#113 - The Most Important (and Hardest) Part of Storytelling: Finding the Stories to Begin With
With John Azoni
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SHOW NOTES
In this solo episode, John tackles a problem he thinks is way more foundational than filming or editing: casting. Before you can tell a great story, you need someone willing to raise their hand and tell it — and John argues that's the part most higher ed teams are actually failing at.
Drawing on conversations with clients and his own experience running Unveild's story-sourcing process, John breaks down why the standard approach — a mass email asking people to "tell your story" — usually falls flat, and walks through what he's currently experimenting with instead: smaller asks, better timing, and specific prompts that help people recognize they actually have something to say.
Key Takeaways:
The hardest part of great storytelling usually isn't the production — it's finding people with real stories who are willing to participate in the first place.
Mass emails asking people to "tell your story" tend to underperform because the ask is too vague, too impersonal, and easy to ignore.
Many students and alumni self-disqualify because they assume their experience isn't dramatic enough — but the most compelling stories often live in small, specific, unpolished moments rather than big "hero" outcomes.
Faculty and staff referrals are valuable, but without training on what makes a story compelling, they tend to surface the same safe, polished profiles over and over.
Lowering the barrier for a first ask — a 30-second voice memo, a one-sentence response — works better than pitching someone straight into a full production, and lets you screen for communication skill and enthusiasm along the way.
Specific prompts ("tell us about a time a professor changed how you think") help people self-identify far more effectively than open-ended asks like "share your story."
Timing matters: asking during emotionally heightened moments — graduation, capstones, final critiques, the end of a clinical rotation — captures better material than following up weeks later.
Story sourcing needs to become an ongoing campus habit rather than a scramble that starts only when a campaign kicks off.
Resources Mentioned:
NPR's The Moth – referenced for its low-friction voicemail-style story submission format
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard and Monica Padman – specifically the "Armchair Anonymous" segment, cited as an example of how specific prompts generate better story submissions
Glengarry Glen Ross – referenced in passing for the "always be closing" line, which John riffs on as "always be casting"
Connect With John:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni
Email: john@unveild.tv
Website: https://unveild.tv
Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter
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(Done with AI so only about 95% accurate)
00;00;00;10 - 00;00;24;04
John Azoni
We talk a lot on this podcast about what good storytelling and good content creation looks like, you know, about taking risks and doing things that are different and finding things that are remarkable to point the camera at and having a good hook and having some conflict and student as the hero of the story and all this stuff. And a lot of times when you know, when we seek out like how to tell a good story, we're assuming we have a story to begin with.
00;00;24;12 - 00;00;46;20
John Azoni
But what if the hardest part of that isn't the filming? It's not the editing. It's not how you tell the story. What if the hardest part is getting the right people to raise their hand in the first place? Because that's the most important part of the storytelling process is starting with a good story. And I know that a lot of schools are running into this too.
00;00;46;20 - 00;01;05;05
John Azoni
I've talked to, you know, many of you who we've worked with directly and who have tried to find stories, students and alumni whose stories they want to tell. Find that it's like pulling teeth. It's hard to get people to raise their hand and say, yes, put me in a video, put me in a, you know, print article, things like that.
00;01;05;05 - 00;01;29;27
John Azoni
It's easy to find people who maybe had a good experience and who, you know, the professors or department heads can point to and say, yeah, this is a good person. She has a great personality and has a cool internship, you know? Okay, well, that's a start. But that doesn't necessarily mean there's a whole emotional ecosystem around that internship and why it matters and all the things that make, you know, good storytelling.
00;01;29;27 - 00;02;00;16
John Azoni
Good. So we're talking today in this episode about casting, finding the students, finding the alumni, finding the people with stories that are actually worth telling and getting them to say yes. Because if you can't do that part, the rest of the machine doesn't matter that much. I'll give you an example. You know, earlier in my career, I used to direct a lot of corporate videos, and most of corporate video making is pretty boring because most of you know, most businesses, they're on computers, they're in meetings.
