FOREWORD

By Shekar Khosla

We are entering a new phase of storytelling with the rise of social media. In this phase, what individual people with a widening radius of trust and global connectedness say about your brand can become more important than what you say about your own brand.

In this new normal, transparency is mandated, and having an experienced and inspiring partner as you commercialize your brand promise is an asset. I found in Richard Krevolin just the kind of partner I was looking for while managing Unilever’s Asia Pacific Skin business and building future corporate capabilities. He gave us a master class in story crafting and brand narratives. It was a powerful and essential workshop that showed me that good marketing is, in the end, really just good storytelling.

Ever since meeting Richard in that workshop many years ago, I have utilized many of his powerful strategies for leveraging the basic tenets of storytelling to build and sustain iconic brands. I have, indeed, come away richer after having been exposed to his teaching and I know you will do the same after reading this book.

In the end, his take on marketing and business is too valuable to be limited to only being accessible in his workshops, so I am grateful and happy that he has finally agreed to get it all down in a book. Finally, all this fascinating and useful information will now be accessible to the world. So then, you may ask, what exactly is contained in this volume?

Well, this book is a compelling exposition by Professor Krevolin on how storytelling is even more relevant in today’s digitized world. Storytelling is widely recognized as our natural response to memory, with the stories we recall becoming a part of our identities. However, with the rise of social media, the challenge for iconic and local brands is that the brand stories are no longer only being crafted by brand custodians, but also by consumers.

Take your time reading this book by a master teacher. Entertaining, informative, and, of course, filled with heaps of wonderful stories, there’s too much information contained herein to rush through it. Refer to it again and again through the course of your life as you continue to compose new brand narratives.

And as Prof. K. says, “Be bold. Be brave. Hook ‘em by telling better stories.”

—Shekar Khosla, Chief Marketing Officer, Kellogg Asia Pacific and Africa