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Winning the Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell - and Live - the Best Stories Will Rule the Future MP3 CD – Unabridged, July 10, 2012
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The story wars are all around us. They are the struggle to be heard in a world of media noise and clamor. Today, most brand messages and mass appeals for causes are drowned out before they even reach us. But a few consistently break through the din, using the only tool that has ever moved minds and changed behavior—great stories.
With insights from mythology, advertising history, evolutionary biology, and psychology, viral storyteller and advertising expert Jonah Sachs takes listeners into a fascinating world of seemingly insurmountable challenges and enormous opportunity. You’ll discover how:
· Social media tools are driving a return to the oral tradition, in which stories that matter rise above the fray
· Marketers have become today’s mythmakers, providing society with explanation, meaning, and ritual
· Memorable stories based on timeless themes build legions of eager evangelists
· Marketers and audiences can work together to create deeper meaning and stronger partnerships in building a better world
· Brands like Old Spice, The Story of Stuff, Nike, the Tea Party, and Occupy Wall Street created and sustained massive viral buzz
Winning the Story Wars is a call to arms for business communicators to cast aside broken traditions and join a revolution to build the iconic brands of the future. It puts marketers in the role of heroes with a chance to transform not just their craft but the enterprises they represent. After all, success in the story wars doesn’t come just from telling great stories, but from learning to live them.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBrilliance Audio
- Publication dateJuly 10, 2012
- Dimensions5.25 x 0.5 x 6.75 inches
- ISBN-10146920844X
- ISBN-13978-1469208442
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Product details
- Publisher : Brilliance Audio; Unabridged edition (July 10, 2012)
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 146920844X
- ISBN-13 : 978-1469208442
- Item Weight : 3.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.25 x 0.5 x 6.75 inches
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Jonah Sachs is an author, speaker and viral marketing trailblazer whose work helped spur the 21st century values revolution which brought the ideals of social change—such as equity, empowerment, responsibility, transparency, and advocacy—to the forefront of business and popular culture.
Sachs’ most recent book, Unsafe Thinking: How to Be Nimble and Bold When You Need It Most, has won praise from luminaries including Daniel Pink, who says the book “will propel you…onto a path of better, sharper thinking”; Adam Grant, who calls it “enchanting”; and Mary Karr, who lauds the book for being “blazingly original.”
A master storyteller, Sachs speaks to corporate, institutional and conference audiences around the world, guiding them on how to break patterns and make new connections to create powerful, meaningful, and radical change. Channeling the wisdom of thinkers from across disciplines and drawing on cutting edge research and spellbinding anecdotes to tell a story of profound change, Sachs is known for creating a unique and intimate connection with his audiences.
Sachs rose to prominence in the early 2000s by creating some of the world’s first, and still most heralded, viral digital marketing videos. As founder and CEO of Free Range Studios, Sachs created watershed viral campaigns, like Amnesty International’s awareness-raising video on blood diamonds which was seen by millions and delivered directly to every member of congress, helping drive the passage of the Clean Diamond Trade Act.
Sachs later produced “The Story of Stuff,” which, viewed by over 60 million people, marked a turning point in the fight to educate people about the environmental and social impact of overconsumption. Sachs went onto to create groundbreaking campaigns for Greenpeace, Human Rights Campaigns and the ACLU, as well as consumer brands including Microsoft, Asana, The North Face, and Patagonia.
In 2012, Sachs released Winning the Story Wars, a deep dive into the stories that have the power to break through the noise and to open minds, move hearts and change behaviors. Published by Harvard Business Review Press, Winning the Stories Wars was hailed as “a storytelling call to arms” by Dan Heath, as “important and thought-provoking” by Deepak Chopra, and as “wise and enlightening” by Bath & Body Works CEO Nick Coe.
Sachs’ work and opinions have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, FOX News, Sundance Film Festival, NPR. Sachs also pens a column for Fast Company, which named him one of today’s 50 most influential social innovators.
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Against this backdrop, in his book, Winning the Story Wars, Jonah Sacks writes:
“We live in a world that has lost its connection to its traditional myths, and we are now trying to find new ones—we’re people and that’s what people without myths do.
