Creative Story Telling
Episode 1021: Creative Story Telling, with Nic Natarella
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Creative story telling — Learn how to make meaningful connections through audio by exploring our unique guide on creative story telling.
Creative story telling — Nic Natarella is the founder of AdWise Creative. He is known for his voice-over talents and directs his team in every project that comes into AdWise Creative. His involvement with each individual project assures that you have top-notch and maximum results for all of our clients.
Nic first started “on the air” back when he was eight years old. He started out by making cassette tape recordings of his “radio shows” on the living room stereo system, consisting of a turntable and built-in cassette player. You will have to google “turntable” and maybe even “cassette player” if you have never heard of that before.
His first real air time was just outside of Nashville as the news guy/sidekick on the morning show. His on-air career has involved morning host duties, middays, afternoon fill-in, and nighttime hosting. He also had responsibilities at the radio station with Program Director, Assistant Program Director, Webmaster, and Creative Services Director, just to name a few.
Nic has written radio and production magazine articles, conducted copywriting seminars for radio sales teams, and crafted thousands of commercials for clients looking to have a radio spot sent out. His voice-over work has been used for projects such as:
- Radio commercials
- Video games
- Corporate training materials
- And rock concerts
Want to catch Nic’s attention? He’s a fan of classic cars from the ’40s and ’50s and muscle cars from the ’60s and ’70s. While at home, he is called a shade tree mechanic, turf management supervisor, and natatorium engineer. He is known for cheering for many college football teams, so you will either love him, or he will become your rival.
Nic and his wife, Debbie, live outside Orlando, Florida. Debbie is a private horse trainer and riding instructor at Amazing Grace Equestrian. Their daughter has her Master’s in Social Work and lives and works in Tampa. Nic and Debbie currently share the house with three rabbits and up to eight horses at any given time.
What you’ll learn in this episode is about creative story telling:
- The power of having creative story telling in advertising
- How to make meaningful connections through audio
- How to take your audience inside the emotion of an experience with a few powerful words
- Tips on uncovering the story behind your service or product
- Why there is gold in your unconscious competence
Resources:
- Learn more about creative story telling, and you can find Nic here
- Explore more topics about creative story telling by listening to this podcast: Sharing stories and Forming Connections, with Chad Heeter
- Website: https://adwisecreative.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adwisenicnatarella/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adwisecreative
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/adwisecreative
Additional Resources:
- Download The 5 Most Common Radio Advertising Mistakes That Are Costing You Money and How to Fix Them here
Creative Story Telling: Full Episode Transcript
Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.
Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interviewed today’s top business owners. So we can learn their recipe for success, how they built and how they scaled their business. So, Onward, I’m going to share several passages from a popular book that will underscore how and where a significant opportunity might lie. When you think about stepping into or stepping onto that next rung of building your position of authority. So when I share the book title, the author, and the date, it is going to feel like the passages were a bit of a prediction, but rest assured, the reality is that it is just as true today.
And going forward as it was when it was first written and then our special guest expert today is going to help us sort all of that out and then craft a strategy that you can take and apply. All right. So here we go with the experts. The next flock of millionaires will grow out of the radio business, which is new and not overburdened with people of keen imagination. The money will be made by those who discover or create new and more meritorious radio programs and have the imagination to recognize merit and give listeners a chance to profit from the content shared. The business owner who creates programs that render useful service is the one who will become rich crooners and light chatter artists who now pollute the air with wisecracks and silly giggles.
We’ll go the way of all light timbers, and their places will be taken by real artists who interpret carefully planned programs that have been designed to serve the minds of the audience. The successful radio program of the future will give more attention to creating buyer audiences and less attention to listener audiences. The builder of programs that succeed in the future must find practical ways to convert listeners into buyers. Moreover, the successful producer in the future must key their features so that they can definitely show their effect on the audience.