00;02;00;29 - 00;02;25;27
John Azoni
I don't care if you're a law firm, if you're a tech firm, you know, whatever else, Web design, graphic design, it's just a lot of times it's just people on computers and on the phone and in meetings and maybe like getting coffee or something. And so a lot of times that's really hard to dress up, you know? How many different ways can you make that environment look really interesting and make people want to watch that whole video?
00;02;26;07 - 00;02;49;26
John Azoni
So I was found that hard as a director trying to make things that weren't interesting, look interesting, and then contrast that with this one experience I had. We at this job I was working at, I was directing a video shoot for a jeweler. She makes like jewelry out of like live flowers. And she brought a professional model because we were filming a course, like an online course that she was going to sell to her big Instagram audience.
00;02;50;13 - 00;03;13;23
John Azoni
So we're done. She made all stuff. She had a professional model come in, and as soon as we started filming the model, it was like the model just like understood the assignment and just took off and started modeling. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm getting the best footage. And this is easy, you know? And I didn't have to tell her every direction to turn and put your hand here and tilt your head to this side or whatever, because I don't always know what to tell you to do.
00;03;14;04 - 00;03;46;09
John Azoni
But it was like this light bulb moment of like, Oh, this is what it's like to work with things that are actually interesting to begin with. It makes my job as a director, or maybe your job as a marketing director, enrollment marketer, or whatever, the person that gets to shape that. You know, from a macro perspective and really make it sing makes something interesting even more interesting then your job isn't making something that's not interesting.
00;03;46;10 - 00;04;07;27
John Azoni
Trying to fake it into being interesting, which is a lot harder. So it was a moment for me of directing becomes easier, more fun, and the final product, because the footage was really awesome. The final product is so much better when you're starting with something good to begin with. You can have the best production process in the world.
00;04;07;28 - 00;04;39;12
John Azoni
You can have great editors, you can have nice cameras, lights, all this stuff. But if you don't have people with real stories, you've got this like content engine with nothing to run on. And so I've been thinking about this a lot because that unveiled one of the things we talk about is what I call plug and play casting system in which we do have, you know, but I have some insecurities about it because while we can help you build the system, like we have a system for people to click a link and they can submit a video of themselves and we have the email templates that come before that to even get people to click
00;04;39;12 - 00;05;02;00
John Azoni
the link. And then we have a whole backend system that can organize them. And we, you know, we guide the client through the process and we make recommendations and stuff. So we've got the container to make casting happen. But what we don't have is the upstream solution to how do you get people to raise their hand and say, I have a story to tell because the reality is they're not going to do that.
00;05;02;00 - 00;05;23;02
John Azoni
You have to go find them. Not only, you know, finding people that have remarkable things to say, but are willing to participate in the marketing. So that's a problem I'm trying to solve and think a lot about it. I've been talking to some of our clients and, you know, the general pattern that I'm hearing is that finding people is like pulling teeth, you know?
00;05;23;02 - 00;05;41;16
John Azoni
So that's a problem for me to solve because, you know, if you're going to hire unveiled to do videos and we're here saying we're here to make this easy, but there's a part of the process that we're not involved in as much, you know, because our job typically starts once people start submitting stuff, you know, submitting themselves to participate in this.
00;05;41;27 - 00;06;04;07
John Azoni
You know, if that part that's on the client's plate is not easy, then that's attached to the whole process of making videos. And so think about how to solve that. And in this episode, I want to talk through a few just a few things. I'm experimenting with some thoughts, I'm having some things and some considerations that make this process difficult that we need to consider and talk about some possible solutions.
00;06;04;15 - 00;06;25;01
John Azoni
And I'd also love to hear from you. You know, if you've had a great experience, you know, with finding great stories and getting a constant flow, like a culture of finding stories to, you know, happen at your institution, I would love to hear about how you've done that. From the outside, it seems like finding stories should be easy because you're on a campus full of them.
