How AI is Transforming Brand Storytelling with Park Howell

Drew McLellan [00:00:37]: 

Hey everybody, Drew Mclellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency. And we have a repeat guest with us today. I’ll tell you a little bit more about him and what we’re going to talk about in a second, but I do want to remind you that probably our most popular workshop, Money Matters, where we spend two days talking about financial KPIs that are specific to agencies, pricing strategies, all kinds of things. The financial reports you should be looking at, tax strategies, everything you can think of about money, we cover in two days. That workshop is coming up again in October. We always sell that workshop out. So if you are interested in that, you might head over to the Agency Management Institute website under the How We Help tab. You’ll see workshops and you’ll find the Money Matters workshop under that. So check that out. We would love to have you join us. It is a perennial favorite and we’re happy to, we’re happy to do it a couple times a year actually, because it’s in such high demand. So it won’t be run again until probably the spring of 2026. So if you can make it work with your schedule, we would love to have you in Denver in October. All right, so today’s guest, like I said, is a repeat guest. His name is Park Howell. Many of you probably know him. Park is a former agency owner who really was a brand guy and really into storytelling and story brands. And he created a methodology for creating a story cycle. And he’s got some frameworks around how you tell your brand story. So he has a book called Brand Bewitchery that came out a few years ago. He’s got a great podcast called the Business of Story that you may be familiar with. And he’s taken a sort of interesting turn in his sort of how he’s approaching brand and storytelling with the help of some AI tools that he and a team have created. And so he’s got a fascinating story to tell and we’re actually going to kind of live demo the outcome of his new tool. He actually ran AMI through the tool and so together we’re going to kind of walk through that report and see just how accurate or inaccurate it was. And we’re going to talk a lot about sort of how we. How we weave storytelling and how we make brand and storytelling something that clients can measure with ROI and how we can sell more of it to our clients, because we all know how important it is that we help our clients have a strong brand and a great brand story. So without further ado, let’s welcome park back to the show. Park, welcome back to the show. It’s good to have you back. 

Park Howell [00:03:14]: 

Oh, thanks, Drew. I really appreciate being here, and it’s great to see you again. It’s been a little while. 

Drew McLellan [00:03:19]: 

It has been a little while. I think last time I was in Arizona was the last time we were together and had a cocktail. So it’s been. It’s been a bit. I need to get back down there. 

Park Howell [00:03:28]: 

A fantastic time to actually get to meet you in person. And that. Boy, that was. That might have been pre Covid. I think, come to think of it. 

Drew McLellan [00:03:34]: 

I think you’re probably right. Yeah. Time flies. So tell everybody a little bit of your story. So you have been all about the business of story and brand building and all of that. So give everybody, in case they’re not familiar with your work, sort of a little bit of a history lesson of sort of where you’ve come from. And then I want to talk about this new sort of season that you’re. That you’re bringing to your work. 

Park Howell [00:04:01]: 

I like that. The new season. That’s great. So, yeah, you know, I’ve been in the branding, advertising, marketing world for 40 years now. Can’t believe it’s been that long. I ran my own ad agency in Phoenix, Arizona, called Park & Co for 20 of those years. And in 2016, I decided to take a detour from the pure agency game. And I found myself doing a lot of consulting, coaching, and teaching of clients on how they could become better communicators, not just relying on our agency, but how themselves as leaders could connect on a much deeper level with their people and how their sales marketing teams and their HR departments could do a better job of actually using branding principles to be able to embed a thought into their audience in a very clear, concise, and compelling way to move them forward. And so I went from your very traditional ad agency, digital ad agency approach to literally Drew teaching a master’s course at Arizona State University on sustainable storytelling in large corporations, to flying around the world teaching leaders from the U.S. air Force to sales and marketing teams at Dell and Intel HubSpot. I mean, a whole host of companies since 2016, precisely on these three core story frameworks that we teach the. And. But therefore the three word narrative framework, the five primal elements of a short story that. So you can tell an anecdote in under a minute to make your business point for you. And then, of course, our larger 10 step story cycle system that I created first and have created everything after that, going from the complex 10 steps down to the three words and have put them all together. That’s what I’ve been doing since I wrapped up my ad agency back in 2016. 

Drew McLellan [00:06:05]: 

So somewhere along the way, you decided to take yet another bit of a dogleg and look at storytelling and building a brand from a slightly different lens. So talk a little bit about that. 

Park Howell [00:06:20]: 

Yeah. And it’s funny. Do we actually make those decisions, Drew, or does the universe make them for us? As markets change, is technology, as we know with AI changes? And that’s what happened with me. So most of my work over the past 10 years has been a lot of training and consulting, a lot of virtual work, and taking large teams through our training. For instance, Walmart Canada is a large client of mine, and I teach their middle managers and leaders that are coming up through the system how to use these frameworks. And then a lot of companies were coming to me, you know, doing branding and so forth. And my ten step story cycle system was all about branding. And I did a lot of it. In fact, it built brands by as much as 600%. But I’ll tell you, it’s fricking hard. And I would give it all, I mean, three or four months of psychosis to go in and do some digging, doing the discovery, the research with a customer, with a client, getting their intake, the creative development around that brand story, bringing it back to them, making sense of it all. They finally sign off on it. We’re all exhausted in the process, and off we go. So it works really, really well once you get through that. And a friend of mine and a past client, Sean Schroeder, he and his partners were running a digital ad agency in Sacramento called Blue river. And they had run it for about 10 years, and they had a lot of big clients and they had a lot of content management challenges going on, just trying to keep everything all in one place. So they created this content management platform called Mira for themselves, and then some of their big clients, Adobe and some of the others, came to them and said, I want that. So they built it out and they made it a piece of enterprise Software. Well, Sean came to me back in 2017. He said, We’ve been trying to brand our agency and our Vera platform. We’ve burned a year to two years on it. We’re getting nowhere. We’re not even sure you can do it, but we’re willing to invest and invoke your. If you’re not absolutely satisfied, we’re going to give you all your money back. And I’m like, oh my God, I better deliver on this one. Because no one’s actually asked for their money back before. 