The new radio technique also demands people who can interpret ideas from a written manuscript in terms of sound. There’s plenty of room in radio for those who can produce or recognize ideas. So, okay. Onward Nation. I wonder if any of that sounded familiar. I pulled those excerpts from Think and Grow Rich, written by Napoleon Hill and published back in 1937. Yeah. At the time radio was the newest technology, the newest medium, and then came TV. And then of course, the internet and now podcasting and a litany of other choices that both you and your audiences consume.
Creative Story Telling: Nic Natarella’s Introduction
But what hasn’t changed since 1937 and candidly throughout human history is understanding the power of words, the power of story, and how to share it with an audience in a meaningful way so that it’s helpful to them. And when you’re helpful over and over and over again, you will get an at-bat to provide service if and when they ever have a problem. And that’s why I invited Nic Natarella to join us today as our guest expert. One of the things I appreciate most about Nic is his ability to craft a story and then transform that story into audio.
So think radio commercials or podcasts, and then that story becomes captivating. It becomes informative in all of that, leaving the audience never feeling like they just got sold, and yet clients see increases in sales. That’s quite a gift. I asked him to join us today so we can talk more about how he does that. A lot of that is unconscious expertise, right? So unconscious genius, there’s a number of different ways that Tony Robbins talks about that. But we’re going to talk through how he does it so that you can do it, too.
Okay. So, without further ado, welcome to Onward Nation, my friend. Hello, Nic. hank you, Stephen. Wow. I absolutely love that quote from Napoleon Hill. Yeah. That is something that’s been reaching back, but it’s funny how it all comes around again, right? Yeah. I mean, we like to think that we’re so complicated and so unique as humans, but the reality is that the power of story has always been there. It literally is part of the human DNA, and being able to tell a story that is meaningful, that captivates an audience, and that is helpful to the audience is key. It doesn’t matter what the medium is.
Creative Story Telling: A Journey in Audio Expertise
Creative story telling makes me so excited, though, to talk about your areas of expertise around audio because that is a depth of expertise for you because many of our listeners are using radio commercials and want those to be more effective, or they host a podcast and they want to be more helpful to their audience and so forth. They also have a business to run. So, being able to link that together is super important. So before we dive into all of that, actually take us behind the curtain. Tell us a little bit more about your path and journey. And then we’ll dive in. Wow. Probably 25, almost 30 years ago is when I first ended up on the radio and I, and I mean, ended up, it was one of those things where I was calling the morning show and like giving them bits and stuff like that and kind of giving them punchlines.
With creative story telling, the guy was like, wow, you’re different. You kinda know what’s going on. Well, I started out as an acting major in college, and then I got my production stage management degree. So I was both onstage and I’ve been backstage and that’s kind of where I got my creativity in my organization. Well, as I ultimately got hired at the radio station, I became the new sidekick guy on the morning show. That was very short-lived because the morning show guy ended up leaving for a much larger market. So now, all of a sudden, I was there; I was the one I eventually became, the morning show guy. So, I was doing the morning show for quite a while.
The thing about creative story telling and a part of it, if you’ve ever worked at a radio station before, one of those, especially in a smaller market, is that one of the job duties that comes along with being on the air is producing and voicing local direct commercials, right? So, it’s not the agency stuff that comes in for Coca-Cola, but you know, Bob’s Pizzeria down on Ninth Street needs a commercial. Our salespeople went out and got them on the air. We write the commercial, and then it’s up to probably the jocks that are on the air, the, the, the personalities to actually voice and produce the commercials. So I’ve been doing that for a couple of years. And then our company got bought by a much larger company, and the new management came in, and the first thing they started asking around was, okay, how do you do things?
In creative story telling, what do you do? What are your gaps, basically a SWAT analysis of the radio stations? And one of the things they determined was they didn’t have a production director. Well, they said, who is the most organized, most creative person on staff? And a lot of people just went Nic. I’m not sure if that’s true or if it just was because I wasn’t invited to that meeting, but I ended up with that job and title. And that’s when I found out, oh, no, you’ll be writing all the commercials too. Okay. And I said, excuse me, I’ve never written a commercial.