00;06;25;01 - 00;06;43;19
John Azoni
We hear that all the time. You can throw a rock and you can hit someone with a great story. But being surrounded by stories and actually like surfacing them are two very different things. That's where the friction shows up. A school will often say, you know, we need a bunch of, you know, stories. Teller We just do this storytelling initiative, and that all sounds great.
00;06;43;19 - 00;07;03;26
John Azoni
But then the real work starts is like, okay, well, it's one thing. Get a video company and then it's like, okay, well who do we feature? Who's available, who's compelling, who's actually good on camera? Who's going to actually show up and follow through on the shoot or whatever? So suddenly, as we've experienced the timeline for this series, this project starts slipping.
00;07;03;26 - 00;07;33;01
John Azoni
And as we realize casting is taking a lot longer. And so here's the first issue I think that people run into when they go looking for stories is that it's not easy to just send out a mass email and say, Hey, submit your stories and then you're going to get a flood of stories. It just doesn't really happen like that because I think students and alumni hear this phrase like tell your story or whatever, and then a lot of them immediately disqualify themselves because in their mind that the story has to be huge.
00;07;33;01 - 00;07;58;21
John Azoni
It has to be dramatic, impressive, emotional. It has to sound like something that belongs in a glossy, you know, campaign marketing piece. You know, we'll think about this episode as my world of video. I'm just going to talk about it from that. But, you know, brought in that to a print article, a blog article, an email newsletter or whatever else, because I think the problem still remains is like, where do you find these interesting people?
00;07;58;21 - 00;08;20;04
John Azoni
And it's hard for them to raise their hand because they often don't think that they have anything interesting to say. But that's usually the wrong filter. Some of the best stories come from these small moments, like a student who maybe almost transferred but then didn't like almost left or like a, you know, a data science student who was bad at math.
00;08;20;27 - 00;08;39;28
John Azoni
You know, I've talked to people like that where it's like an oxymoron to be bad at math in data science field. But they're there and they have succeeded. I mean, what a great story for other people who struggle with math like me to feel like, oh, I can actually participate in a really mathy field that interests me. A lot of times it's not these big hero stories.
00;08;39;28 - 00;09;06;04
John Azoni
It's just maybe these more subtle moments in these subtle tensions that happened before the Big Bang sort of outcome. And a lot of people never volunteer those stories because they don't realize those moments actually count to. They think what you want is this polished. Like, I loved my school, I had great professors. Here's all the reasons why. Small class sizes, world class, whatever, faculty, I got a good job and all that stuff is fine.
00;09;06;05 - 00;09;33;23
John Azoni
Like those are good outcomes. Those are the outcomes you expect when you go to college or when you send your child to college. But that's the punchline. Where's the part before that? Where's the uncertainty, the doubt, the little space specific details that make something feel really human and like unpolished, that's what people connect with. And I think about it like standup comedy, because what makes a good joke work, the punch line is important.
00;09;33;26 - 00;09;55;02
John Azoni
You need that for sure. So my favorite comedians are great storytellers because they go on this whole journey of like setup and it's like the pacing and it's this odd detail that makes you like, be like, Oh, I do that too. It's like this oddly specific thing that you connect with that is hilarious because you've never heard someone else identify that.
00;09;55;02 - 00;10;16;28
John Azoni
And then it's like the turn, the surprise, you know, this punch line that came out of somewhere that you didn't expect. You know, it's all that stuff before the punchline that matters. And so we need to do a better job of helping students and alumni and, you know, see that in themselves. And then, you know, faculty, department heads, deans, all this stuff, you know, have a radar for that kind of stuff as well.
00;10;17;08 - 00;10;43;25
John Azoni
The second issue is motivation. Why would someone do this? I mean, really, like why would a student stop what they're doing, fill out a form, talk to a marketing person, get on camera or do an interview for a text article, carve out time in their schedule, probably feel really nervous and self-conscious, you know, worry about saying the wrong thing, worry about, you know, it's some PR disaster, you know, that they cause, you know, why would they do that?