Drew McLellan [00:08:32]: 

Right, right. 

Park Howell [00:08:33]: 

And we went through it and it was long and exhausting. It was three or four months, five months. Sean was in the middle of it. He was great marketer, but it worked and we nailed it. And their company grew in their mirror platform grew and they ended up selling both of them two years later. And so I’m like, woo, you know, that’s awesome. And hope I had a little, you know, part in that. Anyways, about two years ago, Sean came to me and said, I’ve been using the story cycle system with my friends companies and I’ve been working on it. It’s awesome, but it’s fricking hard. He goes, let’s make an AI tool out of it. It’s perfect for AI. And I was like, honestly, Drew, at first I was like, man, I’m so busy doing this other stuff. I don’t know about AI. Do I really have time to get involved in this? Why don’t you run with it for a little bit? Let’s see what happens. And then he came back to me about four months later and he showed me the first model running a brand by just simply copying and pasting a URL into what we call the story cycle Genie now. And it went. And it created their entire brand story in about five minutes based on how they’re currently showing up in the world. And then you can go in and you can refine and revise anything you want. And then it gives you your foundational brand story and you build everything off of that. Well, that’s when I was hooked. I’m like, okay, I get it. And that’s when I dove wholeheartedly in. AI tried to learn everything I could about it. And since then, we’ve been building and refining. We took 60 companies, including yours, through a beta test of the Genie and we are about to launch it here in the next two weeks. So by early to mid June, it is going to be live and everyone can take advantage of it. And that was my major pivot. I Wish I could say Drew, it was all my thinking, but it wasn’t. It was Sean Schroeder’s nudging said, you’ve got something here. We need to AI fight and take it to the world. 

Drew McLellan [00:10:34]: 

So when he first came to you, you know, I think you and I were talking before we hit the record button, you know, we are just coming out of and releasing the agency EDGE study 2025. And it was all about how clients feel about agency, about AI in general and about their agencies using AI and they’re hungry for agencies to do more of it. And you know, I think a lot of agencies are and were worried that clients would think they were cheating or they weren’t working hard enough or there wasn’t enough sweat on their brow or that clients were going to expect it cheaper or. And honestly none of that came out in the study. But when he came to you with this idea, what was your reaction? Like, were you worried that it was going to dumb down the. I mean this is your life’s work, you know, were you worried that it was going to dumb it down? Were you worried that it was going to change it in some way? Were you worried that it just wouldn’t work? Were you like. Or were you on the other side? Like, if it can do five months of work in five minutes, I’m in. Like, what was your initial sort of attitude about this? 

Park Howell [00:11:40]: 

You know, my, my first attitude was I’ve been in the business for 40 years. Do I really want to take on, expend the energy to try to understand AI or am I just going to tap out and say, thank you very much, I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing? And right off into the sunset, that was actually my first thought. Yeah, just being lazy, I suppose. Like, do I really want to learn something new? And then when Sean started showing me the initial outputs of this thing and how good it was that I was like, oh wow, okay, so you’ve got my attention now. And then I started working it more and more and it was like this machine learning was going on and it got better and better with every, every time I went through it. So that’s when I got super excited about it because it wasn’t dumbing it down. What we Learned through the 60 companies that have beta tested it, a lot of them were agencies, others were just companies, some solopreneurs, you know, across the board. It ends up doing three things for you and maybe you saw it in the output. I know we’re going to talk about it. Here in a little bit. Number one, it goes through. So you feed it your website and it says, here is how you are showing up in the world according to Park’s story cycle system. And it takes you through the 10 steps and adds a bunch of little sub steps in there, but it’s giving you all this intel. And it does, number one, it verifies, it validates what you’re already doing. Well, because you’re seeing it like, yep, that’s it. Oh, man, I nailed that. Okay, that’s great. I’m showing up the way I want to show up. Number two, it then reveals gaps and missed opportunities, because if you’re not seeing it in that report, then that means it’s not being communicated on your website or it’s not being communicated very well. And then the third thing, and this was the part that I really loved, is it provides you inspiring ways to think about your brand and new ways of talking about it. Sentences and words that were always kind of in the background. You never thought about it and they were revealed saying, yes, that is what our brand is about. Let’s start talking it about it that way. And then it gives you story prompts throughout. So it’s not just a static document for you to consider, but it’s going to start showing you where and how to tell what stories and when, all based on your brand story. 

Drew McLellan [00:14:07]: 

And it was interesting. And you’re right. Well, I thought it would be an interesting exercise for you and I to talk through kind of what you sent me when you put AMI through the story cycle genie, because the listeners are familiar with the brand, so they’ll be able to sort of follow along with us. But one of the things I thought about was it would be really cool to be able to take testimonials or client interviews or other things. So right now, if I understand the way it works is based on the way we present ourselves to the world. Right. 