Creative Story Telling: Unveiling the Power of Storytelling in Radio Commercials
Creative story telling on radio is something that: I produce. And I voiced them, but I’d never written one. Well, in the late 20th century, I just did what everybody did. And I double-clicked on Netscape. And I went to that new God, what was it called? It was that new search engine giggle or gaggle or something like that. I started typing in how to write a radio commercial, and all this stuff about copywriting came up, and all this stuff from David Ogilvy, Claude Hopkins, Gary Halbert, and all this kind of stuff started coming up to the surface. And that’s when I discovered, oh my gosh, it’s called copywriting.
It gives me the opportunity to do creative story telling, and that’s just what I bet. Hook, Line, and Sinker ended up just taking this and running with it and becoming our station’s creative services director. And that was the most fun I have ever had. Well, okay. So let’s, let’s take that piece for a second. So when you started doing the research and one of the things about David Ogilvy, his work that I found so fascinating was like, you could read a case study, like a member of the back of the day, the printed case studies on card stock and so forth. You could read that. And it was super informative. And in the end, you were left feeling like boy, these guys really know how to do this stuff, but you never felt sold.
You felt educated as if it were the power of the story. Right. I mean, getting back to what you said earlier about the story, the story has been, like you said, in our DNA for the last 10 to 25,000 years; the first stories are on the walls of those caves. Right. You know, the hunting and stuff like that. And that’s the part that has lasted all these years. And it’s the stuff that we pass down from generation to generation. It’s the stuff that we can sit there. And we embarrass our kids with their childhood stories. Our parents told the same stories about us when we were kids around the Thanksgiving table. I mean, it’s those stories that bind us, propel us as a society forward, captivate us, and draw us in. It’s all of those things.
Creative Story Telling: Mastering the Art of Storytelling in Audio Marketing
It’s all of those things. And when you start bringing it back to your question about the research, when you start diving into it, that’s like, oh my gosh, what was the phrase that hit me finally was for the radio station? Oh my gosh, we’ve been doing this all wrong. Right. That’s what totally captivated me, and it’s stories that get people’s attention and draw them in. Well, okay. So, why take us through this really powerful connection here, the power of story, like, like you were just talking about and then audio, and again, Onward Nation for context one, when I’m thinking of audio.
Sure. Maybe it’s trestle radio. Okay. And maybe you’re running commercials in a local regional market. Okay. Maybe you have a podcast and then there’s a litany of other different audio types of platforms and so forth. So, Nic, when you’re thinking of the power of story, why is that such a powerful connection for your story plus audio? Because nine times out of 10, that’s how we’re going to tell a story. We’re going to speak it. We’re going to talk about it; we’re going to be, like I said, sitting around the Thanksgiving table with family or something along those lines, even if you’re reading a book, something fiction that has a lot of action or scenery or whatever the case may be.
With creative story telling, you’re not just seeing the words on the page. You’re actually hearing the words in your mind. It becomes a quote-unquote spoken story in your own mind. And there are there times when you’re going to see those images in your head. So when we can, when, when I can convey the images and the story and the details and stuff like that in a, in a commercial and make it much more real and tangible and something you can relate to, that’s just going to take you on a journey as opposed to, and I hate to say this, but one of the things in radio that some people may or may not tell you is when the commercials come on, I changed the station.
Creative Story Telling: Unlocking the Visual Power of Radio
Hmm. Well, if I’m telling you a story that gets you engaged, and you can see this either on the radio or you can see on TV, do you remember the old Taster’s Choice commercials with the guy and the girl that you remember that? I mean, when the new one came on, you were like, oh my gosh, what were you going to do next? Right. You were involved in the story, and yeah, they had coffee. Okay. But the point was, you were involved. You wanted to see what was going on. It was that throughline of their relationship that kept you engaged. Probably the most blatant example I can give you is the one that comes up over and over and over again in most radio commercials. And if you listen carefully, you will hear most radio commercials will be a laundry list of skews.