00;10;43;25 - 00;11;13;13
John Azoni
Sometimes there's a gift card involved, Sometimes there's, you know, some little incentive, a sweatshirt or a t shirt or whatever. Usually free lunch. Sometimes we've experienced people just are excited to be featured and that's great. But a lot of time, there's still not enough there. As a general rule, like as a system that works predictably every time to overcome that negative inertia that those decision blockers that keep people from saying like, yeah, let me step forward and expose myself to all this discomfort.
00;11;13;22 - 00;11;30;25
John Azoni
The default response for most people is this sounds like work. Someone else will probably do it. Maybe I'll come back to this later. Later never comes. That's just human behavior. I have like three unanswered texts right now that I have to respond to. After I finished recording this because I'm just like, I've see them pop up while I'm working.
00;11;30;25 - 00;11;54;23
John Azoni
I'm like, I'll get to that later. It's just the people thing. It's a thing. And I think marketers sometimes assume that being featured is automatically exciting, and for some people it is. But for a lot of people it feels like efforts and maybe the video that would be useful to them in getting a job is not the kind of video that the marketing team is going to make, because the marketing team is about promoting the school.
00;11;54;23 - 00;12;14;23
John Azoni
They're not about promoting the student necessarily for the student's own, you know, singular purpose. And, you know, maybe that needs to change. But, you know, the reason we go out and they find these stories is because we want other people to connect with this student and we want it to reflect positively on the school. We want other people to come to the school.
00;12;15;00 - 00;12;35;23
John Azoni
And for a lot of people just, you know, the excitement, the what's in it for me is just not big enough to overcome that effort and that discomfort. Third problem is platform. It's email. I know, you know, everybody has to use it. I get it. Email is the default way to reach people because there are lots of automation.
00;12;36;01 - 00;12;53;19
John Azoni
It's probably built into your CRM to mass email people and you probably put some little merge tags in there that make it feel personal and stuff. And that's kind of like low friction on your end. On the marketing teams. But mass email is rough. A message goes out to, you know, a student list that says, Hey, you know, tell your story, be featured, and then you get nothing or almost nothing.
00;12;53;19 - 00;13;19;28
John Azoni
And it's easy to interpret that as nobody wants to participate. But I think what's happening is maybe a the ask is too broad or the inboxes too crowded. Everyone assumes someone else has a better fit of a story. The sender usually feels distant from the student, and it's not someone that they feel like they are actually interacting with or might ever see at some point on campus, the email gets buried and there's no urgency, there's no specificity.
00;13;19;28 - 00;13;43;15
John Azoni
There's no reason for them to think, Oh, this is for me. So when you're asking for stories through email, the prompt has to do way more than just like submit your story. The phrase is way too open ended. It sounds like homework and people do not volunteer for burning extra calories, mental calories, emotional calories, and doing more homework on top of the homework they're already doing.
00;13;43;26 - 00;14;11;04
John Azoni
Another thing schools do is ask faculty or department heads or staff for referrals. And I think that is directionally smart and you should do this. But there's a catch here because if the people referring the students don't have a strong sense for what makes a story compelling, you tend to get the same profile in over and over. You get the student ambassador who's going to tell you all the list of great things about the school, the senior who is polished and has a great experience, you know, the alumni that maybe has a cool job.
00;14;11;04 - 00;14;33;27
John Azoni
Now that's the punch line. They've got a cool job, but like, there's not a whole lot else there. You know, you're more likely to get really safe stuff. And again, nothing wrong with those people. I love those people. And a lot of times those types of stories are necessary. You know, we have three parts of the funnel here you don't need in all parts of the funnel someone to go on this tangent of a story.
