Final Transcript Patti Sanchez
[00:00:00] Katherine Watier Ong: Welcome to the Digital Marketing Victories podcast, a monthly show where we celebrate and learn from the change makers in digital marketing. Great digital marketers understand that people are the most challenging part of doing their jobs, and this show focuses on the people part of digital marketing wins, what tactics or skills the guests use to align people with their marketing strategy.
I'm your host, Katherine Watier Ong, the owner of WO Strategies LLC. 
We focus on increasing organic discovery for enterprise-sized science-focused clients. Thank you for joining me. Let's get into it and celebrate our victories. 
Today we're joined by Patti Sanchez. Patti is a veteran communicator in Silicon Valley.
She's worked with tech innovators like Apple, Cisco, GE, Hitachi, HP, Oracle, Salesforce, Varian, and VMware to craft narratives that spark change and fuel growth. She's the creator of several highly rated communication training courses and two award-winning books. Her consulting firm, PattiSan Communication, equips and empowers organizations to harvest the power of story to drive positive change at work and in the world.
So this episode is gonna be perfect for you if you're curious about what storytelling is, why it's powerful, how to integrate it into your digital marketing work, why it's still important to improve your writing skills and how to get started on that, what soft skills are gonna help you guide clients or executives through a moment when the old way no longer works, how storytelling can lead you through uncertainty, whether the data's messy or the strategy's shifting, or your own career is evolving, and we're gonna provide a storytelling framework you can use today to be more effective.
I also think storytelling might be one of those things that is not gonna be stolen by AI. Patti, welcome to the show. 
[00:01:42] Patti Sanchez: Thanks for having me. Excited for the conversation. 
[00:01:45] Katherine Watier Ong: Great. So why don't you kick it off by telling listeners a little bit more about yourself? 
[00:01:51] Patti Sanchez: Well, I'm a writer first, and I am a storyteller in the sense that I love to study story, and I've applied it in so many ways throughout my career, which is why I'm passionate about developing it as a skill set.
But I also think of story as a strategy as well as a tactic, and so we can get more into that, but it's, it's very much a way of helping people understand the world and make sense of it and move through it, not just a communication tool. 
[00:02:20] Katherine Watier Ong: So you have said that storytelling can be this tool for influence and persuasion, but how do you define storytelling as a soft skill?
'Cause this show's all about soft skills. 
[00:02:32] Patti Sanchez: Well, it starts with understanding, like I was saying, how people see the world, and that is a soft skill: understanding other humans. I- it's the most important soft skill. It's the one that AI can't take from us 'cause it will never fully understand us. And that's the foundation for great storytelling: understanding the human experience, understanding how humans experience change and life, and then using story to reflect back what that experience is like so that people can see themselves in it and move through change productively.
[00:03:07] Katherine Watier Ong: Great, and so related to that, are there soft skills that make a great storyteller separate from a mediocre one? 
[00:03:16] Patti Sanchez: I think it all comes down to empathy. I mean, certainly creativity is a part of it as well, knowing what thread to pull in a story, what level of detail to add, what kind of emotional note to strike at each moment.
That's the art of storytelling. But the science of it really starts with u- understanding other people and having the ability to even do that, and that's what I call empathy. And I think if you have that as a starting point, you already have a leg up on other people who are trying to communicate and engage people.
[00:03:45] Katherine Watier Ong: Well, and we talk about empathy a lot on the show. In fact, this season we released an episode on compassionate design, where we get into it quite a bit. So I'm ki- I'm kinda curious. I know that we understand that storytelling is important. Oh, I know what I was gonna be talking about.
So I'm kinda curious, you mentioned both empathy, which we've covered, and creativity. Now, as someone who spends... I tend to spend a little bit more of my workday on technical SEO stuff, which is not particularly creative. So I wouldn't necessarily call or label myself a super creative individual.
Do you have any tips for people to increase their level of creativity in the work world? Do you have, like, resources that you point people to? What, what makes a person a creative person? 
[00:04:35] Patti Sanchez: Well, it's, it, I think it comes from being willing to try alternate perspectives, see things from a different angle, and honestly, AI is helpful for that.
It won't replace human creativity, but you can ask it to explain a situation from multiple perspectives or using different metaphors or analogies, and that's one kind of hack, I'll call it, for creativity: to name what you're talking about in a different way. Describe it using language that isn't what you would normally use.
So metaphor, analogy, simile are ways to do that, and that, that is really just the skill of, of adaptability, I think, is, is being able to step back from something that you're wrestling with and being able to see it from a different, a different perspective. And, you know, there are a lot of other tools I use.
I, I have a, I'm in a writing group. And we give each other prompts all the time, and I love looking for prompts as a result because that is also another way to see a different perspective, to approach a topic from a different angle, is to write about this situation as if it were a horror film, or adopt the perspective of the main character who is against your idea or whatever.