These myths will shape our future, how we live, what we do, and what we buy. They will touch all of us. But not all of us get to write them. Those that do have tremendous power.” (6)
Among those competing to gain this power through telling such stories are authors, film-makers, advertisers, religious leaders, and politicians of all stripes. Because it is not clear whose stories will dominate our attention (17), the recent election is a reminder that a lot is at stake.
In this environment of competing myth-making, oral tradition has become increasingly important because social media facilitates immediate feedback between story tellers and their audience, reminiscent of a time when story tellers gathered with their audiences primarily around a campfire. Because “all wars are story wars” (29), Sacks sees story telling as critical, not only to marketers who can either lift us up or tear us down, but also to citizens who may find themselves manipulated into fighting real wars.
So who is Jonah Sacks? Sack describes himself as a: “story expert, filmmaker and entrepreneur”. His back cover and website includes this description:
“As the co-founder and CEO of Free Range Studios, Jonah has helped hundreds of major brands and causes break through the media din with unforgettable [ad] campaigns. His work on legendary viral videos like The Meatrix and The Story of Stuff series have brought key social issues to the attention of more than 65 million people online. A constant innovator, his studio’s websites and stories have taken top honors three times at the South by Southwest Film Festival.”
Sacks divides his book into two parts and eight chapters, preceded by a prologue and followed by an epilogue:
Part One: The Broken World of Storytelling
1. The Story Wars are All Around Us
2. The Five Deadly Sins
3. The Myth Gap
4. Marketing’s Dark Art
Part Two: Shaping the Future
5. Tell the Truth, Part I: The Art of Empowerment Marketing
6. Tell the Truth, Part II: The Hero’s Journey
7. Be Interesting: Freaks, Cheats, and Familiars
8. Live the Truth. (vii)
Once you buy into the idea that stories matter and matter a lot, Sacks starts by instructing us on what not to do—the five deadly sins—which are vanity, authority, insincerity, puffery, and gimmickry (35). Vanity arises as an early problem because “when you love what you’re selling” … “you assume everyone else will too” (36). Sacks uses an unforgettable example when he compares the acceptance speeches of John Kerry and George W. Bush in 2004—Kerry talks mostly about John Kerry, while Bush talks about what “we” can do (37-38). The contrast could not be greater. The other four sins are equally hard to avoid and quick to kill the credibility of a story.
Sacks repeatedly returns to myth as an important component in story telling. He describes myth as neither true not false, but existing in a separate reality (59). He attributes three ingredients in myth: symbolic thinking, having three elements tied together—story, explanation, and meaning, and ritual (59-61). For example, in Genesis Sacks sees creation as a myth with these three elements:
“STORY: God created the world in seven days and gave man dominion over it.
EXPLANATION: This is how everything we see around us came into existence.
MEANING: So God deserves our gratitude and obedience.” (60)
An important observation drives much of Sacks’ own storyline:
“a myth gap arises when reality changes dramatically and our myths are not resilient enough to continue working in the face of that change.” (61)
In our “rationalist modern society” (62) where people refuse to think symbolically, the myth gap zaps meaning and leaves people in an intractable state of hopelessness. “Forward-thinking religious leaders, scientists, and entertainers” who attempt to “reunify story, explanation, and meaning in their work” are quickly pushed out of the mainstream (63). Thus, the myth gap remains and people suffer.
Jonah Sacks’ book “Winning the Story Wars” is a non-fiction, page turner. In part 2 of this review, I will examine in more depth Sacks’ exploration of modern advertising and why we care. (T2Pneuma.net)
For years now, everyone involved in marketing, fundraising, communications, social media, or any related field has been intensely aware that the key to successful messaging is a story. In this beautifully written book, Jonah Sachs explains why that is so, what¡¯s needed for a successful story, and how to construct one, step by step.
