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Can you relate?

Not long ago we wrote about a petition to get the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to change the rating for the documentary film Bully, which recently opened in multiple cities across the country. In that post, we made the point that one person’s story – in this case a high school student who started a petition – can have the power to inspire people to action.

Katy Butler started the petition on Change.org asking the MPAA to change the rating from “R” to “PG-13” so more children could see the film. More importantly, a “PG-13” rating would mean that more schools would be willing to show Bully to a key target audience – middle and high school students.

We’re happy to report that not only did Katy Butler’s story inspire over a half million people to sign the online petition, but the petition was a major factor in persuading the MPAA to finally change the film’s rating on April 5. This was an unprecedented move for the MPAA as they had already voted down the first appeal to change the rating.

The movie itself is said to be a powerful, emotional story about the effects of bullying on children, their parents and the community at large. We’re confident that the stories in the movie will have a big impact on viewers, certainly more so than lectures would.

There’s a very important lesson here: Stories sell. Whether you’re trying to change the world or introduce a new company, product, or service, telling your story can inspire people to action. Want to convince people to sign a petition, become a loyal fan of your company or non-profit, or buy your product? Get personal and you’ll connect.

We know it can be quite daunting to tell your own story, so we’re here to help. Contact us and get our master storytellers spinning your tale.

What if your story could launch a movement 200,000+ strong?

Every movement begins with someone's story

One such story is that of Katy Butler, a Michigan high school student who was bullied when she was 12 years old. One day when she went to shut her locker, bullies pushed her against the wall. Then they slammed her locker shut on her hand, breaking her finger.

On Thursday, March 8, Katy delivered a petition to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), asking them to overturn a decision to give the movie “Bully” an R rating as opposed to PG-13. The film received an R rating for “language.” The truth is, many teens use bad language – often – so hearing it in a movie about bullying is not going to have a negative influence on them.

“Bully” is a documentary that followed and filmed kids dealing with the effects and after-effects of bullying during the 2009-2010 school year. The documentary also covers the increase in child suicides due to bullying. The Bully Project is a collaborative effort that brings together partner organizations committed to ending bullying. You can learn more about the film, which is being released March 30, at www.thebullyproject.com.

The goal is to encourage middle and high schools to show the film and open a dialogue about bullying. An R rating will scare some schools away from showing the film. “I can’t believe the MPAA is blocking millions of teenagers from seeing a movie that could change — and, in some cases, save — their lives,” Butler wrote. “Think of how many of these kids could benefit from seeing this film, especially if it is shown in schools?”

Change.org recently sent an email, asking readers to sign Butler’s petition. Almost immediately the web site briefly crashed from so many people trying to sign at once. Imagine the sheer number of people who instantly stopped what they were doing to reply to this call for action, causing a traffic jam on that website.

When I was finally able to sign the online petition Feb. 27, the goal on the change.org website was 25,000 and they had over 19,000 signatures. As of 5:00 pm Feb. 28, they were just under 100,000 signatures with a goal of 150,000. On March 2, they had over 186,000, and were averaging 500 signees every minute. The petition Katy is deliverying to the MPAA on March 7 has been signed by almost 220,000 people. In a little over a week.

As a parent featured in the film “Bully” says, “Everything starts with one and builds up.” Be the one. Tell your story.

Video series asks today’s leading scientists to tell their stories

If you’re like me, fascinated by science and its continued evolution and exploration but usually unable to make it through esoteric science journals without falling asleep, then you may want to check out “Cambridge Nights: Conversations About a Life in Science,” a series of interviews with academic scientists intended to give them the space to share their views and thoughts. Or, in other words, to tell their stories.

Cesar Hidalgo interviews Marshall Van Alstyne

The series, brainchild of César Hidalgo, ABC Career Development Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab and an assistant professor at MIT, wrapped up its first season at the end of November with eight videos of interviews with scientists who find themselves conducting research or teaching at leading universities in the Boston/Cambridge area of Massachusetts. The videos range from 20 to 45 minutes, with the last 10 or so dedicated to the subject’s personal life, career choices, and development.