And those are, again, tools you can use, kind of flip your mindset about whatever it is you're writing about or talking about. 
[00:06:04] Katherine Watier Ong: Yeah. Oh, those are great tips. I w- I'm glad you answered. I was just about to ask you, like, so what did you do before AI? Yeah, I also use AI to brainstorm. I have an, an economic client, and I'm, do not have, do not have a background in economics.
And AI's been great to brainstorm what economic terms we should use on this page so that people would find it, 'cause I would be very lost on all of those. And it's been great, and it gives me a couple of terms. I can check it in AHS, see if it has volume, back and forth. Definitely been part of my workflow for the last, you know, year or so.
Not particularly directly writing a long-form, but at least getting started on the topic. 
[00:06:41] Patti Sanchez: See, and that's, that's creativity right there, right? It's just generating alternatives, and so building that muscle of rejecting your first idea and pushing for a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, just simply more alternative versions is going to challenge you to be more creative.
[00:06:59] Katherine Watier Ong: I see. I always think of- when people say creativity, I have a bias, clearly. I think of, like, Mad Men and the ad world, and that's where I feel like I can't compare myself. The whole, like, spitballing an ad campaign and coming up with whatever crazy idea you come up with. But you're right. Just pivoting your workflow and finding a different way to execute it is creative.
[00:07:22] Patti Sanchez: Yeah, I mean, I was a fan of Mad Men. I love that show, and I've worked my entire career in agencies. So I get that reality, and there's certainly a huge pressure to do something better than the client could do themselves, or to do something better than their last agency did that you stole the business from.
And so the bar is always high and getting higher every time you do a project for a client. And so I can relate to that, but I also think that that show represents a kind of elitist view of creativity, and there are people in the agency world who will act like they're the only ones who can have creative ideas, you know- the sort of, like, rarefied artist. And I reject that notion, maybe because I was a suit before I was a creative. And that's agency talk for the business person, the account manager, and you're not allowed to be creative in some agencies, where there's a very firm divide between the left-brain and the right-brain people.
But as I said, I reject that notion, and I frankly think that all of us need to see ourselves as creative, and that we are, because that is the thing that separates us from other animals- and certainly from AI. 
[00:08:32] Katherine Watier Ong: So I know AI is taking over a lot of the writing craft, or at least maybe involved in the output of writing.
And I'm asking this question both as a marketer who writes and then also as a homeschool teacher. So I homeschool my kids, and from the beginning, we were really focused on writing skills, because for me, I went to a college as an undergrad that had a lot of writing, so I was forced to do a lot of writing.
And it wasn't until I got into the workforce that I realized that was a skill that was marketable. I don't know, I just didn't realize that it was, like, a skill that you could have. And for me, it has been helpful throughout my whole career. And I know careers are changing, and I know lots of other parents out there are like, "What can my kid do that's not gonna be taken away by AI?" 
[00:09:17] Patti Sanchez: Yeah ... 
[00:09:17] Katherine Watier Ong: You know, a love of learning, an ability to self-teach, and I still think good writing skills might make it through this AI phase. Do you agree, and what do you think good writing looks like in 2026? 
[00:09:35] Patti Sanchez: I do agree. I think what, what writing used to, the baseline for good writing used to be rooted in grammar, right?
That's what we all had to learn first: sentence structure and how to string sentences together into paragraphs that make sense, and how to string paragraphs together into a flow that makes sense. And that's table stakes now, and AI can create that. So what makes good writing now is, I think, the human perspective.
And that, that sounds like a, like a platitude, but what I mean is, our own experiences, our own voice, that AI can't replace. And so what does that mean? I do use AI. I use a lot of different AI tools. I lean toward Claude 'cause I think Claude is helpful, is more helpful than other platforms, and it's un- unfortunately trained on real good writers' voices without- 
[00:10:31] Katherine Watier Ong: Mm-hmm
[00:10:32] Patti Sanchez: Without permission. Without permission. Hence the lawsuit. Yeah. Yeah. But it, it, it is trainable to understand your voice, but you can never use it to replace your voice. So what I use it for, as an example, is I use it to do research. We were just chatting about that, right? If you're trying to understand a market you don't, you don't know or a buyer profile persona you don't understand, it can teach you about what matters to that audience or what's, you know, top of mind in that market, the language people use.
So it's great for research before you start writing, and it can even help you organize that information into logical chunks. But that doesn't mean you should write about it in that same logical structure because that is not necessarily the most engaging way. That's, that's like a lecture. But you might wanna start your piece with a story about a time when you realized that the way you work is not productive anymore, and that's the same issue that people in this industry are facing, or whatever.
That's the kinda thing that AI won't know how to do. It does know humans like stories, and it will suggest that you could insert a story, but it doesn't know your experience, so it's gonna give you back a generic, like, human-ish experience, and you've gotta replace that. 
[00:11:44] Katherine Watier Ong: Human-ish. I'm totally gonna use that.
