Winning the Story Wars

About the Author: Jonah Sachs. As the cofounder and CEO of Free Range Studios, Sachs has helped hundreds of major brands and causes break through the media noise with unforgettable campaigns. His work on renowned viral videos including The Meatrix and The Story of Stuff have brought key social issues to the attention of more than sixty-five million people online. A constant innovator, his studio's websites and stories have taken top honors three times at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. Sachs's work and opinions have been featured in a variety of media, including the New York Times, NPR, and Fast Company magazine, which named him one of its fifty most influential social innovators. About the Illustrator: Drew Beam Drew Beam is the Innovation Director at Free Range Studios, where he helps clients see the future and leap into it. After earning his BFA at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Beam built a successful career creating visuals and innovation strategies for dozens of Fortune 500 companies. His illustrations have been published by Time Warner Books, Penguin Books, and Rolling Stone magazine, to name just a few.

"Story Wars is a thorough guide for the novice or even practiced storytellers in all of us. Sachs offers story structures, ways of thinking about characters and messages. He pulls artfully from recent brand successes from companies including Nike and Apple. And he tells a few good stories along the way." -- Forbes "Sachs is full of ideas and strategies to help readers give their brands the rare, compelling story that will raise their message above the melee of advertising noise... the ideas are powerful and solid, and will make inspiring reading for marketing professionals looking to set their stories apart." -- Publishers Weekly "In this timely, practical, perceptive, and thought-provoking book, Sachs (CEO, Free Range Studios) does a remarkable job trumpeting storytelling as a means by which people can effectively influence others." -- CHOICE "The book is an interesting blend of marketing and advertising history, mythology, and psychology that pulled me in and kept me turning the pages... the eye-catching illustrations of Drew Beam. Beam's artwork combined with Sachs's writing style kept me glued to the pages... this one has earned a place on my bookshelf and a noteworthy position on my leadership development reading list." -- T+D magazine, American Society for Training & Development "This fast-paced entertaining book takes on storytelling from the POV of a 24/7 information culture and shares the strategies and tactics that fuel today's most compelling content." -- Ketchum PR, On the Bookshelf: New Year Reads "Sachs offers a step-by-step guide to corporate storytelling, showing how brands can use recognisable characters, such as "freaks, cheats and familiars" to create instantly relatable campaigns...Marketers who are able to define the core values of a brand then use them to engage the target audience in a compelling, relatable story are the ones who will thrive in the new media landscape of the "digitoral" age." -- Warc "His investigation also unveiled a process to help others create winning stories that he shares with great depth and charm in this book." -- 800 CEO READ "To influence this brave new world, first convince the global media marketplace of your story. The better the story, the better chance of making people think differently." -- Quantas magazine "In the often superficial, deceptive world of marketing and advertising, social innovator Jonah Sachs is an individual with a conscience...Sachs's engaging work is a call to arms for anyone who works to influence consumer choices." -- getAbstract ADVANCE PRAISE for Winning the Story Wars: Dan Heath, coauthor, Switch and Made to Stick-- "Jonah Sachs knows stories. He's responsible for some of the most popular and respected viral messages of all time: The Story of Stuff, The Meatrix, Grocery Store Wars, and others. This book is a storytelling call to arms, an appeal to tell the stories that matter. So read Winning the Story Wars--and join the fray." Nick Coe, CEO, Bath & Body Works; former President, Land's End-- "History is written by the winners. And as Jonah Sachs makes abundantly clear, it is now being written by the marketers, the new mythmakers of our time. Whatever your product or your cause, if you want it to succeed, read this wise and enlightening book." Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director, Greenpeace International-- "Winning the Story Wars will convince you that storytelling is the most powerful way to move people to action. And it will teach you to use that power to orient our world to a more positive future. If you're ready to be a great storyteller, read this book." Deepak Chopra, founder, The Chopra Foundation-- "Great leaders transform the world through stories that inspire hope, stability, trust, compassion, and authenticity. This important and thought-provoking book shows that leadership in marketing will require the living and telling of such stories as well." Bill Bradley, former US Senator; Managing Director, Allen & Company-- "We know about who we are both individually and as a society through stories. In this brilliant book, Jonah Sachs tells us how we lost our storytelling capacity and how we must regain it, constructing our own myths and living the truth of the stories we tell." Paul Hawken, author, The Ecology of Commerce and Blessed Unrest-- "In the current maelstrom of media babble and corporate deceit, Jonah Sachs makes sense where none appears to exist. Winning the Story Wars explains why we respond to lies--whether in political or product ads, campaigns or speeches--and how truth ultimately trumps all. This remarkable book delivers on that rare promise of changing how you see the world."