“A focus on social responsibility is particularly important to attract, retain, and increase the commitment and engagement of Millennial employees and talented women”- Center for Creative Leadership
“The most recent era in audio entertainment… users are asserting power over the medium to select particular content at particular times”- Mass Communication and Society Journal
“Stories are a device… [that] provide managers with a form of social and intersubjective interaction that reflects belief systems, role expectations, interpersonal norms and conditions for work behavior”- International Journal of Management
“Employees have a deeper affiliation with the message through organizational storytelling due to aligning stories with their own experiences and understanding”- International Journal of Business and Social Science
“Spoken word audio listening is up 40% in the past seven years, and up 8% year over year”- National Public Radio Organization and Edison Research
“Audio narrative has recently benefited from profound cultural shifts in media consumption associated with on-demand television’s binge watching revolution and the advent of digital longform storytelling”- Journal of Radio & Audio Media
“Audiobook sales revenue has been on a steep rise since 2018, reaching 1.3 billion USD in 2020”- Statista
“116% growth in spoken word listeners 13-34 years old in the past even years, with 18% growth in the last year”- National Public Radio Organization
“There is value in a story that is, designed to drive the simulation and to elicit the [employee’s] best performance”- Society for Human Resource Management
“19% [of Millennials] say they have paid in the last year for a subscription service for eBooks or audiobooks such as Kindle Unlimited or Audible”- American Press Institute
“Storytelling that starts with the persona allows us to tap into these deeper recesses, where the influence of attitudes and emotions is greater… loyalty and trust are found there”- Journal of Business Strategy
“Narrative presentation of corporate strategy, comparative advantage, is more effective at producing a consistent and confident choice of competitive advantage among an audience than a presentation of corporate strategy using a PowerPoint style, bulleted list approach”- Journal of Strategy and Management
“Over 71 thousand audiobook titles (were) published in 2020, a 39% growth between previous years”- Statista
“Employees have a deeper affiliation with the message through organizational storytelling due to aligning stories with their own experiences and understanding”- International Journal of Business and Social Science
“64% of Millennials consider a company’s social commitments when taking jobs and will not work for a company if they do not have strong corporate social responsibility (CSR) values”- Cone Communications
“The storytelling process yields positive impacts on internal and external stakeholder outcomes including increasing employees’ thriving and meaningful work, as well as the attitudes and trust of multiple external stakeholders”- Journal of Strategic Marketing
“Three uses for storytelling in organizations: (1) to motivate employees, (2) for education and (3) to consolidate corporate culture”- Journal of Marketing
“A poor cultural fit is frequently cited as one of the main reasons [an employee] decides to leave an organization… defining the organization's culture through storytelling should start with branding of the organization and continue through the interview and onboarding process”- Physician Executive Communication Journal
“Audio platform superiority was about the desire to use an audio platform that is perceived to be superior to other audio alternatives, including on-demand convenience (time and place) and content (vari- ety and uniqueness)”- New Media and Society Journal
“The majority (79%) of Millennials want to work for a company that cares about how it contributes to society and 69% would refuse to work for a company that is not socially responsible”- Journal of Education For Business
“[the way employees are on-boarded] sets the tone for the culture of a place, the people, and the values of a new institution and can have a significant impact on employees’ sense of belonging”- Journal of Research, Assessment, and Practice in Higher Education
“Brands can bring their CSR (corporate social responsibility) efforts to life through authentic storytelling [and] Millennials want to know what companies are doing to make the world a better place”- Center for Social Impact Communication at Georgetown University
“Maximizing success through onboarding by storytelling during orientations, [helps employees understand] the company's culture and values [and] its goals and history”- Society for Human Resource Management
“Millennials are more technologically advanced than any previous generation [and] survey data has shown a correlation between age and reading preferences [where] younger people listen to more audiobooks than older Americans”- State University of New York
“Audiobooks have had a big shift in popularity in 2018 where for the first time, “a full half of all Americans ages 12 and older have listened to an audiobook, up from 44% last year”- Forbes
“The audiobook market share shifted from 42% digital copy sales in 2009 to 87% digital copy sales in 2017”- Audio Publishers Association
“When it comes to digital storytelling for branding, there is, a more positive attitude towards the company when the employer branding message is using digital storytelling”- Management Dynamic in the Knowledge Economy Journal
“73% of the U.S. 12+ population (an estimated 209 million people) have listened to online audio in the last month, up from 68% in 2021”- Edison Research
“The corporate world cannot ignore the demands and expectations of Millennials, who are devout in their desire to associate with companies aligned with their values”- Center for Social Impact Communication at Georgetown University