Yeah. Just the stuff we do this, we do this, we do this, so it’s just a long list of stuff. For example, I got a production request for something like that from a local pool builder, and they did a refurbishing. They did in-ground pools, above-ground pools, and vinyl liners, and they have all the chemicals you need. Right. So, I wrote a commercial that asked what your favorite vacation spot was. Was it Rome? Was it Greece? Was it Hawaii? What was your favorite place? How would you like that? Just outside your back door, bring us your favorite picture from that vacation, and Smith Pools will design you a pool and put that picture in your backyard.
Such a vacation. And then you hear the slam of a screen door vacation just out your back door. Yeah. That sounds terrible. Who wants that? Nic wants to relive the beautiful, whatever memories from the patient come on. Okay. All joking aside, though. This is a great illustration of how you use the power of story, as well as visuals, and connect that back to the emotions surrounding the vacation and take something that could have been super transactional. Right? When you mentioned that using stuff that could have been super transactional or maybe price an item or whatever, you turned it into a story that will connect with the audience and give them an experience.
You said a few minutes ago that you would take you on a journey. You’re taking them on a journey back to their favorite vacation. Right, right, right. It is something you just said that is a cornerstone for me. And this is going to blow people away. When you hear this radio is visual, radio is visual. And when you let that sink in because, again, it’s the stories. We’re going to see stuff. We’re going to see stuff when we tell the story correctly. And when we have, whether it’s, like I said, Rome or Greece or Hawaii, you automatically have those pictures in your mind.
Creative Story Telling: Emotional Impact in Audio Marketing
And I think that’s one of the most powerful things about radio. And when you couple that with emotion. Oh my gosh. It just, that’s where you end up knocking it out of the park. My absolute favorite was a bridal store. Okay. And everybody knows that at the bridal store, you’ve got racks, just racks of wedding dresses. Right. Okay. And they can say all kinds of stuff, like you’re number one to us, and we have an exclusive appointment schedule. So you’ll be the only one there. And all of our attention is on you and blah, blah, blah. That’s fine.
Okay. That’s fine. That’s almost expected as a bare minimum. Okay. I would almost expect that when my daughter comes in there, you’re going to do this right. As part of your service. Right. So, I wrote it a little bit differently. Now, what experience do I have at a bridal shop? Well, I’ll be the bride’s dad. Right. So I wrote it from Dad’s perspective because dad’s there, he’s just there for the debit card. Right. So whenever your daughter steps out and comes out, it’s like, she’s like, oh, this is pretty. And that’s like, how much does it cost? How much does it cost? How much does it get? How much is that one? All right. Yeah. Tell me about it, but when she walks out, when your daughter walks out of that dressing room, wearing the dress, the only thing dad’s going to say is beautiful pumpkin.
I mean, I tear up just thinking about it. What is it going to be like for me? Pick out a wedding dress with my daughters, and I’m just like, oh my gosh. Not allowed to make me cry on my own podcast. Oh my gosh. Okay. I’m going to be a wreck. I’m going to be a wreck, but okay. So let’s break this down here because now what you’re doing is you’re taking your audience inside the emotion of that experience. Right, right. With a few powerful words. Yeah. And they’re little tiny tweaks like that. For example, let me get back to that dad’s line. Okay. You look beautiful. Pumpkin. It’s not, you look beautiful.
Pumpkin, pumpkin it’s dad’s nickname for her. Within two or three weeks of her birth, he was calling her Punkin. And now here she is, she’s a grown-up woman getting ready to get married. Nobody is still daddy. She is still daddy’s little girl. And when you share that, you’re talking about the Nickname, and I’m thinking of my daughter, Caitlin. Her nickname is Babes. She’d probably be mortified that it just said that during an episode. But so as, as a future father of the bride, you saying that, I’m like, oh my gosh, that’s why it literally gave me teared up by is because I’m thinking about it as you intended the audience to think about it.