That's the first time I've heard it. I, I want, I want that to spread everywhere. We're gonna say human-ish. Anyway. 
[00:11:51] Patti Sanchez: There we go. It's like truthy, you know? Yeah. So you have to, you have to bring the human. And so I don't use it to craft my first draft, especially if it's something that is very personal to me.
So I'm in the writing group; I would never use AI to write what I bring to the writing group, because that's an expression of my personal experience and voice. But when I'm writing for business, I will use it to edit and refine and streamline, because it's good at that too. I can say, "Take 50% of the words out," without changing the meaning.
If I'm really struggling to murder my darlings, it can help me with that. 
[00:12:27] Katherine Watier Ong: What tips do you have for people to get better at writing? I mean, my gut feeling is a lot of practice, but are there other tips that would help folks get better? 
[00:12:36] Patti Sanchez: Well, certainly reading good writing. Oh. So follow bloggers, read books.
I don't read books as often as I used to, and I'm sad about that. I think my life is poorer for it. But one of the things that we do in our writing group sometimes is to take a piece of writing that we enjoy and share it and talk about what we like about it. And the same is true if you want to get better at presenting or anything else: study other people who do it well, and notice what affects you about their work.
You know what? Why did that sentence grab you so much? So that you can understand the mechanics of what actually moves you. 
[00:13:14] Katherine Watier Ong: That is exactly the format my daughter has in her writing class, so clearly it works. Yeah, clearly. 
[00:13:21] Patti Sanchez: Amazing. 
[00:13:22] Katherine Watier Ong: So, how do you coach leaders to write in a way that builds trust?
Particularly, and I'm thinking in the digital marketing space, where you're gonna be providing information about something that is uncertain. We're in a current state of, like, a lot of change. A lot of it's uncertain. 
[00:13:42] Patti Sanchez: Well, the first thing I advise leaders to do in all situations, especially when they're communicating internally to employees about something that's hard, is to step into their shoes and understand their situation, and that is not the first impulse for most leaders because we're, the majority of the time they're thinking about the business or the market or its customers.
They're thinking about what we need to accomplish as an organization, and they're not thinking about what that means for employees or how it feels for employees, and yet if you want to move employees, you need to understand what they're thinking and feeling so that you can meet that connect to it, and then explain your perspective after you show you understand theirs, which, you know, all comes back to empathy.
And I, I think that's the core of it. I mean, the other piece that's really important is authenticity, honesty, transparency, whatever word you want to use to describe it, don't BS people. 
[00:14:38] Katherine Watier Ong: Right. 
[00:14:39] Patti Sanchez: Acknowledge what's true, acknowledge what you know, but also acknowledge what you don't know, because people can smell when you're lying, and they know what they see, and so if you don't acknowledge it, you're not going to build trust.
[00:14:53] Katherine Watier Ong: And that also applies to outbound corporate communications. So if you've got some corporate thing where there's a moment of change, folks on the internet, on social media, are also gonna sniff out inauthentic communication, so being as transparent as possible works in that way as well, not just internally.
We actually- totally… have an episode talking about uncertainty, so Maggie Jackson, who has wrot- written a book about uncertainty, has been on the show, so if you're kinda curious a little bit more about the power of uncertainty, she talks a lot about that. So you've helped organizations communicate big changes, so what do you do when you're trying to craft something that people don't want to hear?
You talked a little bit about thinking about their focus, but, what if, for instance, and I'm particularly thinking of an AI moment, there was a, moment floating around the internet where someone, God knows why they did this, but they plugged in, like an MCP into their analytics and let the AI agent report out on company metrics, and then they made sales and business decisions based on the metrics, and the AI was fully hallucinating.
So how would you go about communicating in that sort of arena, like when you're trying to fix a big oopsie like that? 
[00:16:12] Patti Sanchez: Well, you have to acknowledge what happened, and you will have lawyers advising you not to, right? That is because admitting wrongdoing could lead to lawsuits that go on forever and cost bajillions of dollars.
And so, there's always gonna be resistance to acknowledging that a problem occurred and especially taking any responsibility for causing it. But that's the starting point for rebuilding trust, right? Even I'm sure as a parent you've experienced this. You know, if something bad happened, your kid made a mistake, you need to acknowledge first that the bad thing happened.
Now, how do we move forward from that? How do we avoid this happening again in the future? And so that's what the leader should do as well, acknowledge what just went wrong. Acknowledge that it was crappy, because again, if it hurt anyone in any way, then they won't be able to move past that until you acknowledge that they suffered in some way as a result of it.
And then you can talk about what you're doing differently to fix it. So there's a structure for a change story, regardless of what the change is. Whether you're trying to recover from a bad change or you're trying to implement a good change, and it always starts with the current reality. So acknowledge the current reality.