“Researchers have shown that storytelling strengthens the connections consumers have to brands, so that to a great extent what a brand means to a consumer is based . . . on the narratives he or she has constructed that incorporate the brand.”- Journal of Business Strategy
“83% of Millennials would be more loyal to a company that allows them to contribute to social and environmental issues”- Cone Communications
“Online audio (podcasts, radio shows, music and audiobooks) has become more popular than ever before”- Publishing Research Quarterly
“Storytelling is essential to successful branding, since your brand is the sum of all your corporate behaviors and communications that inform your customers’ experiences with your product or company”- The Journal of Business Strategy
“As technology evolves, people have more options available to them, which may explain why [reports] found younger adults to be more likely to opt for audiobooks and the multi-tasking they enable”- Forbes
“Storytelling that integrates a moral and spiritual component can transform an organizational culture so members of the organization begin to feel connected to a larger community and a higher purpose”- Journal of Business Ethics
“Should produce positive effects on key audiences, such as increasingly positive attitudes toward the company and eventually behavioral intentions to support this company”- Public Relations Review
“[onboarding] can also aid employees in identifying values congruence which is critical to career contentment and commitment which can significantly impact retention to both the field and the institution long-term” - Journal of Research, Assessment, and Practice in Higher Education
“There are currently about 1000% more titles published since 2011”- Audio Publishers Association
“Story-telling is an important element… involving the sharing of experiences and creation of mental-maps of the environment in which people are motivated to perform to their full potential”- Leadership and Organization Development Journal
“Corporate storytelling is suggested to help demonstrate the importance of the corporate brand to internal and external stakeholders… as well as help a firm to bond with its employees”- Product & Brand Management
Business Audio Theatre
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Tell Your Story Once and They Can Listen for Generations!
How many times do you find yourself telling your business story? There’s always new employees, new vendors, and new customers. How much time do you spend repeating that story? How many more people would you share your adventure with if you had the time? And how much time does it […]
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Communicate Company History and Culture to the New Generations
Does it seem like your employees are getting younger? Every decade there’s a new generation that grew up with different experiences, different preferences, and different technologies. Their preferred form of communication changes with each generation, as well. Probably the biggest change in the last ten years is a return to […]
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CLICK, HEAR! – To Listen to the True Story of Our Company
Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a button on your website that would create increased engagement, decreased turnover, increased customer loyalty, and decreased cost of sales? This “magic” button would offer users instant gratification, entertainment, and appreciation for your business. It would help them identify with your story, values, and […]
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Putting the CAST into Podcasts
Everybody and their brother has a podcast these days. Podcasts are exploding! Is it because of the education, inspiration, or celebrities? That’s what the listeners will tell you. But the elephant in the room that nobody talks about is that podcasts are on fire because they are FREE! FREE! …To […]
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Forbes: A Transformative Idea: “Business Audio Theatre”
A Transformative Idea: “Business Audio Theatre” From The Founders Of Barefoot Wine. Not Just Narrated … Performed! Robert Reiss Contributor Over the years, I’ve written about, interviewed, and listened to Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey, the founders of Barefoot Wine and New York Times bestselling authors of The Barefoot Spirit: How […]
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How We Went from Wine to Business Audio Theatre
They say California has three world-class exports: Hollywood, Technology and Wine. This is the story of how we wound up combining all three! After we sold Barefoot Wine our acquirer asked us to help them keep, as they put it, “the Barefoot Spirit” alive at their giant company. We worked […]
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Reducing Employee Turnover: Relationship Bonds Can Be Stronger than Transactional Bonds
You’ll never see a line item in a business plan that says, “Turnover, $300,000 in three years!” Yet, if that’s all it costs you, you may be fortunate. Turnover is one of the biggest hidden costs in any business. Just when you get the right candidate, onboard them, orient them, […]
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Tell a Story to Build Your Brand
Our business, like many businesses, was totally dependent on sales. At first we thought our customers, who were distributors, retailers and the general public, would be swayed by superior features and benefits, and, to a degree, they were. But when our sales really began to take off was when we […]
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We Connect with Someone Who We Believe is Being Authentic with Us
It used to be all about features and benefits, pricing and programs. And it still is to a degree. But now there is a growing preference to do business with companies and brands who are transparent, credible, and socially conscious. In other words, authentic. Merriam-Webster offers a definition of authenticity […]