Park Howell [00:14:42]: 

It’s showing you how you show up. You know that old saying, you’re in the bottle and you can’t read the label that everybody else is reading? Well, this shows you the label and then gives you the flexibility to iterate on that content immediately to get it dialed in exactly the way you want it. 

Drew McLellan [00:15:01]: 

Yeah. Is there a way to add more data from other sources like clients and things like that? 

Park Howell [00:15:11]: 

Yeah. So when you first come into the genie, it says, what’s your brand? You know the brand name. Put it up there, because it’s going to use it throughout everything. It’s going to ask you for your website. And then you can upload as much material as you want. PDFs, marketing plans, marketing pieces of client testimonials. You just feed it as much stuff as you want. We found it super powerful if you only feed it three things. You know, a website maybe, maybe a LinkedIn or a post you’ve done, or a marketing piece or something like that. But you can load as much stuff into it as you like, and you can continue to load into it as things change. So it’s always playing off of your information, feeding it back to you, and then you can tweak it as you go. 

Drew McLellan [00:15:54]: 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fascinating. Okay, so when you saw the first, when you saw the 60 reports, how is it different than the work that you took four or five months to do? What’s, what’s missing, if any? 

Park Howell [00:16:09]: 

It’s not. That’s the beautiful part of it. It’s not missing anything. It’s actually adding stuff to it that we wouldn’t do until down the road. We would get the customer close, say, okay, we got something now let’s start doing some creative now. Let’s, you know, some aha moments come in. We’re going to add that to it. We’re going to add this to it. It does all that for you in advance. And we’ve been spend about a year and a half doing the prompt engineering on it. So it gets it just right. And the funny thing is, Drew, I thought my goal was if we could get people 80% of the way there and then they use 100% of their energy to get at the final 20%, I knew we had a winner. Well, what our beta testers are telling us is it’s getting them 90% of the way. There’s. And then they’re just doing some tweaking on the end of it to really get what they want. So the interesting thing is, the surprise to me, Drew, is it actually creates an even more thorough document than we did when we were doing it in person. And I think exhaustion towards the end of it probably got the best of us and our clients for that matter. Now you don’t have that exhaustion. Just go, there it is. 

Drew McLellan [00:17:19]: 

Right. So we’ve talked a little bit about sort of this idea of human first AI. So when someone gets this report, what does the brand or what does the agency who’s developing this for a brand, what do they have to still add to this at this stage to sort of flesh it out? 

Park Howell [00:17:39]: 

Yeah. So let’s say it’s a brand new client and the Agency is still trying to learn as much about them as they can. 

Drew McLellan [00:17:48]: 

Yeah. 

Park Howell [00:17:48]: 

So they run this thing. It gets them like I say, 90% of the way there. They pencil in some assumptions here and there and then they go sit with, with a client said let’s read through the brand report as you are currently showing up in the world, tell us what’s working, what’s not. We believe this, we believe that. So you can get into some co creation with them and then you get that input, you go back in the genie, you give that genie the input, it fills it out the rest of the way for you. 

Drew McLellan [00:18:16]: 

Yeah, I guess too you can probably put different prompts in to test where you might want the business to go and sort of see what it says you would look like if you did go in that direction. 

Park Howell [00:18:27]: 

Yeah. And here’s, here’s the beautiful thing and there’s something that Sean really showed me is you don’t have to be a prompt engineer with this because he is and he’s done all the prompting. You talk to it just like you’re talking to me or yourself or whomever and you just say okay, I like this but now I want you to focus this story on such and such market that we are considering going into. You can even use it, we’ve got so many agents built into it. So you can at first not only create your foundational brand story, it will then create a marketing plan based off of that for you. It will create a content calendar and social media plan for you. It will create every conceivable piece of content you can imagine all based on your brand story of what it knows about you in that foundation. It will do competitive research so you can look to see what your competition is doing and how they’re showing up and or your clients competition saying these guys over here kicking our ass. How come? Well let’s go run their website through it and give you a competitive analysis of it. And the genie will say all right, here’s, it’ll give you a score throughout. Here’s how you’re showing up, here’s how they’re showing up and they’re going to tell you where the white spaces are, where the missed opportunities are, where they’re kicking your ass and where you can really dial up the heat on them. So it, it’s this built in agency intel as well as creative tool and it’s never meant to take the human out of it, it’s meant to take the minutia out of it. Yeah, I’d ask anybody watching this what would you rather do, be creating cool ads or doing the research, the planning in the management? You know, I like, I like to say the genie replaces the blank page and the blank stare with inspiration and information that you can operationalize immediately on behalf of yourself and your clients. 

Drew McLellan [00:20:25]: 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let’s take a break and then we’ll come back and we’ll sort of pull out some pieces of what you sent me that the AMI version of the genie gave out. And let’s just, we’ll just kind of fact check it a little bit because I will admit, when you sent it to me, I was like, holy buckets. This is pretty spot on of how I would hope people would see us and how we’ve heard people see us. And so I just want to pull it out because I think for the listeners, being able to sort of hear it in real time with a brand that they’re familiar with will be insightful. So let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back and do that. 

Park Howell [00:21:04]: 

Sounds good. 