As Sachs writes, ¡°the oral tradition that dominated human experience for all but the last few hundred years is returning with a vengeance. It¡¯s a monumental, epoch-making, totally unforeseen turn of events.¡± If these statements strike you as hyperbolic, consider this: the nearly universal distrust of institutional authority (whether governmental, corporate, or religious) that has become a distinguishing feature of our society over the past five decades, combined with the atomization of our information sources (500 TV channels, one billion Facebook users, 500 million Tweeters), makes it absolutely essential that anyone who needs to deliver a message to a very large number of people must couch it in the form of a story with broad appeal across all the lines that divide us (and define us). As Sachs explains, ¡°Great brands and campaigns are sensitive to the preferences of different types of audiences, but the core stories and the values they represent can be appreciated by anyone. Universality is the opposite of insincerity.¡±
Winning the Story Wars is, simultaneously, an honest and occasionally embarrassing tale of Sachs¡¯ own halting progress toward understanding the craft of story-making, an exploration of the cultural and anthropological roots of the archetypal stories that live on in our consciousness, and, ultimately, a lucid, practical guidebook to building your own stories.
Sachs has done his homework. He has read Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung as well as the Bible, delved deeply into the history of marketing and advertising, and explored contemporary advertising, as exemplified by the Marlboro Man, the rule-breaking 1960s campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle (¡°Think Small.¡±), and Apple¡¯s more recent ¡°1984¡å and ¡°Think Different¡± campaigns. He manages to tie together all these disparate sources and examples within the framework of an entirelly original analysis. Along the way, Sachs reveals how three men ¡ª Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover, and ¡°the father of public relations,¡± Joseph Bernays ¡ª transformed the American economy by shifting public consciousness from the values of our Puritan heritage to the dictates of the marketplace, enshrining consumerism as the dominant feature in our ethos. It¡¯s truly brilliant.
Sachs bases his analysis on ¡®the ¡®three commandments¡¯ laid out in 1895 by marketing¡¯s first great storyteller, John Powers: Tell the Truth, Be Interesting, and Live the Truth.¡± Sachs emphasizes the importance of avoiding ¡°Marketing¡¯s five deadly sins: vanity, authority, insincerity, puffery, and gimmickry.¡±
If you¡¯re engaged in marketing, advertising, fundraising, or anything even reasonably related to them, you must read this book.
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Top reviews from other countries

When the book arrived first of all I felt a bit disappointed because it wasn't what I was expecting. I thought it would be set out into the different 'how to' sections.
I thought "here we go again, another book which tells you what you need to be doing, without actually telling you how to do it".
How wrong I was. After reading it from cover to cover in 2 days (I only stopped reading to sleep and eat) I believe that its the best book on marketing that I've ever read.
The reason I say this is because:-
1) It explains the theory
2) It gives you real life examples
3) Then it gives you exercises to do - Real life exercises that you can use to craft any kind of story or message. And real life exercises that I actually did, and enjoyed doing.
That's not all though, I bought this book to help me craft my stories, but it's done so much more than that. It's shown me that we can be honest and truthful and transparent, and still get ahead in life. It's given me faith in human nature, and in our ability to change things for the better.
This book for me is Winner because it connects with my core values (and I thought I was just buying a book on story writing)! It connects with the beliefs that I already hold, and it's helped me to shape my ideas, and to have more courage in my convictions.
If your interested in being one of the good guys, but always believed that nice guys finish last, then this book is for you.
This really is a fantastic book, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Die CDs kann man gut nebenher hören und trotzdem einiges mitnehmen. Aber hier liegt vielleicht auch die Krux, es ist eher leichte Kost und wiederholt die klassichen Insights aus der Welt des Storytelling kombiniert mit Archetypen. Was man mitnehmen kann sind ein paar gute Fallbeispiele und Grundlagen einer guten Geschichte. Ich habe in dem Bereich allerdings schon vieles gelesen und hätte mir etwas mehr Neuheitswert und praktische Anwendungsbeispiele gewünscht. Was bei Amerikanern außerdem immer auffällt ist der Hang zur Wiederholung. Das soll der Einprägsamkeit dienen, nervt aber teilweise auch etwas. Also, alles in allem war das Buch okay, aber nicht weltbewegend.


