THE STORYTELLERS INSTITUTE

Attract

If you're ready to attract and engage audiences, the Storytellers Institute was created for you. Welcome!

We attract audiences and mobilize them to embrace new products. Your vision creates the future that audiences aspire to.

Working with corporate leaders, creative agencies, and entrepreneurial disruptors, we’ve captured markets, won record contracts, and fueled unmatched new business.

Inspire

We blend your customer strategy with great visual design and a connective story with the power to attract buyers.

This power forms your unique emotional bond with new customers.

Change

We deliver stories that attract audiences and influence their buying decision. We have identified new paths of growth and helped foster a trillion dollars of new business for these visionary leaders.

The Hero's Journey

This strategic Hero's Journey story campaign helped Lockheed win the largest contract in history. It redefined the way the industry communicates. Lockheed-Martin has become the largest defense contractor the world.

A Vision of the Future

To attract $1 billion investment into a new technology that few understood, we created a twelve-minute immersive story that visualized a future that investors globally embraced.

A Story of Magic

Before the iPhone, Motorola dominated the mobile telecom market with a five-year long strategic storytelling campaign we created to embrace new technologies in new markets.

The Story of Character

Volvo sought to share the character of their wonderful Swedish personality with the world through their vehicles. We literally brought the Volvo brand to life in markets globally leading to its acquisition by Ford.

A Story of Heritage

To launch a first-in-category vehicle, we created a story that captivated the truck market and led DAF Trucks to become the fastest growing truck brand in Europe.

A Family Story

SC Johnson elected to understand the needs of the market using a storytelling approach in order to develop new derivative products for one of their leading brands.

A Story Becomes a Product

To expand the value it delivers in emerging markets, Unilever undertook a storytelling centric approach to creating a strategy that resulted in innovative new products.

A Story of Integrity

Ferrari North America sought to improve the value of their iconic brand and embraced a storytelling approach to identify the path needed to make it happen.

What They're Saying

Here's what some have had to say about their experience with the strategic storytelling process.

Tom Burbage

Former President Lockheed Martin Aeronautics and former VP/GM, F-22 program

"Tom is a creative and energetic sales promotion professional - the best I have worked with over a 33-year career in Aerospace. He generates innovative approaches that are very effective in communicating key messages and in attracting further interest. Highly recommended."

Ingvald Smith-Kielland

Director, Product & Service Design, Optum

"I thoroughly enjoyed working with Tom. His aptitude to truly listen to people and understand their needs, combined with a passion for translating any messages into compelling, understandable stories not only makes him unique in the design field but also eliminates any sense of traditional selling. These qualities make him a great executive in a variety of creative fields."

Fred Walti

Founder, The Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator
CEO, Network for Global Innovation

"One of Tom’s outstanding traits is his willingness and skill in working with other members of the team to develop project outcomes that are both excellent and reflect the team’s strengths. Tom is an excellent leader as well as a partner. I highly recommend Tom and would be happy to speak to anyone on his capabilities."

Sanjay Poojari

Founder & CEO, Saya Life

"Tom has an amazing personality and is the best “Storyteller” you can find in the industry. He can take a business model and transform it into a gripping narrative that can capture the imagination of any audience. I have had the greatest privilege of being mentored by Tom in the art of articulating your business model with a story."

Craig Chamberlain

Director of Experience Design, Sonosite

"Tom is one of the best marketing and business development executives I've seen."

Harhish Jani

Partner, Director, and Venture Portfolio GM at BCG Digital Ventures

"Tom is a visionary leader and a charismatic storyteller. An avant-garde communicator, he possesses uncanny ability to listen and he comprehended client needs to get to the heart of their problems, craft business programs and succinctly articulate the value of the solutions which transcended traditional strategy, design, marketing, and engineering domains."

Denzil Porteous

CEO, Pride Fund Ventures

"My time working with Tom can only be defined as some of the most exciting work with which I have engaged. Tom’s desire and understanding of changes needed to set a trajectory for redefined success and new depths of recognition, was profound. Tom worked to engage partners in the visualization and implementation of plans needed to enact that vision."

Gaylon White

Writer, Storyteller and Communications Consultant

"As the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Jim Murray once said, "The problem is to find it; the challenge is to tell it without putting the reader to sleep." Tom knows how to keep his audience awake and engaged. And he has all of the other attributes a client is looking for when he/she is trying to make a difference."

Thorston Hoins

Founder & CMO, Twyne

"I had the pleasure of spending just one day with Tom. During that short time, our brand position crystallized to a remarkable degree became more defensible, more exciting and significantly clearer. A solid brand often is the only defensible asset...which makes brand work the most valuable activity of any organization. And if you want to get that piece right, Tom is your man."

Transformation Strategy enables proven brands, startups, creative agencies, students and non-profits to communicate unmatched value to generate results in presentations and online experiences.