00;14;34;02 - 00;14;53;04
John Azoni
Sometimes you just need someone to say, This place is amazing. You'd be dumb not to come here. You know, that's not a story, but that is a strong marketing message. So nothing wrong with those types of stories. But in general, you want to find people who can tell you more. So like what happened? What specifically, what almost went wrong?
00;14;53;04 - 00;15;16;06
John Azoni
What changed? What surprised you? What did you believe at the beginning that turned out to be different? You know, that's the sort of journey type stuff that people can emotionally connect with. And if nobody in the sourcing process is trained to look for that, you end up with a lot of people who are excellent representatives of the institution can give you a five star Google Review, but are less interesting storytellers.
00;15;16;06 - 00;15;43;24
John Azoni
And now you have the hard work of digging and digging and digging and trying to find something interesting. If you ever dug a hole with a shovel, it's hard. It's very hard. It's exhausting. I did it in my backyard when I planted two apple trees. I was sweating. I was tired. You know the difference between trying to dress up a generic story and starting with a good story to begin with is like the difference between a hand shovel and a what you call a excavator or something.
00;15;43;24 - 00;16;04;07
John Azoni
With the bucket thing that just digs a big hole. It's like boom hole. So at the highest level, the umbrella over all of this is a culture problem. So it's a culture of not being on the lookout because other things are yelling louder. And so you wait til the need for content starts yelling louder. And now you go back and you try to find stories.
00;16;04;16 - 00;16;23;13
John Azoni
But the best time to find stories is not when you need them. It's before. It's when you have the space to be curious and things like that. So you've heard it, you know, there's that movie with Alec Baldwin that says, Always be closing. And then like Coffee is for closers only. I would say always be casting. ABC always be casting.
00;16;23;13 - 00;16;41;05
John Azoni
But really, you know what I mean is this story sourcing can't be something you think about. Only when a campaign kicks off. It can't be just like once a semester, like a scramble. All that you do once in a while. It has to become a habit. It has to be a campus wide habit. Even better, the strongest version of this is cultural.
00;16;41;13 - 00;17;01;27
John Azoni
You know, faculty noticing stories, advisors noticing stories, student life staff noticing stories, career services, alumni relations, people across campus starting to recognize moments, you know, worth documenting and know where to send them and know where they're going to end up. That's the ideal. But most schools aren't there yet, which is fine. You don't have to, you know, pretend that you're there.
00;17;02;02 - 00;17;22;26
John Azoni
But if you want stronger storytelling a year from now, that muscle probably has to start getting built now, because when that muscle doesn't exist, every storytelling initiative begins from zero, and starting from zero is expensive and tedious and pulling teeth. It costs time, it's cost momentum, it's a lot of work and it usually ends up in weaker, finished content.
00;17;23;00 - 00;17;44;01
John Azoni
So if the long term play is culture, what then are some practical ways to get there sooner? So here's some things that I've been thinking about to go from zero to better stories in a shorter amount of time. Number one would be stop relying on cold options. Look for people who are already creating content or already talking publicly about their experience.
00;17;44;01 - 00;18;05;26
John Azoni
This could be students posting about campus life. This could be people making tiktoks students using Instagram stories a lot. Alumni who are active on LinkedIn, people are already showing some willingness to be visible because those people have already crossed an important line. They're comfortable sharing. They're comfortable with the attention being on them. They're comfortable being seen. They've already raised their hand in some way.
00;18;06;04 - 00;18;30;28
John Azoni
Now, that doesn't automatically mean that they have a great story. Some of them are just going to be all surface level, just five eyes. But it's still a better starting point than asking a totally cold audience to volunteer their story and to self identify as having a story. Because at least now you're starting with people who are more likely to participate, who are already out there sharing their life and are probably more in tune with.