Drew McLellan [00:21:05]: 

Hey everybody, thanks for listening today. Before I get back to the interview, I just want to remind you that we are always offering some really amazing workshops. And you can see the whole [email protected] on the navigation, head to how we help. Scroll down and you’ll see workshops and you can see the whole list there with descriptions of each workshop. They are all in Denver and we’ve got them throughout the year for agency owners, account Execs, agency leaders, CFOs. We have a little something for everybody. No matter what it is that you’re struggling with, people, new business, money, all of those things we’ve got covered. So check them out and come join us. All right, let’s get back to the show. All right, we are back with Park Howell and we are talking about don’t even know if I would call it a tool, a product. What do you call this magic thing that you’ve got going? Park? 

Park Howell [00:22:00]: 

Now the story, Michael. Janie. It’s really a platform. Yeah, it’s like brand narrative strategy platform. It helps you really fine tune your brand story narrative and then shows you how to tell it in the world. 

Drew McLellan [00:22:16]: 

All right, so looking at the assessment of AMI, just for everybody’s reference, the URLs that were fed into this were AMI’s core website and then a couple pages on the website, meet ami how am I Serves Agencies and the AMI Manifesto and then my LinkedIn URL. So it gathers all of that data. And one of the things I Thought was really fascinating was it defines a brand, a brand position statement. So it says, from what Jeannie knows about your brand offering and your audiences, it is revealed the following position statement. So I just want to read this out loud because I want everybody to hear. It says, for marketing agency owners who feel isolated in their leadership journey and struggle to build consistently profitable businesses, AMI provides a unique combination of peer community, proven systems, and practical guidance that transforms the overwhelming complexity of agency ownership into clear, actionable steps towards sustainable success and personal fulfillment. That’s pretty spot on. 

Park Howell [00:23:19]: 

Have you ever written it that way? 

Drew McLellan [00:23:21]: 

I was going to say, I said to you before the recording button, Jeanne talks a little more formally than we do, but. But the sentiment of that is spot on. Absolutely. Yeah. 

Park Howell [00:23:33]: 

And Drew, the one thing that we’re doing with this and Sean has been practicing on me is he has fed the genie my voice. 

Drew McLellan [00:23:41]: 

Yeah. 

Park Howell [00:23:41]: 

And so I will also get something that’s much more sort of clinical here, the foundation of it. And then I’ll say, yeah, you nailed everything I want to say. Now say it in my voice and it’ll go and it’ll write it in Park’s voice. It’ll be able to do that in your voice and anyone who’s using it, you’ll feed it some of your materials and they’ll say, okay, great, we are going to tell this from the brand voice as you’ve, you’ve directed us one. 

Drew McLellan [00:24:06]: 

Of the other things that it did, it identifies the audiences that are critical to the brand. So in the genie it calls it, the heroes in your brand story are your primary audiences. And so it identified for us small to mid sized agency owners, which is spot on. And then it was agency leadership teams, which is also spot on. And, and aspiring agency owners, which we also do work on. And then what it identified was the challenges, fears, frustrations and aspirations of each of those audiences. And so, you know, the challenges for the small to midsize agency owners are maintaining consistent profitability while managing fluctuating client demands, scaling the business beyond the founder’s personal capacity and relationships, balancing client work with business development and internal operations, creating systems that allow the agency to function without the owner’s constant involvement, and navigating industry changes and evolving client expectations. I don’t think anybody listening would say, no, I don’t have that challenge. I mean, I again, I think it’s pretty spot on. So where does that data come from? Does that come from the content you uploaded or does it go out and once it identifies the audience, does it go out and do research on that audience beyond. Beyond what would be on, for example, the AMI website. 

Park Howell [00:25:27]: 

Yes. So it reviews your information first and then it goes and looks at the industry. Who are you competing with, you know, for maybe this audience’s attention? How are they talking about it? And then finally, what do we know about this audience and what are their, what we call their emotional drivers? Because you’re going to use challenges, fears, frustrations and aspirations for all of your marketing. Every single one of those points can become a landing page, can become an ad. It can become a, you know, a point that you are going to be talking to them. So it does it while the genie is a platform that is completely contained inside this platform. Like, you know, remember these, these guys built mira, they sold it, they have now since built a new content management platform that nobody, no AI can hack. Your story can get in to see it. They can only see what you are sharing with the world out there. But it will go through and look at it. It’ll build the foundation of your narrative around it. And then it’s going to go out and look at your different markets and your competitors and come back and share with you how it believes that you should be, how you are currently talking and giving you ideas on other ways to talk about it. 

Drew McLellan [00:26:41]: 

Yeah, and so one of the foundations you mentioned before, which I know has been something you’ve been teaching for many, many years, is the and but therefore statements. And so talk a little bit about that. And then I want to read the one that the Jeanne served up for ami. 

Park Howell [00:26:56]: 

Yeah, well, the ant. But therefore, those three most powerful words of setup, problem, resolution are the core to me, my belief in all branding and marketing. It’s something I just Learned about from Dr. Andy Olson, Harvard evolutionary biologist, USC Film School grad, taught it to me back in 2013. And when I saw it through from a branding marketing standpoint, I’m like, oh my God, is this like the holy grail algorithm for here’s the simplest way to make a complex message land. And so we use the ABT in everything, in strategy and content. And you’ll see like we’ve got case studies where I use the ABT just to show a real ROI to it. Crimble, which is a SAS provider out of Denver, global SaaS provider for heavy equipment, agricultural industries and so forth. They did a campaign, a Facebook campaign in five different countries in March of 2022. And then I took that campaign and reframed all their messages and all those different languages using and but there for a set of Problem resolution. And we did an A B test from March 22 to March or to April of 22, and they had a 400% increase in engagement. And it’s not because the copy was stellar. It was just that it was in this framework on how the brain wants to make meaning out of a brand or meaning out of the madness of being alive. So when we go through and identify your audiences and what are their challenges, fears, frustrations, and aspirations, we then tell the genie. All right. Wright drew in this case, a foundational ABT story narrative statement for each of their audiences that you can then build on. And then how you use them is when you start creating landing pages and you start creating ads and so forth. The genie is taught to first think and strategize an ABT form and present the copy to you in that way. Because we have just found that people react to it way. They converts, it connects. So that is the background on the abt. 

