Google Talks: The Art of Business Storytelling

2018-06-11

Ameen Haque: “The Art of Business Storytelling” | Talks At Google

So I’ve just been watching another great Google Talk called The Art of Business Storytelling by Ameen Haque, former VP over at Ogilvy & Mather and founder of Storywallahs.

Here’s what the introduction over at YouTube tells us about this Google Talk:

Ameen Haque, Founder of Storywallahs, is a storyteller, story coach and consultant. He trains leaders and entrepreneurs in storytelling, crafting narratives, and using story and story based frameworks to help organizations navigate change and inspire action along desired goals.

Formerly a Vice President at the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, Ameen has over 20 years of experience in Advertising, Theatre & Consulting. A graduate in Business Administration, he has done a course in advertising from MICA. These experiences have exposed him to stories, human behavior, team dynamics, strategy and influence his storytelling work today.

One of the main messages of this talk is that all storytelling revolves around conflict. As Ameen points out, if there’s no conflict to solve, then there’s no story.

And the same goes for any business:

You identify a problem, and then you sell a solution for just this.

A good example of this is Google itself. The simple yet all so powerful solution they offer is to help people find what they are looking for. Ameen comes up with a great slogan for this, “helping you find your needle in the haystack”.

Watch this great talk to learn more about storytelling and why it is so important for every type of corporate marketing.

Google Talks vs TED Talks

On a general note, I always recommend watching Google Talks.

They cover a wide section of various interesting topics, and Google does really well in inviting outstanding people to their offices. Usually Google Talks will last for a ca. 40-60 minutes. In my opinion this is far more effective in communicating ideas than the shorter more snappy TED Talks.

If you want, you can compare TED talks to “fast food of ideas”. And Google Talks are more like “5 course menus” while they manage to go far deeper into the topic.