Creative Story Telling: The Power of Descriptive Storytelling in Radio Advertising
Yeah. And it’s being able to lead them on that journey and show them those images and those pictures and things like that. I will never forget my best and my worst week on the radio. And this was when I was doing mornings, driving around, and listening to the competition like you’re supposed to do to find out what they’re doing. Okay. Well, the morning show hosts on the other station were doing a live ad for a local jewelry store. Now, I happen to know this jewelry store and how it is unique. One of the unique things about this jewelry store is that they spend a lot of money on their display cases. Okay. Most jewelry stores will have glass front and back.
Creative story telling — And I mean on the front and on the top, and you can look down or whatever, they took it an extra step. And then there’s that metal trim that helps make that corner between the front and the top; they went an extra step and took that and made that a solid piece of glass that curves. So your view was completely and totally unobstructed, no matter where you viewed it, when you didn’t have to move around and try to get your head either above or below that bar. Okay. It just wasn’t there. So I knew about this. I knew about this place, and the morning show DJ is like the other day I went into there, and the place is just, I mean, it’s like you; I just can’t describe it.
Oh boy. I came on glued. I came on clued on, literally punching the dashboard, screaming at the top of my lungs. What do you mean? You get it. Describe it; it’s your job. I’m like, you just made it a hundred times harder for the rest of us in this industry. Right. And I just totally freaked out. A couple of days later, I’m driving around. Okay. Do you remember Paul Harvey? I do remember Paul here. And he would tell either the rest of the story that he was doing his news or whatever. And in the middle of his news, he would do a couple of live ads, especially.
Creative Story Telling: Harnessing the Power of Vivid Storytelling
You may do his own life as well, especially in the world of creative story telling. One of them was for a particular boy’s town that he and his wife were sponsors of and helped they would make donations to, but he also felt in his heart that this was a really great place for wayward boys and girls who had gotten off track and get back on track. He starts showing Paul Harvey pictures of his vacation on the air, right? I’ve literally had to pull over, and I wept; I thought, what am I doing in this industry? What am I doing in this business? You know, and you can hear it. And he’s like, and this is the campground right here.
And this is where they, this is the, the mess all over here. And then you’d hear him flip the page. He’d flip to the next picture and go, oh, and this is where it is. And as you’re driving along, you see the river over here and right around that bend in the river, which is where the campground is located. But his power and his descriptions are so visual; going back to your point of radio is visual, right? Like he was a master of that. Exactly. And when he started telling that, it was like, this is their mess hall, and this is one of their cabins and the rears, the bend in the river. And I was just like, that’s it, I’m done. I quit. I quit. I’m not going to be like him. That is just, that’s the epitome of it all. And so I had those two experiences in the exact same week, and I was like, oh my God, wow, this is it.
This is what I’m talking about here. If we can tell these stories and get people involved and emotionally involved in, I mean, literally living it how, when you hear something that catches your eye, you kind of lean into the radio, or you kind of look at you, look at the radio, not the speaker. You look at the radio, not the speaker. Right. You know, try to get more information. If people can get, if you get that story going about your business, whatever it is, you’re selling. There is a story. There is a story there; it’s a matter of uncovering it and then making connections with your listener. Yeah. Back in the day, when Bob Costas used to do the play-by-play of baseball games, I used to love that because it was like having a historian because I’m a bit of a baseball historian.
Creative Story Telling: Lessons from Baseball, History, and Beyond
I love baseball. I was going to say, oh, a baseball story. Imagine that. And he would, he would work in history, and he would connect one player to that player. And then three generations of players before that and all of that. And it was like, oh my gosh, I, I’m not just watching a Red Sox Yankees game. I’m actually getting context as to why this game in this tradition matters. And it was kind of like a Bob Costas version of the rest of the story. Right. You know? So you’ve got a lot of that. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I am totally okay. So this is really interesting.