And as I describe it, when you des- when you're painting that picture of the current reality, you have to name the problem, the consequences of that problem, and the stakeholders that are affected by it. And all of that sets context, and it also creates trust because you're reflecting reality as other people understand it.
Then the second piece, the middle of that change story, is the transition state. This is now our change we're going to make, and how we're going to get it done, and why it's good that we do it this way. And then the third section, which is really the third act of the story, the end of the story, is where you talk about the future state.
So as a result of this change that we're making, the future's going to be better in this way. You know? So we're putting in place these controls. There's always gonna be a human in the loop who's double-checking the work, and what that means is you will have a higher degree of accuracy in whatever we report out to you, and we guarantee that.
Or whatever your promise is for the future, which is where you wanna leave people, with that promise of how you're going to help them, you know, be more successful in the future. 
[00:18:50] Katherine Watier Ong: Yeah, you know, as you were talking, I was wondering, in your professional work, what parts of communication do you spend more time helping your clients with?
Are you doing internal communications, internal and external? Are you helping them with actually drafting storytelling for a marketing campaign? How does that, all that sort of break out? Where do you spend more of your time? Or branding. 
[00:19:13] Patti Sanchez: All of the- 
[00:19:13] Katherine Watier Ong: Branding could be another piece. 
[00:19:14] Patti Sanchez: All of the above. All of the above.
So the way that I think about my skillset, I call myself a strategic storyteller. And there are three kinds of use cases or arenas around that. There's brand and product communication, there's change communication, and there's what I would call executive communication. So it's all of that, the executives representing the organization, whether it's internal, external, but there's a specific kind of narrative that they're trying to communicate over time, that is i- in service of both the, you know, success in the market and success internally 
[00:19:51] Katherine Watier Ong: So, on the brand product side, have you pivoted your writing approach?
I particularly have noticed a decrease in attention span, and then I'm- I was a little shocked by the podcast we just released, where she brings everything down to a sixth-grade reading level. So the reading level has also been on my mind. So, reading level and attention span, have you pivoted to either one of those?
[00:20:17] Patti Sanchez: Well, certainly, there's been a move to simplification for years. It's not a new thing. You know, I've worked with big corporations, especially in tech, because I'm in Silicon Valley, which has done studies and implemented, you know, reading level mandates for their communication just as a, kind of a, what's the word?
Like, a remedy to the problem they created, which is- 
[00:20:41] Katherine Watier Ong: Right. 
[00:20:42] Patti Sanchez: Far too complicated, jargon-filled, you know, engineering, academic language. So that's been happening for a while, but I agree with you that what's accelerating is that people don't have the patience anymore. I mean, TikTok happened, and now we don't wanna watch videos longer than a few seconds, a few minutes, you know?
And then that's- I'm being extreme because then when people want to really deeply understand a domain and build their skills, they're still willing to invest some time, which is why podcasts like this exist. Thank you very much. But, you know, you have to earn the right to hold their attention that long, and so definitely top of funnel is shorter than ever, I think.
[00:21:23] Katherine Watier Ong: Yeah, I've particularly been blown away by the combination; I think it was the announcement this year of how many books people read, for instance. Like, so the combination of short-term video and the use of, people's use of short-term video and watching that, and the decrease of reading books, which we just talked about.
I don't like the trend, but I'm also impacted a bit by the trend. I'm trying to compensate with audiobooks in my ear, but yeah, it's a trend, and I do notice myself; I just, I don't have the patience even for a long-form video. Like, what's going on with my own brain? Anyway, that clearly impacts how we put our message out there.
But my clients are more, a lot of them are academic journals, and I was not pulling it down to a sixth-grade level. I just thought, sixth, wow, just as a reader, it makes me heartbroken that people can only read at a sixth-grade level. Anyway, just a side note. Just want more people reading. Especially since you need this writing skill to continue your career if you're in the business world, and y- we just talked about how reading good books is a big piece of that.
People need to actually read, for sure ... good writers. Yeah. 
[00:22:31] Patti Sanchez: Yeah. Anyway. And, as an author, my heart is breaking, right? Right. Because it begs the question, why would you even bother publishing anymore in the future? But, you know, maybe if people aren't reading the long form, the LLMs are. Spiders are still crawling that content.
Maybe, you know, it needs to be, it needs to be presented in a way that also meets their comprehension needs, right? Their consumption preferences. But I guess my point is, it still has a role to play to y- to build your authority, to educate. But the way that humans access it is changing. 
[00:23:11] Katherine Watier Ong: Yeah. So I just- I have a question for folks that we've kind of talked about if you are in the leadership position in communicating.
But do you work with folks who aren't directly able to influence from a leadership position but still have to communicate a big change? And what kind of tips do you have if they don't have the overall authority to impact change, but they do need to communicate a big change or pivot in the strategy?