00;18;30;28 - 00;19;01;08
John Azoni
What's interesting about their life. The downside to that is that can be really manual. And right now a lot of it is I'm thinking about that a lot because I do think that there's room to make the process more efficient. But even if it's manual, it can still be useful. You're hunting where people are already active. That's usually smarter than hoping, you know, the perfect story randomly shows up in some form submission and the other thing I'm thinking about too, is when people are posting on those contents, reaching out to them on that platform, if someone's active on Instagram and you send them an email, they're not hanging out in their inbox, they're hanging out
00;19;01;08 - 00;19;25;04
John Azoni
on Instagram, DM them on Instagram, DM them on LinkedIn, on Tik Tok, whatever. That's a different play. I think that we need to start making as content creators. Sourcing material to tell stories with is reaching people where they're at for a lot. That really does literally mean go where they're hanging out and talk to them. They're the second idea is about making the first ask smaller.
00;19;25;06 - 00;19;56;02
John Azoni
So a full documentary style feature is a big ask, especially if the person doesn't know you. They don't know the marketing team. They're busy, they're not used to being interviewed. Don't start there. So start with something easy. So a 32nd voice memo, a three sentence text response. I know NPR Moth storytelling. I think at some point they had like a voicemail line, like you could just like, call this voicemail line and tell your story and then be done, and then they might reach out to you to, like, go on the moth stage and tell the story or something like that.
00;19;56;02 - 00;20;15;06
John Azoni
But they had a low friction way to talk about yourself and submit your story. So now the barrier drops and that changes a lot because once somebody gives you a small yes, you can learn a lot. Do they have a strong perspective? Can they communicate clearly? Is there any emotion there? Is there anything specific? Do they respond quickly?
00;20;15;06 - 00;20;38;29
John Azoni
Do they seem up for it? You're screening and building rapport at the same time and that's huge from the participants perspective. They're not signing up for some giant production. They're just answering one question that feels really manageable. And I think we need to get into the habit of prompting people in smaller ways, but more on that later. I think a lot of institutions would just get way more traction if their intake process felt smaller, faster, more human.
00;20;39;08 - 00;21;05;05
John Azoni
And that leads to the next idea. Your prompt has to help people recognize themselves. So my wife and I listened to this podcast called Armchair Expert with DAX Shepard and Monica Padman on the way. When we go on road trips and stuff like that, and they do this series called Armchair Anonymous, where they will post a prompt to story prompt and then all of the listeners, they call them arm cherries will submit their wild stories and then they sift through them.
00;21;05;05 - 00;21;26;10
John Azoni
They pick a few to bring on the air for the armchair anonymous episode. And those are our favorite ones to listen to because some of these stories are so wild, so many twists and turns, but they're so specific. They're great because they're very specific and the prompt was very specific. It's not Tell me a story. It's tell me a story from this particular context.
00;21;26;21 - 00;21;44;28
John Azoni
So they give people a very specific doorway. For instance, tell us about the wildest thing that happened at graduation. That's the one we listen to on the way up to northern Michigan last month. And then when people hear that prompt like that, they instantly know whether they have something for that. That's the magic of a very specific prompt.
00;21;44;28 - 00;22;05;27
John Azoni
So specificity helps people self identify. So maybe your prompt is tell us about a time professor changed how you think. Tell us about a moment when you almost gave up. Tell me about an unexpected friendship that shaped your college experience or your favorite meal that you've ever had in college, and why was that meaningful? Tell us about the first time campus felt like home.
00;22;05;27 - 00;22;29;07
John Azoni
You know, whatever those are better prompts because they're specific because now somebody can hear the question and think, Oh, wait, I do have something for that. You're removing the confusion of like, I don't know if I have a story and your social team could run prompts like this through Instagram story question stickers. So maybe once a week you're posting one of these questions sticker prompts and allowing people to submit and engaging with those like, you know, maybe someone some.
00;22;29;07 - 00;22;42;03
John Azoni
It's a really interesting one and you reference that whatever you can put like the answer on the screen or whatever, and then you can talk over it or whatever, like you engage with it and it becomes a thing. It becomes a thing that people want to submit to because they want to engage and they want to be featured.