You’re giving us several principles. You’ll laugh. Maybe you already have this list, but so I’m keeping two sets of notes here on the right side of my desk. I’m literally keeping a sheet that reads the Natarella principles. And so the first one is radio is visual. The second one is to take the audience on an emotional journey. What kind of started us down this path? You mentioned oral traditions and history. I mean, when we think about that, right? Like, even before there was written language, it was all audible. It was all auditory, I guess I should say. And passing history from one generation to the next, to the next to the next, you mentioned cave paintings, but it was also based significantly on oral tradition.
So literally, we’ve been programmed from the very beginning, like our DNA, so taking that audio is so important. Oh yeah. And I mean, a lot of it also had to do with your identity. I mean, for example, look at the Bible. You know, when you look at a couple of the books in the Bible and a couple of the gospels, they start out with the lineage, of course. Okay. And it’s who and who and who begat stone. So it gets all, and you’ve got to have that lineage because what it all adds up to is Jesus sustaining, which is proof that Jesus is who he says he is.
Creative Story Telling: The Power of Ancestral Narratives
That’s the perspective from that lineage, right? Then, in the Easter story, Jesus was hung on the cross, and three days later, he rose from the dead. It was Joseph of Aira Mathenia who gave up his tomb, right? That is the man who knew everything was going to be okay because Joseph Thea was giving away his lineage. Right, right. He was giving away his identity, but he knew he was getting it back. So that’s why it was okay with him. So interesting for him to do at that time. Exactly. As a Jew in the first century and first century. Yes, absolutely. What he’s giving away, his entire heritage and his future.
Hmm. That’s pretty big. I mean, and those, and that heritage, let me bring it back around full circle. That heritage was always told orally. And you had to know who you came from. That was part of who you were 16 generations back, and you, of course, never met. Never knew it was just a name to you, but that was who you are. That’s where your identity started. And it was all through oral history. That was a fun little twist. Thanks for that. I mean, I’ve not thought of it, and I know that story very well, but I’ve not thought of it from the perspective of oral tradition in history. That was awesome.
So when I was teasing a few minutes ago, when I, when I was talking about the Natarella principles, teasing sort of, but not teasing, because when you mentioned radios visual, and then you shared the Paul Harvey story, which really illustrated that with the photos, like who, who, who verbally describes photos and have it be so compelling. Then, the audience is on an emotional journey, and you gave us a few examples of that. And so then, let’s think about maybe, like, is there a third one, maybe there’s a fourth one. What are some of the principles that when you’re sitting down to write, or you’re sitting down to craft strategy? What are some of the other principles they probably are just; maybe this is part of your unconscious genius.
Creative Story Telling: Putting the Customer First
What are some of the other principles that you take into account? Well, first of all, I want to clarify, and of course, nobody saw this. I nodded my head and agreed with you about the unconscious, not necessarily the genius part. So, I just wanted to make sure that it was there. Fair enough. You said unconscious. And I was like, yeah. And then you said genius. I was like, Hmm, I don’t know. So the other one of the other big things that I have to do, and it kind of overlaps with what you said earlier about the radio, is visual. It’s about the customer, and this is like basic copywriting 1 0 1. It’s about the customer, not the business.
Creative story telling? Okay. And when it comes to writing a commercial, if I don’t myself, if I can’t imagine myself using it, then it’s going to be really hard for me to write it. Yeah. Talking about a product or service, be the customer, what’s their life before this enters their life. What’s their life like after they purchase? What is the meat? What are the feelings and emotions that come up, but what’s the problem ahead of time? And again, this is all basic copywriting stuff, the pain, the problem, and the stuff they’re going through. And then what becomes the transformation once they’ve made the purchase, and how has their life been better? How was it? How was the problem resolved?