Drew McLellan [00:29:11]: 

All right, so. So let’s test out the abt. So this is the one for agency owners. It says so remember, the ABT stands for and, but therefore. So abt. As an agency owner, you want to build a profitable, sustainable business and create a legacy you can be proud of. But you feel isolated and overwhelmed because you lack peers to share challenges with and proven systems to implement. Therefore, you can now confidently grow your agency with clarity and purpose, backed by AMI’s commitment to providing community, proven best practices and practical tools that have helped thousands of agencies thrive. 

Park Howell [00:29:51]: 

How’s that work for you? 

Drew McLellan [00:29:52]: 

Yeah, pretty spot on. Again, it is what we talk about every day, right? 

Park Howell [00:29:57]: 

Yeah, yeah. And so let’s. For your audiences, let’s just break the ABT down really quick so they can see the algorithm. They understand the magic to cast the spell. So with an abt, you always start from your audience’s perspective. What’s in it for them? So it’s written about them. As an agency owner, you. So we. Now you’re talking directly to me, right, to that agency owner. And now what do they want and why is it important to them? You want to build a profitable, sustainable business. That’s what you want. And why is that important? Create a legacy you can be proud of. All right, now you insert the problem. So we’ve got this statement of agreement, just like you’re doing right there. You’re nodding. Yes, that’s what I want. Now you insert the problem, but you feel isolated, followed by an emotion and overwhelmed. Because, using the conjunction of because, that plays to our pattern seeking, problem solving, decision making. Limbic buying brain because you lack peers to share challenges with a proven system and proven systems to implement. Yeah, that’s exactly what’s going on here. Solution. Therefore, when you begin with them, you see how it doesn’t introduce AMI immediately, not the brand. The brand doesn’t come to the second clause in the therefore because you’re keeping it focused on them. Therefore, you can now, confidently, another emotion, grow your agency with clarity and purpose, backed by AMI’s commitment to providing community, proven best practices and practical tools that have helped thousands of agencies thrive. So there’s an absolute algorithm to all of that. We taught the genie, which is the ultimate word processor, is all AI is, is an ultimate word processor to be able to deliver that to you. So you have the right way to talk about it every single time. And then, of course, you can go in there and tweak it as much as you like. 

Drew McLellan [00:31:52]: 

Right, right. So. So then it boils down that brand position to the unique value proposition. So again, you know, for all of you, this is what you’re doing with clients every day. It’s one sentence that says, why us rather than anybody else? So for ami, it says, building better agencies through community, knowledge and proven systems. So again, just kind of boils it down. No fancy, no fluff words in that. Just right, Straightforward, but get clear and concise and compelling. Again, wrapping up the value proposition for ami. 

Park Howell [00:32:28]: 

And again, you can go in there, drew, and tweak that as much as you like. And sometimes I’ll do that working with brands. I’ll tell you and say, I like it, but it feels a little sterile, or I think this one word is overused a little bit. Give me three options in replace of that word or whatever, and I’ll do it. And it will also provide you its thinking of why it gave you what you got. 

Drew McLellan [00:32:49]: 

Yeah. And then one of the more interesting parts was the section where it’s talking about creating authentic brand stories that captivate your audience. And it says, all right, so you call it the O Exercise organization, how your brand operates, offering what customers experience when working with your brand and outcomes, the outcomes they receive from your offerings. And so you know, when it says how your brand operates, it was interesting. I expected it to say, you teach these workshops and do that, but it was. It was much more nuanced than that. So it identifies three things. One, that were experienced over 30 years of agency experience, blah, blah, blah. But the authentic AMI embodies straightforward, honest communication without sugarcoating challenges or promising unrealistic results. The team speaks from Actual experience rather than theory. Creating genuine connections with agency owners through shared understanding of the industry’s unique challenges. That’s pretty nuanced. 

Park Howell [00:33:47]: 

Yeah. And again, it’s pulling a lot of that from what you’re already doing out there. 

Drew McLellan [00:33:51]: 

Yeah. And then it talks about the next part of how the brand operates is supportive. AMI creates an environment where agency owners feel safe to be vulnerable about their business challenges. Foster genuine connections between members and provide consistent encouragement through both successes and setbacks. Recognizing that agency ownership can be an emotional rollercoaster. Again, pretty nuanced. It’s not just you teach workshops and you hold peer groups, but here’s what happens inside those. 

Park Howell [00:34:20]: 

And start speaking in your voice. And what we do is we call this the ooh exercise. Ooo. For organization. Offering an outcome and having some fun with it. Because it’s like, ooh, you do that, but you use these nine one word descriptors as story prompts. Because then the next thing I would challenge you, Drew, if you were my client. I said, okay, it says, where you’re experienced. Let’s show people how your experience shows up. By telling an anecdotal story about someone you’ve helped given your experience. 

