Growing up in Georgia, George Dawes Green, a poet and novelist, spent many warm summer evenings with friends on a screened-in porch telling each other stories late into the night. A hole in the screen allowed moths to join them, so the group began calling themselves the Moths. After moving to New York City in 1997, Green missed those evenings of friendship and entertainment and decided to bring his storytelling tradition to the cafes and clubs of his new home. Thus The Moth, a not-for-profit storytelling organization, was born.

The Moth is best known for The Moth Radio Hour, a weekly live program that airs on National Public Radio stations, through which it has generated a broad interest in the art and craft of storytelling. Although most of The Moth’s activities are directed at storytelling as entertainment, in 2010, Moth Senior Producer Kate Tellers began working with Publicis Groupe, a global advertising and marketing firm based in France, to help corporate clients who wanted to learn how to connect better with their customers.

Tellers first developed and delivered workshops to Publicis Groupe clients who were looking for an effective way to tell their stories to customers, but later expanded the workshop offerings under the name Mothshop Corporate Training and made them available to a wide variety of companies. Although these workshops include technical storytelling tools such as developing a story arc and reinforcing a theme, they also provide corporate marketers with an appreciation for the importance of authenticity and being specific with a message. According to The Moth, a key element in any story’s success is its ability to convey an underlying, deep lesson to the listener.

Moth shop Corporate has worked with a wide range of major companies, including Kraft, Google, L.L. Bean, McDonalds, and Organic, Inc. Its corporate training programs include elements such as “Advancing New Concepts,” working on “Perfecting the Pitch,” developing a “Brand Story,” and building a “Company/Project Identity” that turn the Moth storytelling principles (which include ideas such as “develop the arc” and “set up the stakes”) into techniques for improving a company’s marketing and communication efforts.

In the world of online marketing, a company has a limited window through which to communicate. Customers and prospects must see common themes in the blog posts, tweets, YouTube videos, and other social media tools. These themes must be coordinated and consistent with its Web presence, e-mail strategies, and branding approaches across all available communication channels and physical locations (if the company has them). The Moth’s  training programs help companies create stories that can be told in various forms in each of those channels.

REQUIRED:
1. Many forms of online communication, such as e-mails, tweets, and the content of Web pages, requires short-form, concise writing. In two or three paragraphs, discuss how storytelling might motivate short-form writing that can convey elements of a company’s or a product’s brand image online.

2. Choose a product with which you are familiar and, in about 200 words, outline the elements (such as branding, product characteristics, product use benefits, comparison to competing products) you would include in a story about the product and recommend online communication media (Web page, e-mail, social networking, and so on) that you could use to expose potential customers to the story.

3. Storytelling is an important part of many online gaming environments. In about 100 words, compare the role storytelling plays in online games to the role it could play in product marketing and promotion.