How was the pain relief, whatever it is? If I can’t see those in my head and relate to them in some way, then I’m gonna have a really hard time writing yet. Well, because then it becomes super self-serving, and it’s about the business. It just, again, is transactional. It’s not helpful to the audience, like taking them taking your audience on an emotional journey for thinking about a radio commercial here for a second, taking the audience on the emotional journey that connects emotion to the product. That’s really important, right? In this conversation right now, you’re taking Onward Nation on a journey through some of the principles of how to be better in this audio format.
Creative story telling? That’s super important. Right. But, if it felt like it was transactional or formulaic or whatever, then it has less impact, right? Yeah. And the formulaic is what just really hits me. There are so many times when you’ll hear, let’s say, the ad, start to the question, they list the five or six things that they have to offer. And then all of a sudden, they go into this little of how to either call them, go to the website, here’s the address, blah, blah, blah. All that. I mean, CTA overload is what I call it, depending on one of the little tiny principles, that I adhere to is one CTA, just one CTA.
Creative Story Telling: Prioritizing Attention-Worthy Content in Radio Marketing
And that is the thing. That’s going to be the most common way to buy if they need to come in. Sure. Then you can simply say, come on in, you’ve got to understand that this is the 21st century. And most people have a computer in their back pocket, if not at their fingertips. Right. Anything and everything that they need to look up about your business, whether it’s the phone number, the address, even directions, how to get there. They’re going to know they’re going to find so one call to action in the call to action. One thing specifically, per the ad, is getting back to that swimming pool contract that I was telling you about. They had refurbs, new installs, vinyl liners, and all the chemicals.
I boiled it down to just new installs because every single one of those has a different audience, and this is going to sound trite or canned or something like that. But I made it up, and I’m proud of it. So here it is. If it’s worth a mention, it’s worth the attention. Oh, give it its own ad. Give it its own app. If it’s, if it’s good enough to say, and we do this, if it’s, if it holds enough weight that you can say, and we do this, give it its own ad. It stands on its own. Okay. Let me give that back to you. Make sure I got it in my notes. If it’s worth a mention, it’s worth attention, worth the attention.
Correct. That’s cool. If you’re just going to flip it, we mentioned it in an ad, but if it’s that important to flippantly mention, it deserves its own ad. Yeah. Well, when I think about that from a content strategy, right? I mean, it’s, we all, we do all of these things, and then, it’s really easy to gloss over the depth of each one of those things. Right? So I love this as a principle. If it’s worth a mention, it’s worth the attention your audience deserves to benefit from digging deeper into that and then showing them how by digging deeper. Yeah. Maybe it’s two or three levels deep.
Creative Story Telling: Unveiling Unconscious Competence in Business Marketing
Maybe it’s only one or two levels deep in this particular thing, but there’s plenty to discuss. And again, this is kind of one of those moments where you take it for granted; this is what you’re selling on a day-to-day basis. This is, this is the pools. This is the mutual funds, this whatever it is that you have out there, whether it’s the product or service you do it so easily. Like you were referring to at the top during the intro, I like to call it unconsciously competent. Ah, okay. There we go. Okay. There’s there’s consciously incompetent. I’ve never heard of the job, and I certainly can’t do it. Okay. Then there’s consciously incompetent. I have to think about it to do it, but I can do it.
Then there’s consciously competent. I’m really good at it. And I still got it. You know, I still know it, but then there’s unconsciously competent. I can do it in my sleep. Yeah. Nine times out of 10 business owners are at the unconsciously competent level, and the stuff they do day in and day out has just a huge benefit for their customers. Yeah. But since it’s part of their everyday operations, they just kind of blow it off, and yeah. Okay. Well, we got to do this now. I mean, the other day I shared something with somebody about they’re like, well, how long is it? I’m like, well, if you just take it, divide by the word, count by three, and that’s how many seconds.