Drew McLellan [00:34:52]: 

Right. 

Park Howell [00:34:53]: 

And then that way you’re not running around saying, we’re so experienced, we’re great, pounding on your chest because nobody cares. You’re showing them the impact of being of that experience. And so people take this and they start building a story library which becomes unbelievable content. They feed that back into the genie, and then the genie pulls out when you’re creating content down the road. But this is where the human element really comes in. Because a genie can’t write those stories for you. You have to go back and talk about the actual engagement and interactions and the outcomes that you’ve created for people and show it to them in action. 

Drew McLellan [00:35:28]: 

Yeah. And so one of the other takeaways in the report is the emotional promise. So talk about that. So in the report, sort of the overview says, we arrive at a singular, overarching emotional promise that your brand delivers to everyone who works with you. And in your business, your promise is your true north, or, sorry, your north star. To evoke a consistent emotion communicated through your existing brand story. It’s important because your customers buy with their hearts and justify their purchases. So how does the genie figure that out? 

Park Howell [00:36:00]: 

Well, through massive amounts of story prompting or engineer prompting on our end. But it would go in and then we ask it to assess it through a behavioral agent to be able to come back and say, okay, what does he truly stand for from everything that they’ve told us. In your case, it’s confidence. 

Drew McLellan [00:36:18]: 

Yeah. 

Park Howell [00:36:19]: 

And so what I then. And we would do this with a client too, but we would have to sit there and go, oh, I think, I think it’s this, I think it’s that, whatever. But if it’s confidence, then it’s like, okay, how do everybody that comes in contact with AMI feel confident that they’re spending the right time, they’re spending the right investment, they’re doing the right things? How do you in your organization and programs exude confidence? And it’s everything if you’re from an agency standpoint, number one, how when people come in to work with us, how are they confident that they’ve made the right choice for the right career, for the right agency? How are our prospects confident we’re the right agency. And so it plays all the way through everybody that you connect with. In Sean Schroeder’s case with Blue river, the agency we did, we arrived at their emotional promise of flow and that you are going to experience this flow in everything you do, whether you’re a colleague or a customer or a part of the communities we serve through what we do and how easily we make your content work for you. So we’re always looking for that singular one word that you can really back up with your emotional promise. 

Drew McLellan [00:37:32]: 

Well, and as we know as agency folks, everybody buys with emotion, but they need to justify it with something that is, that is more tangible. So the very next part of the report is the physical gift, or basically as the definition is the measurable outcome that you’re offering provides. So this connects the logic and the reason driven brain that justifies that emotional purchase. And anybody listening, you’ve had this conversation with your client a million times. It’s people buy a sports car not because of how many miles per gallon it gets. They want to know that so they can justify the purchase, but they buy it because it’s a sexy car. Right. And so the report also then says that there is this physical gift or this very practical, measurable outcome that the brand delivers. And then it goes on to explain that. And so for ami, it says that it’s clarity. AMI cuts through the confusion and complexity of agency ownership to provide clear direction and, and actionable steps. And then it goes on about how it’s easy to get overwhelmed and am I help sort of manage that, that sense of overwhelming with structured frameworks, peer insights, expert guidance, blah, blah, blah. But again, it now marries. And if I have clarity and I know what to do then of course I’m going to have confidence. Right? I mean, you can sort of see that one, two, punch in that. 

Park Howell [00:38:49]: 

And I have confidence in you that you’re going to provide me the clarity I need. So it is that virtuous cycle, and. 

Drew McLellan [00:38:57]: 

Then it goes on to give brand personality archetypes, which we won’t spend a lot of time on. But again, it was really fascinating to sort of read through all of this, and in your email where you sent me the report, you sort of told me a little bit about how it came to be. But I will say I was surprised. I expected it to be more factual. You know, our core, our first, very first core belief is we lead with love. So we’re not factually. I mean, we are very factually based on how we teach and what we teach, but it’s not how we want to show up. I want to show up alongside our clients, caring about them, caring about their success, having them feel like they’re not alone. That’s all that’s very important to us. And I was surprised, candidly, that that comes through in all of this. You know, they use words like caregiver and protective nature and, you know, cheerleader and support. And so it certainly identifies the fact that we teach knowledge. The primary archetype is the sage, but it also talks about being a guide and a mentor that is helping people navigate rather than just give them facts. And so it was impressive, the nuance of all of this. 

Park Howell [00:40:03]: 

I thought I liked the third one, the secondary archetype of the every man or every woman. And. And I don’t know you that well, but I’ve had a chance to be on your show twice now. We’ve had a chance to communicate. And I see how you communicate online and LinkedIn and how people react to you, the Susan Bears of the world, who I have great admiration for, and you are very much. What you see is what you get. There’s no bs. You’re just, You’re. You’re that. So I was really happy to see that. It picked that up. 

Drew McLellan [00:40:33]: 

Me too. 

Park Howell [00:40:33]: 

From simply your written content. 

Drew McLellan [00:40:35]: 

Yeah, yeah. So at the end of the day, how do you. I know you said you’re getting ready to go to market. How do you envision agencies? How do you envision listeners using? And whether it’s your tool or another tool, tools like this, because this is just showing us it’s peeling back the layer of what AI can do for us. And, you know, to your point, this is data crunching, this is trend mapping. This is pattern mapping. This is putting language around those trends and patterns that we as humans can react to and refine. So how do you, as you guys were building this out, I know it was a great experiment, but now you’ve obviously invested enough time and money in it that you have intention that people will use it. So how do you envision agencies using this? 

