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Insights

Bobby Rettew's Creative Blog
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My Message: “Dismiss the skeptics with the middle finger!”

Hilarious Middle Finger

Yes…I said it…give them the middle finger and prove them wrong!

What is your passion?
Many times, I am asked to speak to college students and they always want to know my path. They want to know what I do and how I was able to get where I am today. I always ask them, what is their dream job? I ask them to tell me, what would they do if money did not matter!

Many students struggle with that question, having a hard time to frame the wisdom of what tomorrow might hold, given the frankness and reality of their upcoming graduation. I ask them…what is you passion?

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Storytelling is our battlefield; I am the chief storyteller!

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You see these hands…they have scars from years and years of cameras, cold shoots, 1k and 2K light burns, cuts, bruises, broken fingers, years of typing with carpel tunnel and consistent camera movements…they represent the battlefield.

It is our battlefield and it is something we hold dear to our hearts. The mere process of finding, telling, curating, sharing, and engaging interactive narratives is more than just an experience…it is years in the making.

Many of us storytellers have learned from our personal experience, failures, and experiments. We have learned from numerous mentors as we have spent years in the apprenticeship process. We have cobbled together lots of job descriptions, career tracks, educational experiences to get to where we are…and we protect our knowledge base(s), we hold it close.

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What is your ministry?

 

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What is your ministry? What do I mean?

I met a very cool person this past weekend, his name is James Morrison. James has a simple mission, chopping firewood for those in need this winter. He has been volunteering his time to AIM in Anderson, SC for the past 25 years. Yes…for 25 years he has chopping firewood. 

James has a simple passion, simple ministry…to use his God given natural talent to help others. This passion has led him to find others with similar passion. Now he has attracted a group of men to help him every year. He has volunteers in the community donation wood, logs, and limbs; wood he transforms into firewood for many individuals that depend on this resource to keep their homes warm during the winter.

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WDBJ Shooting – It could have been me OR any of my colleagues!

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I have to say I am speechless. I am having a hard time articulating how much this is bothering me. This blog post is by no means trying to make this situation about “me”…but it could have been me. Yes…I was that guy, that photojournalist. They had no idea…none!

This comes almost a few days after the ten year anniversary of Katrina. I was a part of a crew that covered Katrina for Belo Corporation, who owned WWL-TV. Yes, we flew helicopters over areas where people were stranded, many of whom were trying to get our attention hoping we would help them. Some used guns to shoot at us while flying over, mainly to get our attention…we could not land because of the location and the danger.

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F is for Facebook in Google’s Alphabet (I bet!)

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Yep…I am talking about this very specific relationship one that has been riddled with miscues and online battles of digital lines in the sand. It was last year our health care digital team launched a Google Hangout embedded inside Facebook, since that successful campaign..it has been a lot harder to pull off technologically speaking.

But I am not really thinking through the lens of how to make these digital properties talk to each other when deploying campaigns, but more of the relationship between these two audience giants when it comes to digital content marketing.

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So you want to be strategic…shift your mind not your job title.

bobbyblog-strategicI have had many people ask me, what does it mean to be strategic? I think it is an interesting question, one that emerges when those whom I mentor want more strategic positions.

I have spent my years serving in roles that were very tactical, executing very tactical concepts using technology where the job was dependent upon the precision of that technology. I have also learned how to shift that very tactical thinking into broader applications, preparing for long-term strategic opportunities.

During the time I was working on a large portion of my graduate research, I began to study the principles of techne and praxis.

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What does it really mean to implement agile storytelling?

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This past June during the PRSA Southeastern Conference here in Greenville, SC…my friend Kevin Purcer of Erwin Penland led a discussion surrounding something he termed as “Agile Storytelling”. Much of his premise surrounded the ideas of what makes really good content and when should we share accordingly…I wanted to critically think through this idea.

Kevin specifically looks through the brand storytelling lens, creating narratives that represent the brand image, versus content curation storytellers leveraging narratives in real time for for sharing and engaging.

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Shifting Your Digital Ad Budget —> Match Ad Dollar Spend With Content Curation Investment

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The role of B2B digital communications has challenged me in so many ways, every day as a storyteller. I am attracted to the projects that brings audiences new places to explore, learn, feel, connect, and share. I have struggled to think through the marketing lens, actually…it is quite hard for me.

Over the last year, we have been working with groups ranging from large national clients to smaller business/organizations…and many things are ringing with the same tune. Digital marketing is a lot of damn work because people just do not like digital ads. We have to tell stories and put digital ad dollars being content for more effecting impact.

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Concerns of Auto-Pilot Mode of Scheduling, Digital Automation, and Digital Ad Buys

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The time is now! Telling rich stories has become ever more important in the world of organic storytelling. It is providing a much needed balance to digital content marketing efforts inside agencies and inside organizations. With more and more access to digital marketing tools and automation, the temptation is to put more thrust behind reach rather than substance.

We are finding more and more groups and willing to jump the digital ad buys quickly and begin to ignore the far reaching sustainable efforts of organic storytelling they have built.

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The truth behind the on-camera interview

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It was just the other day as a storyteller and I sat through another amazing interview…an interview that not only brought me to tears, but the people around me. Laneika is a more than a domestic violence survivor and her story is one of purest of crystal balls…you have to carefully take care of her story or it will slip through your fragile fingers and crash all upon the floor.

Storytellers have a tremendous burden, one of not only crafting the story…but finding the right characters and helping them find the right words at the right time. It is a special dance and we carefully step around the ballroom. The largest part of that dance, those steps, is finding the path through the interview.

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