evil, “he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance…Just a tiny bit.”
That part of the movie resonated with me as I was reflecting upon the television news business and the changes that have occurred over the last 25 years. Clearly, much of the mainstream news media has gone to an “infotainment” format as competition for “eyeballs” has increased with the internet. There are seemingly more “Tom Granick” type of people in the media (flash over substance) and a watering down of coverage to make news easier to “digest” for the general public. In other words, to me, the movie “Broadcast News” has taken on some qualities of George Orwell’s classic “1984.”
When I first watched “Broadcast News” in the theaters in 1987, the most memorable part of the film was Albert Brooks flop sweat while reading the weekend news (still one of the funniest scenes in the movie). However, watching it again some 23 years later, I found myself marveling in the prophetic nature of the flick and wondering how, or if, the mainstream media will ever get back to a higher standard of news.
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- 2011 StoryTeller Highlight Video December 22, 2011
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