Park Howell [00:41:25]: 

Yeah, well, number one, we will have an agency partner plan that they’ll be able to come in and get a reduced rate on it, and then they can go and bill whatever they want for their brand development. Even in my belief is even if they cut their costs, I mean, cut what they’re charging by a third, just to become even more accessible to more clients, that their margins are going to go through the roof because they can do this so fast. That’s the thing. And again, I got tired of doing my own system because it took too long and was too exhausting. And then when I saw that I could do this in under an hour, like your report drew, without any communication with you, I just took that stuff, ran it through there, and within 10 minutes it gave me that entire report. And I spent more time formatting it for you so it looked good so you could read it. But our genie will do all that now because this went out a couple months ago. So I see it as an immense time frustration and energy saver so that you can do what you want as an agency and really bring that creative, healing, human element to it. And you get to spend 100% of your energy on that last little 10% of what the genie’s not giving you to make it uniquely your own. Uniquely, you know, your, your clients own. That’s the beauty of it. That’s what really gets me excited about it. It kind of has democratized branding. Not just the rich people can do it anymore. Everybody can do it. Not just the people that have a whole lot of time and energy can do it. No, anybody can do it. And you can do it simply by filling in some, some, you know, URLs. And people have asked me, said, well, how is this any different than story brand? And I’d imagine a lot of your agencies are story branders. And my point to that is story brand is a bit of a misnomer. It’s a great marketing tool. It helps bring it’s, I call it kind of brand Botox. It brings fluff and puff to a landing page so that it converts better to create revenue, which is awesome. Ours takes a very deep dive into the actual emotional heart. The Morals, the values, the mission, the vision of your brand, and then brings forth how to communicate that from your point of position in the world. So I see this as a much deeper dive for agencies to get a much deeper connection with their agent, with our clients, and be able to operationalize the content immediately. Because you know as well as I do, Drew, that a lot of clients are like, I don’t know if I want to invest in branding. I can’t really attach an ROI. Give me a campaign, a LinkedIn campaign that actually engages. Well, now you can do that because you are speaking directly from the heart of the brand and you’re using our frameworks that we know will make that connection happen and increase the ROIs. You can report back. 

Drew McLellan [00:44:20]: 

You know, our agency did a ton of brand work back in the day and we often ran into the problem that, to your point, it’s so labor intensive that we would burn through the client’s budget getting to the brand. And then they didn’t have any money for three months, six months, nine months, a year to actually launch the brand and start using the brand in their marketing. Because they had, they had sort of burned the wad and it wasn’t us gouging them. It just took that much time. So one of the things I was thinking about as I was looking through this and sort of thinking through my sort of brand agency thing is I would have loved to be able to say, look, give me X number of dollars and we will define the brand and then let’s use the rest of the money to put the brand to work. Because if I have, if I have the right brand language and all of the other things that come in this report now, my marketing is going to be spot on. I know exactly who I’m talking to. I know what to say to them. I have language that resonates. I have proof points and case studies that demonstrate that I’m not just blowing smoke up their skirt. And when I can do that for a client. And now brand becomes tied to ROI because I actually have the money to do something with the brand to deliver the leads, the trials, the sales, the. All of that. So that to me is the power of this, is that it takes the best of brand, but it allows us to use it faster and better to benefit clients in a more measurable way. Which we know is what all clients need right now is they need to be able to prove to their higher ups that they’re spending their marketing dollars wisely. It’s hard, you know, I’m sure for your Clients too. It’s like it took five months and we ended up with what, like I. 

Park Howell [00:46:13]: 

Heard that all the time. 

Drew McLellan [00:46:14]: 

Right? It’s right, it’s good. But now what do I do with it? As opposed to I spent two or three weeks fine tuning the brand and now I’m ready to go to market. 

Park Howell [00:46:26]: 

Yeah, yeah. Well, think about it as a pitch tool. Okay, so say I’m going to come in and I’m pitching you for your business and I just run AMI through it and I show up. I’m really looking forward to our meeting tomorrow. Here are some insights on your brand. Drew, take a look at it so we could discuss it. Would you not be impressed when I walked in the door and say, holy cow, what is, where did you get this? I explain how I got it a little bit, say it’s not perfect. We still need to refine a little bit with you. But hey, let’s look at your number one audience and let’s if you agree that that number one audience, okay, small business, mid size agencies, and let’s look at that fear, making decisions that could jeopardize the financial system. Let’s do a LinkedIn just focused on that. I’m going to tell the genie to write it on that fear and then give me a call to action. Let’s plug it in. Let’s see what kind of engagement you get versus your old way of doing it. You walk out, no skin off your teeth. You just provided this value and they’re going to go, holy cow, how’d you do that? What’s the magic? Where do we go from here? 

Drew McLellan [00:47:30]: 

Yeah, yeah, no brainer. Yeah, it’s pretty potent. So this has been great. Conversation and report really blew me away in terms of it really was about the emotional nuance that I didn’t expect because I too think of AI as it’s a data crunching tool. It’s again, patterns, trends, data. And this was very nuanced, which I guess makes me happy that our content and the things that we put out in the world demonstrate that nuance. So that’s, as you said, is validating that we’re showing up the way we want to show up. If folks are interested in this tool or want to talk to you even about the development of the tool or want to explore it, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you and schedule time to have a conversation or test drive the tool or however that may be. 