[00:23:37] Patti Sanchez: Yeah. This was a big question, a point of debate with a book that I published 10 years ago with a co-author, Nancy Durte, and this was all about how to lead change using storytelling. And yet we had a lot of debate about it and got pushback from people outside the organization about our definition of a lead and that this book is for leaders.
And I would always say in those internal debates, and eventually when I went out on the speaking circuit, that anyone can be a leader. How I define a leader is not that you are in a position of power in the organization, but that you have influence. You have a strong point of view that can improve somebody's situation.
And so it's, you know, it's up to you to grab the pen or the mic and help people understand how things can be better if they adopt your point of view. So how do you, how do you drive change if you're not in that position of power? It's by building your influence skills, and I would argue that storytelling is your number one influence tool.
It's helping people at the top or people at your side or people beneath, maybe even if you do have some kind of team, to see the situation as it is, to understand why it's not great, and to give them an alternate picture of how things can be. And I don't think it matters where you sit in the organization.
If you can communicate that, you'll get somebody's attention. 
[00:25:06] Katherine Watier Ong: Yeah, I'm particularly struck by that because I was an internal change maker in a lot of roles before I went off and started my own business. Tactically, what do you think that kind of looks like for that person? Are you starting a corporate newsletter?
Are you trying to coordinate brown bags on the regular? Have you seen some kind of process that seems to work? 
[00:25:27] Patti Sanchez: Yeah, sure. I think... Well, you know, I am a believer in the power of presentations because I've done that throughout my entire career as a consultant. And so if there is a lunch and learn, if it doesn't exist, maybe you create it, or you get yourself on the agenda of whatever employee resource group or management meeting that will have you.
And just like a politician would campaign, you campaign. Campaign for your idea. But again, you have to make it relevant to whoever it is that you're speaking to. So it's not, it's also not enough, really, to have an alternate view, right? An idea that you want people to adopt. You need to coat it in, you know, a candy coating that's gonna make it taste yummy to them, which makes it relevant to them.
So I think that's my core recommendation. When I say storytelling, it's really about explaining to people your vision, and so that can often take the form of a presentation, or maybe it's a video that you record. It's a Loom. "Hey, I was looking at this data. I've noticed a pattern over the past six months or the past year.
There's a problem here, and that problem is going to get worse for us if we don't change course. I have an idea, and here's what I'm recommending, and here's why I think it's really good for this team, your team, this organization to adopt it. And I've got- I recommend a first step, right?
That we try a pilot. I would love, you know, permission for my team to do X, Y, Z for the next three months to see if we can turn this around." So you've gotta give people an ask as well. 
[00:27:00] Katherine Watier Ong: I also think I kept thinking about how much I use my sales training in that element too, because mirroring body language and knowing who the big influencers are, excuse me, all of that, I think, is in- at play during that presentation moment.
Do you have resources for how to create a great presentation? I've intermittently seen stuff about putting a story arc in your presentation, for instance. Do you have some good go-to resources for people that wanna up their presentation skills? 
[00:27:31] Patti Sanchez: Sure. Well, I do have a blog on my website. It's only one 'cause I've been so busy since I launched my solo practice.
It's about communicating a change story, and so you can find that on my website. But also I did write a book called Presenting Virtually, on the kind of tail end of the pandemic, that talks a lot about, the strategy of great presentations, but also how to structure the content, how to think about your visuals, and how to tailor your delivery so that you really engage people in the vigil- in the virtual format, which is even harder.
But if you don't wanna get those resources from me, you can always look up Durte, D-U-R-T-E, which is the organization I was with previously. They're known as excellent presenters. They publish books and training if you wanna check that out. 
[00:28:13] Katherine Watier Ong: Oh, that's great. We'll put both of those in the show notes.
And then I am curious about the book. I do a lot of virtual presentations, so I'm kinda curious if there are any tips I can get. 
[00:28:20] Patti Sanchez: Most of us do these days. 
[00:28:21] Katherine Watier Ong: Right? Yes. A lot. Yeah. And I do virtual training, and I'm always worried about people falling asleep on the other end, so I've modified mine quite a bit, but always wondering if there's more to keep people's attention, especially if they're multitasking on their screens on the other side.
And anyway, yeah, much challen- much more challenging. I enjoy being in front of people more because you can see people check out, and you can actually sort of gently call it out and bring them back into the conversation live. But virtually, dude, it's a black hole. Who knows what they're doing on the other side?
So how do you balance? I'm kind of circling around this idea of, again, presenting challenging data, 'cause our group has to do that a lot, especially with the changes. So, say you've got a messy data set, or a trend line that you have to sort of explain. What's your process for finding the story inside there?
How do they add in the storytelling to be the most effective when they're presenting a real change in data that would be impacting the business? 
[00:29:27] Patti Sanchez: Well, storytelling, one of its kinds of superpowers is meaning-making. You know, it helps people understand what the data is saying and why it matters. So it goes back to that, that change story structure, I think, that I was talking about earlier, which is how do you describe the current situation in terms of a problem and the consequences that problem is creating for somebody?