And that’s how long the audio blew them away. Take your blog. Post divide, take the word count, and divide by three. And that’s about how many seconds long an audio version would be. Yeah. That’s something I do. When I sleep, I look at the bottom left-hand corner. It’s calculated for me. I’m I move on. I’m ready to go. Yeah. But you know, when somebody doesn’t know that, that can be regulatory to them; the same thing happens in your business. Suppose there’s something that you just do naturally rote without even thinking about while you’re typing over here; your left-hand reaches back and handles that over there. Boom, you’re done. You don’t even think about doing it. That could be a major point for your audience and your prospective buyer.
And if we bring that up, give it some, give it a spotlight, give it a life, and start to tell a little bit of a story around that and make it bigger. So when people are going to gravitate towards that, you never know. I hear stories all the time. People like, oh, I’ve got I’ve written 5,000 blog articles, and they’re all, they’re always these three. That seemed to be the ones that people were landing on. Notice. They’re incredible. They’re just like, wow. I can’t believe it was those three. Hey, if it’s those three running with it, but you’re not going to know until you write those three. Okay. This is fantastic. I know that we are quickly running out of time. I know. There’s I know there’s more, but I’ve captured six.
Creative Story Telling: Last Bit of Advice and Connect with Nic
Okay. So Onward Nation. These are the Natarella principles. Okay. And then, and once I go through these, Nic, I’ll ask you if you think we missed anything before we say goodbye, I’ll ask you if you think we missed anything, and so forth, but onward, here are the six one radio’s visual to take the audience on an emotional journey, right? Third, it’s about the audience, not your business, right? For one, call to action. So just one CTA five, if it’s worth a mention, it’s worth the attention in six, there is gold in your unconscious competence.
Right? Really amazing, Nic. I mean, this has just been awesome. So, I know we covered a lot. So before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, any final advice or recommendations you’d like to share with Onward Nation, then please do tell us the best way to connect with you. Oh, thank you. You know, one of my absolute favorite stories about marketing and advertising, and it’s the one about David Ogilvy, who is on a train with William Wrigley as in Wrigley gum Wrigley field, that Wrigley. Okay. He was a real person, which many people are shocked to hear, but yes, William regularly was real.
And David Ogilvy is very young. He’s like 20, 21, 22, somewhere in there. He’s very young, and they’re on a train, and David Ogilvy asks him, and he’s like, Mr. Wrigley. He’s like, you’re first, you’re number one in chewing gum. I mean, nobody buys anything else but your gum. He’s like, why do you keep advertising? And William really sits there for a second. And he kind of looks pensively at a very young David Ogilvy. And he says, tell me, how fast do you think this training is going? I mean, that’s out of left field. Right. And David Ogilvy’s like 40, 45, 50 miles an hour, maybe.
And William Wrigley replies. Fair enough. So now that we’re at top speed, do you propose? We unhook the engine. I was like, wow. Yeah. Okay. I got ya. Yep. I mean, that is the biggest thing. Just keep it going. And I, and people think that so many times there’s so many times when I’ll speak to a client and it’s, well, this one is going to make or break me. It’s like, no, it’s not going to make a break. One ad is research and feedback for the next step. Yes. You just keep going. You keep going. You keep; you don’t unhook the engine. And that’s why I love this so much.
I absolutely love it. I really love it. Well, that is evident. My friend, I can hear the passion of your voice, and so can Onward Nation business owners. So, the best way to connect with you for my website, AdWiseCreative.com. Or you can just simply email me Nic, and that’s N-I-C [email protected], Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and relisten to Nic’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do the key is literally taking the principles that he shared with you today. Take them, apply them to your business, and accelerate your results.
And Nic, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. My friend and I am so grateful that you said yes to come onto the show, to be our mentor and guide, help us move our businesses onward to the next level. Thank you so much, Nic. Well, it was my honor when you asked, thank you. Thank you.
This episode is complete. So head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.
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