Park Howell [00:48:20]: 

Hey, the best way to go is go through my website, just hit the contact form, put your Information in [email protected] and then you’ll see up upper right hand corner, just click contact, shoot me. And that’ll give me your email and everything. We’ll set up a time to chat. If you’d like to learn more about the Story Cycle Genie itself, go to businessstory.com storycycle-genie so all one word, story cycle dash genie. And then you’ll see we’re in the launch phase when, by the time this show comes out, I’m not sure when that is exactly, we may well be launched. 

Drew McLellan [00:48:53]: 

I think it will be. Yep, yep. 

Park Howell [00:48:55]: 

Yeah. So you could go then to go to Story Cycle, Story Cycle Genie. Gosh, I can’t even get that URL out of my head. StoryCycle Genie AI is where you are going to find the actual genie, where you can start running with it immediately. We’re also going to give a freebie with that that you can go in, put in your URL and even some of your competitors URLs and for free. The genie is going to show you and grade you how you stack up against your competition and where the, you know, where your opportunities are and what you might be thinking about in refining your brand story. So that’s going to be the freebie to get in, start using it and you can see the power of the genie that way. 

Drew McLellan [00:49:37]: 

Yeah. So all of those URLs that part just gave you will have in the show notes for sure, in case you’re driving or on the treadmill. But go check it out. I mean, again, I think you’re going to be fascinated just with the free report. I think you’re going to be fascinated at what you learn and how accurate it is. Or maybe you’re not portraying yourself the way you want to. And this is a great test to see how you show up to the world. 

Park Howell [00:50:01]: 

Hey, last question for you, Drew. I sprung this on you. Yeah. I just ran it and I sent it to you and you and I had not chatted for a few years. Were you taken aback? Were you like, how dare you run mice through this? Or were you like, ah, what’s this? Because I’ve heard both sides. 

Drew McLellan [00:50:18]: 

No, no, no, no, no. I was fascinated by it and immediately my brain goes to, oh, our people could use this. Right. So part of it was I was fascinated about because, you know, everybody thinks anything about themselves is fascinating. So I was fascinated about just sort of reading how it captured the AMI brand. And as a brand guy, I was fascinated by it. As you know, I very quickly shot you A note back and said, need to get you back on the show. And took us a little while to make that happen because I knew this was a topic that we needed to have on the show. I think whether it’s this tool or not, the point for me of this show is there are new, interesting ways for us to do our work that does not in any way diminish our value, but actually increases our value because we can do more with it. So the agency edge study, that’s just coming out, one of the things clients said to us was, I think one of the things every agency is worried about is that clients want agencies to use AI so they’re cheaper. And when they list all the things they want agencies to use AI for, I want to say 20, maybe 20th on the list was to save me money. They have much bigger goals and visions of that. What they want is faster, better, not faster, cheaper. And this is a tool that demonstrates that AI, whether it’s this tool or another tool, but AI can be a companion to agencies to be faster, better. And when we’re faster, better, I mean, so much I think about Jay Baer’s book about response time and the currency of time. So much of what we do now and actually a lot of what we hear from clients when we do client satisfaction surveys is, I love my agency, but God, they take forever to do stuff. So if we can use tools like this to deliver our work better and faster, that’s more profit to us. That’s more opportunity for us. That’s not. That’s not AI taking away from us. That’s AI helping us level up to be more of what the clients hope we could be. And clearly we can do it. I mean, you’ve proven it. 

Park Howell [00:52:28]: 

Well, that’s our little genie. So help untap your brand genius out of the bottle with the story cycle genie. How else could I end it? 

Drew McLellan [00:52:37]: 

That’s right. I love it. Park. This has been great. It was great to reconnect and I’m excited for you. This is a whole new chapter for you. You thought you were going to slow down, and I think you’re going to be busier than ever. 

Park Howell [00:52:48]: 

I told my 100 year old mother on her birthday on April 5, she goes, what are you up to? I said, well, I just started a tech company. She’s like, what the hell? Yeah, why not? We’re having fun. 

Drew McLellan [00:52:59]: 

Keeps us young. I love it. So thanks for being with us. 

Park Howell [00:53:01]: 

Yep. All right. Thank you, Drew. 

Drew McLellan [00:53:03]: 

You bet. All right, guys, so head over to the URL, play with the free tool. And again, whether this is the tool for you, a lot of you are lots of different kinds of agencies, so this may not be something that makes sense for you for your clients. It probably makes sense for you for your agency though, if nothing else, but play with the tool and let it open your mind to what AI can bring to the party for you, your agency and your clients. That for me is the underscore of this episode is yes, this is an amazing tool and yes, many of you are going to find value in it. But even if you don’t, it doesn’t mean there’s not something else out there that would bring something magical to what you offer clients and get you to that faster, better. So be open minded, start playing around and experience what the future is bringing. Because this is coming at us like a freight train and we can either jump on the train or we can get run over by the train. I think those are our two choices. So like park, I want you to jump on the train. All right. Before I let you go, I want to of course say thank you to our friends at White Label iq. As you know, they are the presenting sponsor of the podcast and we are super grateful to them. They are a White Label design dev and PPC shop and you can learn more about [email protected] AMI they help many, many agencies all over the world deliver better quality work at a better price for their clients. So check them out and by all means, please say thank you to them if you’re enjoying the show and you value their sponsorship as much as we do. Okay, I’ll be back next week with another guest. I’m hoping you’re coming back too.