Just tell the panda story...

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make, but about the stories you tell,” said a man called Seth Godin - a self-styled anti-marketeer who sells tons of books about purple cows and their influence on 21st century marketing.

But he's right. The world has changed. It's not about your products or your brand anymore. It's not even about the stories you write about your stuff, simply because no one reads anymore. Reading is for old people. Reading is boring. Reading is dull.

Pictures are in. Pictures mean everything. Minimal effort is in and the new tech-savvy generation simply love pictures and hate... books. Pictures tell the stories nowadays, not words.

In the News recently, it was revealed that Google has now restricted employees to ‘pictures-only’ meetings. No written agendas at all. The thinking here is that people remember issues presented to them visually, rather than in a series of written, bullet points. Plus people simply do not read or retain written information. It gets quickly scanned and then shoved in a file, never to be looked at again.

And that is why I recently opened an Instagram account. Today's society has reverted to comics in a big way - only these comics are called Instagram or Snapchat. And they are made by you, me, us, everyone, and sent round the world at the tap of a button. Our own little stories. Billions of pictures of cute cats, people on beaches and women falling over at weddings. These are the big stories of our times! And no words, because words are dull, bor... yes, we've done that.

Anti-marketeers call this VS, because catchy acronyms are also 'in' nowadays. Visual storytelling. ‘Micro-stories’ - everything told in a series of photographs. No need to read anything. Just look and swipe. And we all use it too. Look at LinkedIn any day and there's always masses of people at conferences clutching awards or leering drunkenly at an I-Phone. Picture-chains which show how well all the delegates are doing and what a great time they are all having... and how unlucky everyone else is who decided not to attend.

Anyway... I tried a picture of my own a few weeks ago. I used this photo of me (above) taken in the middle of China a few years ago. I had been stalking wild pandas for days on end and then suddenly... on a soggy, mosquito-infested hill in the middle of nowhere, this happened. I have to say, it was a magical moment - a totally wild panda looking thoroughly fed up about being disturbed in the rain. I gave it a carrot and its spirits appeared to lift.

Now, you have to admit, this a nice and cuddly story. So... I used this picture to generate interest in my company. Not surprisingly, the effect was startling, even though it had absolutely nothing to do with my business, whatsoever. I had hundreds and then thousands of 'hits' from all over the world - completely dwarfing the numbers that my carefully-worded press releases had generated. People love a story, especially when it's a picture and not a lot of boring words. And if you can throw in a panda or something fluffy, then you can pretty much get any message across to any amount of people.

The days of words are definitely over. It is pictures, photos, cartoons, and anything that doesn't require too much thinking that rule the air-waves today. VS is the way forward in this impatient, easily-distracted and bored society that we are living in.

So, my advice to any businesses out there is to stock up on pictures of pandas, donkeys, bears, cats, doggies, squirrels, bunnies and then scatter-gun your press releases with fluff and cuteness. It never fails!