00;22;42;03 - 00;22;59;22
John Azoni
And you know, they want their story to show up in the next story and whatever, and then mix in some fun ones, like what's the most embarrassing thing that happened to you in class or something like that might have nothing to do with marketing the school, but it could just get the momentum going for submitting anecdotes. And some of those can be pretty gold.
00;22;59;29 - 00;23;24;06
John Azoni
But the broader point is that it feels like lower pressure. You're making participation feel casual and human, and that's a much better environment for getting real stories. Another thing I think schools should do more of is ask for stories in moments when emotion is already elevated. Timing matters. Graduation week matters. Capstone Presentation Day Matters. The final critique in an art program matters.
00;23;24;15 - 00;23;48;21
John Azoni
You know, the last clinical rotation, the end of orientation. These are all moments across the student journey where people are already feeling something strongly. They're proud, they're relieved, they're overwhelmed, they're reflective, they're emotional. And that's when they are ready to share. A lot of times, if you wait three weeks and send an email, the feeling is passed. So maybe it's a QR code on a program or something like that.
00;23;48;21 - 00;24;13;21
John Azoni
Maybe it's a text to submit prompt. You know, you're getting people's phone numbers and you're texting them to submit. Maybe it's a quick, you know, booth setup kind of thing. Maybe it's a staff member with a phone, you know, like a man on the street thing, you know, taking an iPhone video, asking, you know, one strong questions. It's like nothing fancy, just a way to meet people while the emotion is still available because people tell better stories when they can still feel the moment they're describing.
00;24;13;27 - 00;24;29;18
John Azoni
And if you want faculty and staff to help source stories, the process really just has to be simple. You know, you don't want to ask a professor to write a whole paragraph. They're not going to do it. And that's okay. So lower the lift. Give them a one click nomination form, you know. Student Name one sentence about what happened.
00;24;29;18 - 00;24;50;14
John Azoni
Done. You can follow up if there's something worth following up there about, because I guarantee that faculty see meaningful moments all the time. You know, they see students push through hard things and transformations and breakthroughs and personal issues and, you know, discomfort and whatever else. They just don't know to connect it to anything bigger than that moment specifically in that box.
00;24;50;25 - 00;25;12;04
John Azoni
So build the easiest possible path. So, yeah, this is something I'm actively thinking through right now. These are some just thoughts that I have collected that I am experimenting with currently. I want to share with you because I really believe that a lot of higher ed teams have better stories around them than they realize. The problem is usually just access.
00;25;12;04 - 00;25;37;04
John Azoni
It's finding them identifying them, creating the conditions where people are actually willing to share them. And if you want stronger video, stronger written stories, stronger campaigns, stronger social content, the finding part matters a whole lot. You can't build great storytelling content from generic inputs. So maybe the question for your team is how are stories getting surfaced on your campus right now and where is that process breaking down?
00;25;37;10 - 00;25;58;07
John Azoni
Do you have a culture of collecting stories or are you just waiting for the next campaign? And then you're going to hurry up and try to scrape some together? Because once you can answer that, you can start fixing it or tweaking it. And I'd love to hear from you genuinely. What has this looked like for you? Because this is a universal problem and people have in higher ed have addressed it in different ways.
00;25;58;14 - 00;26;16;24
John Azoni
And I want to hear what your ways are. How have you had success or how have you had failure with trying to find people to raise their hand and say, I have something worthy to say, Send me, you know, let me know. You can email me at John at Unveiled Dot TV or find me on LinkedIn, Joe and A.C.O.R.N..
00;26;16;24 - 00;26;29;29
John Azoni
I if you're searching for me, okay, that's all I got. It's really hot in my office because I have the air turned off so it doesn't wreck the audio, but it's like 100 degrees outside in Michigan. So I'm just going to stop here, okay. And go wipe the sweat off my forehead. Okay, Bye.
