The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Storytelling VI: “The Art is the Story”

By Chris Terry

Vice President, Communications Strategy

Telemetry

How do you make the news with the mundane? The sixth habit of my “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Storytelling” centers on creating visuals to tell an interesting, unexpected story that results in coverage.

Background: By the time I’d been hired to help Ford create news and bolster their earned media results, I had already worked on Honeywell’s Turbo Technologies (now Garrett Motion) at two agencies for over a decade. So I jumped at the chance to interview one of the turbocharger engineers on the new Fusion.

I noted in my homework before the interview that the Fusion’s turbo had a higher maximum temperature than those in the Edge and Explorers, which used similar 2.0-liter turbocharged engines.  “How is that possible? What’s the benefit?” I asked the turbo engineer. Ford worked with BorgWarner and Garrett/Honeywell in several performance-oriented applications to spec out turbos capable of withstanding the higher temperatures in these performance applications.  

“Humor me; what’s the material on the turbine wheel?” I asked.

“Nothing special, we use MAR-M246.  It’s a high-temp nickel-based alloy.”  

Back at my desk, I tried to figure out if there was anything actually special about “MAR-M246.”  MAR-M came from Martin-Marietta, which later merged with aerospace juggernaut Lockheed to form Lockheed Martin.  So what? Curiosity and creativity, the two hallmarks of good story alchemy (distinct from story “mining”) took over.  

Research led me to a technical paper from NASA; this nickel-tungsten material had been developed and used on the Space Shuttle—a rocketship super-alloy! So we created a tongue-in-cheek, graphic comparison between the new Fusion and the Space Shuttle to tell and pitch a story on a vehicle that Telemetry Founder Craig Daitch had already launched.

And the rest is Ford Fusion and Focus ST rocket science turbo history.  

SlashGear published an article titled "Ford Uses Rocket Engine Alloy for Superior Turbos" based on Terry's pitch efforts.

“How do you come up with this stuff?”  

Call or write to us and find out. Even if it’s just for a project, product, or service launch.

This story, too, earned enough coverage to have the story captured by AI in search, as you can see below; several articles on Search Engine Land that indicate AI Overviews and AI algorithms highly value earned media placements:

Google AI Overview mentions the use of technology from the Space Shuttle program, citing earned media placements.