And so can you find a pattern in the data that at least describes the current situation, even if you can't project confidently into the future using this data set? What problem is it pointing to? Or maybe it's two potential problems, and now we have a hypothesis that we can use further testing to validate or invalidate.
I'm always looking for trends, patterns, because those make the... those put the numbers in a larger context. You know, like, what's really happening here? What we've noticed is a decline in traffic over XYZ period of time, but among which audience or from which websites, or, you know, how can we get as granular as possible around the nature of that pattern and then the potential problems, and then what can we do to reverse those problems?
And again, it could be just having a couple of hypotheses that we test. 
[00:30:53] Katherine Watier Ong: And that is also one of the places where AI might help a little bit in finding patterns, especially if you've got bigger data sets, and it might be harder for you to see with your naked eye. But this is a part where the industry doesn't do a great job training people, honestly.
So, have you run into any resources that would help people become better data analysts, finding the patterns and forming the hypothesis? Both of those two things, people are on their own to figure it out in our industry, for the most part. 
[00:31:22] Patti Sanchez: Yeah. Well, I think once you've identified what the problem is, you know, then I think that a great resource is the book Data Story by Nancy Duarte, and I get no reward for promoting that book, so you know, I have no skin in the game.
But it really is an excellent framework. She gives you an excellent framework for describing what you see in the data, and then helps people make a decision based on what you're seeing. But it doesn't answer the question of analytics and how you actually identify those patterns. So your guess is as good as mine on that.
I wouldn't say that's my strong suit. 
[00:32:02] Katherine Watier Ong: It's more the question I ask everybody. I just ask everybody because I know it's this weakness in the industry where we just don't do a good job helping people figure it out. If you have not also read Tufte, I was really impacted by Tufte in graduate school.
So highly recommend those books because you could misinterpret the story based on how you set up your charts and graphs. So put that in your back pocket if you haven't read Tufte. Yeah. 
[00:32:26] Patti Sanchez: Way back when I was in college, we talked about a book called How to Lie with Statistics, which is, you know.
What Tufte is arguing against, right? To be clean and honest in your representation of the data. Don't manipulate it. Yet he's also still arguing in favor of context and storytelling. It's... But rooted obviously in trustworthy data. One of my favorite pieces, I know this is going on a tangent, but in one of Tufte's books is the graphic of Napoleon's army marching to, into Russia, and then back, and it's that kind of top-down visualization of the size of his army as they entered into battle, and then the s- size of the army when they came back. And it makes the cost of war really obvious because you can tell that the army is much smaller, but overlaid with that data about the time of year, the temperature, all of the other factors that contributed to the demise of the poor souls who were f- forced to fight that war.
And I just think it's such a beautiful example of storytelling with data, still using rigor. 
[00:33:39] Katherine Watier Ong: It's so funny, the different parts of, like a, a book, like Tufty's books, that you get, that you get stuck with. So that was the thing that you got stuck with. I was the Challenger generation. Like, they pulled out the TV while we were in school, and we watched the Challenger explode, and Tufty talks about the Challenger in one of his books, and that's the thing that has always stuck with me.
Here we are, like a decade later, and it's still in my head. Anyway, oh, talking about the power of storytelling, some of those stories stick with you, right? 
[00:34:09] Patti Sanchez: They do. 
[00:34:09] Katherine Watier Ong: Yeah. Yeah, that really stuck with me. Let's see what other- What's your favorite.. Go ahead. 
[00:34:19] Patti Sanchez: Oh, no, I, well, I guess I was just gonna say there's something that we haven't really talked too much about when we were
talking about storytelling that I think explains one of the reasons that those two stories stuck with us, the one for me about Napoleon's army dying and for you about the Challenger. The reason we remember those is not just the facts of the story, what happened with the Challenger or what happened with those armies, it's the emotion that those stories
evoked in us. And the more em- emotion you make people feel and the more intense that emotion is, the more likely they're going to remember what you told them, which is why stories matter, because the facts are neutral. The facts, the data sets themselves, don't have any feeling, but you create an emotional resonance in the way that you unpack them and what that means for people.
[00:35:10] Katherine Watier Ong: Oh, that's a great, that's a great conclusion to our talk about the stories we really loved. So - you've hinted at one framework. I don't know if there are multiple frameworks, but is there a storytelling framework that marketers could a- regularly apply to either a client presentation or a report that they provide?
Do you have, like, a start with this, start, go there, go there kind of format that you tend to use, or does it depend on what the ... We spent a lot of time when I was in the agency talking about the output you wanted from the presentation and walking backward. So, you would stack the story based on what you wanted the other people across the table to do from the presentation.
And then particularly pivoting it based on who was in the room. We did a lot of that, and we would practice a lot before we had to do tough presentations where we really needed to persuade the person across the table. But do you have a framework that generally works for most folks? Is it in your book?