Watching and listening to the interviews with some of today’s thought leaders, in which they describe their current work and theory as well as how they got to this point in their lives, makes the scientist’s specialty – and the scientist himself (so far all the interviews are with men) – more accessible and interactive than reading a research paper. Don’t get me wrong, research papers and journals are extremely important for the scientific world and community, but for us interested laypeople, the storytelling in the “Cambridge Nights” videos allows us to get a good basic understanding of the subject matter and the person behind it, perhaps spurring us on to deeper interest and reading.

For example, listen to Luis Bettencourt’s interview and you’ll hear him explain why people who live in New York City walk much faster than people who live in Topeka, Kansas, and why, contrary to what you’d think, large cities are less energy-intensive than more spread-out areas. Bettencourt, a professor at the Santa Fe Institute and a former researcher at the Las Alamos National Laboratory, then goes on to talk about how he eventually made his way to the U.S. and why he thinks that right now is not only an exciting but downright historical time for science in the U.S. and why so many scientists are coming here to work on issues together.

Or maybe Marshall Van Alstyne speaking about information exchange and “information markets” within companies and broader organizations is more up your alley. Van Alstyne, a professor at Boston University and a researcher at the MIT Center for Digital Business, explains that sharing information is a big productivity and profit booster within a company, but also presents challenges like how to motivate top performers to share information with average or low performers. Van Alstyne also discusses “information markets” across organizations or within a field of specialty. He cites the example of the Google.org Flu Trends page and how sharing data and data analysis can help people see trends and make decisions using that information.

A highlight for me was listening to Lant Pritchett discuss why he thinks the education world is too obsessed with “schooling” rather than educating and how and why governments control the curriculum of public schools. Pritchett, Professor of the Practice of International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School, also explains how his time as a missionary in Argentina influenced his career choices and why he’s a professor of “the practice” of international development and not solely a researcher of international development.

All in all, the talk show, even without a witty opening monologue, house band, and stupid pet tricks, is another great example of how using stories to explain complex ideas to plain old people can hook us into listening/watching/reading/consuming.

I was reminded of this powerful equation recently when I got the chance to look at 40-year-old photos I haven’t seen in – probably not 40 years – but a very long time.

My mother had kept some old slides we had from over the years, 142 of them to be exact. When the last projector broke, we had family discussions on what to do with the slides. Should we scan them? No, the quality was not good enough. Cameras weren’t that great back then unless you were a professional photographer. And whoever took the photos was definitely not a professional  – you know, heads cut off, people so far away you couldn’t tell who was who; a photo of people in a car – but you can’t see the people in the car because of the glare on the windshield.

The funny thing is, the slides I finally had digitized (that is a verb, right?) weren’t “tagged” with location, but somehow it didn’t matter. We all knew where most of them were taken when we had a chance to see them yesterday. When I got the email telling me my project was finally finished and I could view the images, I dropped everything and clicked on the link. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I alternated between the two. And then I immediately called my mother, who had been waiting to see these images, while we arranged for me to get the slides from my sister and ship them. It took a leap of faith to let the shipping company take the box from my hands, and then we waited.

The first photo I saw was of my dad. My dad died over 19 years ago, so for that to be the first image that I opened was a bit startling. I had forgotten how handsome he was. He had been sick for quite a few years before he died, so my more recent memories of him were quite different from the image in the photo. And our grandfather — how long since I had seen a photo of him?  Someday soon I’ll write about the photos taken of us in Europe; five sisters from age 5 to 17, and my parents, who were very brave to travel with such a motley crew.

Oh, how I wish I had my iPhone back then!! Imagine the photos and videos we could be looking at now? All neatly uploaded into an album shared on Flickr, Facebook, Snapfish, Shutterfly, and possibly even in a printed photo book. That’s about the only way I print photos now, if I take the time and effort to create a photo book. And I do just that for my family vacations. We look at those books often, my son and husband and I.

So now I go back to looking at these old photos and I wonder – if one picture is worth a thousand words, what is a lifetime of some of the most wonderful memories worth? All I know is, you can’t put a price on it. Because all the money in the world couldn’t buy this feeling.

This is my first story for Lockstock Communications. What story can we tell about you or your company?