This story may sound familiar to you. During a keynote speech at a crowded conference in Las Vegas, most of the audience was still snoozing until the speaker began telling a story. All at once, every one of the five guys at my table picked up the speaker’s handout and began to follow along.

In fact, we had all heard the story before about Southwest Airlines strategy. But the drama still worked.

Ted Cuzzillo

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Now compare that to most BI marketing copy. Try as I might to read it, I usually find my attention skittering off the page—even after three or four tries. Why? Even though business intelligence is full of concrete and emotional stories, we usually insist on making do with bloodless, jargon-filled descriptions.

The benefits and features must always be reinforced with good stories—”sticky” stories.

By using a story to show what your technology has done for a food distributor, a furniture chain, a bank or other typical customer, you let the reader make an easy leap to their own situation. You lead right to the “aha!” moment.

These stories can be just a few words or pages long. You don’t have to name names or spill sensitive details—they rarely matter. Stories can even be composites of several cases. But they must be concrete with bits of surprise and emotion. Above all, the stories must engage the average business reader.

Business intelligence is full of stories 
I jumped into business intelligence because it’s about letting data tell stories. I earned a CBIP (certified business intelligence professional) after my name in 2007, and I write a column for TDWI’s newsweekly, BI This Week plus other publications such as SAS Institute’s magazine sascom—and I write a variety of marketing for clients with BI products to sell.

  • I persuaded one new client to break his pattern and let me lead a press release with his customer’s success. Past releases had lead with his company description and were ignored. Within two days of release, the new release soared to the top of the Google News business intelligence section.
  • My “personal data warehouse” article in TDWI’s BI This Week sparked so much discussion that it inspired a session at TDWI’s summer conference (which I also wrote about, here). The “warehouse” developer wrote, “You have done something very difficult: you have explained a very technical subject in human terms.”
  • An article I wrote for TDWI’s BI This Week won praise from dashboard expert Stephen Few: “What a beautifully written article. Such skills are rare among high-tech journalists.”

Technology stories and I actually go back even further than that. For example, I’ve written a monthly marketing ezine for a startup telecom company, which the CEO praised in a report to the board; and research reports for the producer of JavaOne and NetWorld+Interop that quickly became a hit within the company.

Now that you know my story, tell me yours

Call me at 510-215-8640 or email me through my contact form and tell me what you need. Or if you want to read more, see my brief bio—which also starts with a story, of course.