I'm just kind of curious. 
[00:36:09] Patti Sanchez: Mm. Well, so, so the most basic framework of any great compelling story is the three-act structure: beginning, middle, end. And there are different ways you could describe what happens in the beginning, middle, and end. You know, it could be a personal perspective, so this is basically the hero's journey.
In the beginning, we meet somebody that we can relate to, and they have a goal. And in the middle, they encounter obstacles as they try to achieve that goal. But then somebody steps in, a mentor, who helps them, offers some sort of resource, and in the end, they overcome and succeed. So that's one structure.
And in a way, the change story structure that I use, and I use it in pitches, I use it in recommendations all the time, is like a hero's journey, but for an organization or for people who are trying to get out of a bad situation into something better. Because in the current state, there are people being hurt by something that's not working, and in the middle, you're going to remove those obstacles with the change you're recommending, and in the end, you're going to be transformed.
You know, everybody's going to experience something better as a result, which is a great place to end a pitch, because you want your buyer to remember the feeling, again, feeling and emotion, of that you're gonna leave them with, which is, "I- my problem will go away, and I will be more successful in my business, if I choose them as my partner."
[00:37:35] Katherine Watier Ong: Yeah. Are there other storytelling techniques we haven't touched upon that you think would be helpful for digital marketers to learn more about? 
[00:37:43] Patti Sanchez: Well, one of the things that Nancy Durte- and I've talked about her a couple of times- wrote about in her book Resonate is a structure that contrasts one thing with another, and that contrast creates tension that people want to see resolved.
So the way that she talks about it is that you contrast what is with what could be. It's not that different than that change story that I was talking about. But it's also a contrasting problem with a solution or a feature with a benefit or, you know, you're, you're taking one thing, and you're juxtaposing it with another thing.
And so that's a powerful way to help people see why the thing you're recommending is better than what they have. But you don't end there, you know, with just the comparison. You know, "Here are the three things you're doing, and here are three better alternatives." You still wanna leave them on a high with this picture of what you're going to help them accomplish when they choose your three best things.
[00:38:41] Katherine Watier Ong: Yeah, and that's why the industry talks about doing sales projections, because that would be the positive. Look at the money you could get if we do X, Y, and Z, but I don't think we talk enough about the flip side. Sometimes you're trying to get clients to just do anything. And so you could also stack up what'll happen if they do nothing, right?
That, that's exactly right. And there are a couple of case studies floating around the internet that can help you kind of craft that story. But the big takeaway is if they don't do anything, their traffic will eventually slowly decline across 
[00:39:08] Patti Sanchez: Yes ... 
[00:39:09] Katherine Watier Ong: Every industry. Unfortunately, SEO is like a maintenance thing.
You just gotta keep working on it and keep boosting your website to keep it visible. If you walk away from it for a couple of years, it will fade into oblivion. So I have so- a question here about the story burst technique. Can you talk a little bit more about that? What it is, why we're going to use it.
[00:39:35] Patti Sanchez: Yeah. Well, so, so I think I've talked about the fact that's the kinds of story structures that we've talked about are really kind of strategic stories, big picture about where we are, where we are, where we need to go, where we will end up when we make these changes. But a very simple kind of story is a personal story about a lesson that you learned, and this is also based on the hero's journey, but in a very simple form.
And basically what you do is, at the beginning of the story, you say, "So I had a goal. I was trying to accomplish X, Y, Z." I... And then in the middle, you talk about the obstacle you had to overcome. "So I ran into this challenge, and the way that I overcame it was by trying this new technique or by investing in this new tool."
And you end the story not just by talking about the better result that you got, but the lesson that you learned, because that is what becomes that kind of teaching moment for whoever it is you're trying to communicate to, whoever you're trying to persuade, and that's really powerful when you're a consultant.
Because really, basically, you are a teacher when you're a consultant. You shouldn't be focused just on selling a solution, an answer to their problem, but you should also be building trust that you know what you're doing, and you can take away their pain. And so by sharing your experience through the form of a case study, which is basically what that is, you build your credibility. 
[00:41:00] Katherine Watier Ong: Yeah, this one I do naturally. I was kind of curious, 'cause I do that a lot, depending. I'm like, "Yeah, this is just like when so-and-so did X, Y, and Z, and it turned out to be this, and then we did that and realized that was the best way to be doing it," kind of thing.
Yeah. 
[00:41:15] Patti Sanchez: Exactly. 
[00:41:16] Katherine Watier Ong: Well, so, what if you were talking to a digital marketer and you wanted them to invest in one soft skill this year with the whole AI stuff, what would be the one skill you'd want them to work on? Would it be writing?
[00:41:31] Patti Sanchez: You would think I'd say that, as a writer. Yeah. But really, it's gonna, it's going to be empathy. I don't think there's any more important skill right now than trying to understand other human beings and trying to understand what makes them tick, trying to understand what keeps them from doing what they should be doing.
So study psychology. Use AI to build personas if you don't already have it to argue an alternate opinion, what, you know, for whatever you're trying to recommend. I mean, really, just be a student of people and what it takes to get people to change, because I think that's what you're ultimately trying to do.
[00:42:12] Katherine Watier Ong: Well, and on the digital end, you can use SparkToro to figure out where they hang out online and do a little lurking. So if you can't afford a social media listening tool, you can at least know that my target audience is on this subreddit, and I'm gonna listen to what they've been talking about for a bit.
If you can't afford to do a focus group or some other way of getting to know your audience, social media lurking can get you at least partially on your way there. 
[00:42:35] Patti Sanchez: I love it. 
[00:42:36] Katherine Watier Ong: Yeah,and this is where I go back to this episode we just released about compassionate design. It is stressful, man. There is a lot of stuff going on, so I just think everybody should probably think, "What could this person be going through right now?"
When you start having problems communicating one-on-one. You know, I just think people have a lot going on right now. I mean, we- Yeah ... we have just wandered into an armed conflict on top of everything else. So, yeah, people are maxed, I think, and just keep that in mind when you're communicating with your audience, outbound, like marketing stuff, but also your own employees, like, yeah, it's a lot of stuff.
It just keeps adding. We haven't decreased anything since the pandemic started. We've just added more stress and stuff to deal with. Yeah, so if you had a storytelling habit that's served you really well throughout your career, that's not empathy; what would be the other one that you would suggest to people?
[00:43:35] Patti Sanchez: Well, it's reading; it's following other storytellers. It's the stories that they do tell. So, for instance, I was just doing some research for a client that I'm working with on a big narrative for an event with their customers, a very high-stakes situation, and I was looking at how other leaders have talked in moments like this.
And I was re-watching a video of Indra Nooyi, who had been the CEO of PepsiCo during a period of major transformation. And I- she was talking about her experiences as a leader and lessons that she learned, and she was sharing stories. And I'm transcribing that stuff, and I'm banking it for future reference, and that's one of the things I do routinely because it helps me to f- find more examples of great stories being told by leaders, and it also helps me and coach leaders when they push back and say I shouldn't tell a story.
Watch this video of Indra Nooyi speaking and see how powerful that moment was. 
[00:44:36] Katherine Watier Ong: Do you have a short list of great writers that you would recommend people read? 
[00:44:41] Patti Sanchez: Hmm.. 
[00:44:41] Katherine Watier Ong: Or listen to? 
[00:44:43] Patti Sanchez: I, well, because I'm a writing nerd, I do read books about writing by writers. And so one of the best ones is Stephen King's book, I think it's called On Writing.
[00:44:53] Katherine Watier Ong: Oh, I didn't know he... oh, sorry, I'm a Mainer. I did not know that he wrote a book about writing. That's fascinating. 
[00:44:59] Patti Sanchez: It's pretty old, yeah. Yeah. And it's just chock full of tips. Yeah. So that- that's a good one, I would recommend. And then also, Ann Handley. Oh. If you're a writer, you probably follow Ann Handley in the content marketing space, and she wrote a book called Everybody Writes, and it's got l- lots of practical tips as well.
And her newsletter is always a good read. 
[00:45:18] Katherine Watier Ong: Oh, I have not subscribed to her newsletter. Though I did read the book. That was part of our book club. I have a business book club I'm in, and that was definitely what we were reading. Those are great. So this has been great. I think it's a ton of tips.
Do you have any other wins or resources that you want to share with the listeners that you think would be helpful? 
[00:45:35] Patti Sanchez: Well, I wouldn't mind if people checked out the book Illuminate, which I co-authored. 
[00:45:39] Katherine Watier Ong: Great. Yeah. 
[00:45:40] Patti Sanchez: That would be amazing, especially if you want to influence change, whether you're in a seat of power or not, and you want to understand how leaders drive transformation using storytelling, then I think you might pick up a couple of ideas from it.
[00:45:55] Katherine Watier Ong: Great. How can people learn more about you? 
[00:45:58] Patti Sanchez: You could check out my website, pattisan.com, P-A-T-T-I-S-A-N.com. You can follow me on LinkedIn. I accept pretty much every connection request, unless you're obviously a bot, although sometimes it's hard to tell these days. 
[00:46:13] Katherine Watier Ong: Great. This has been fabulous. Thank you so much for being on the show.
[00:46:17] Patti Sanchez: Thank you. I loved it. 
[00:46:18] Katherine Watier Ong: Thanks so much for listening. To find out more about the podcast and what we're up to, go to digitalmarketingvictories.com. And if you like what you heard, subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Rate us, comment, and share the podcast, please. I'm always looking for new ideas, topics, and guests.
Email us at digitalmarketingvictories@gmail.com or DM us on Twitter @dmvictories. Thanks for listening.