MEET SHANE SNOW:
An award-winning journalist,
Turned brand storytelling pioneer,
Turned scientific researcher and author,
Turned TV & Broadway producer.
Now the #1 storytelling instructor on LinkedIn & world-renowned
STORYTELLING KEYNOTE SPEAKER.
See what audiences are saying about Shane Snow's cutting-edge talks and trainings:
Or scroll to learn Shane's story:
An award-winning journalist
My career began as a reporter covering tech and business, and then as an entertainment and culture writer (covering Hollywood and more), and eventually as an investigative journalist exposing corruption in government and business and more.
- Winner of the Innovation in Journalism Prize from Columbia University
- Entrant for the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism
- Part of the early teams at Mashable and Gizmodo; then a correspondent to GQ, WIRED, Fast Company, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Observer, Forbes and more
- Co-led team that won the Donald Robinson Memorial Award for investigations exposing gun trafficking, given by the American Society of Journalists and Authors
- Discovered and digitized lost CIA recordings from a fake news campaign that took down the Guatemalan government in the 1950s (this story is in the process of becoming a premium TV series)
Read more of my writing »
Turned pioneer of the brand storytelling industry
As my friends in the journalism world started losing jobs and having to go freelance during the 2008–10 recession (including an editor of mine whom The New York Times laid off and hired back as a freelancer!), I launched a company to help broker freelance work for highly trained storytellers. This company became Contently, whose primary clients became brands who wanted to hire these displaced journalists to help them tell stories in the world of blogs, Youtube, and social media.
- Led content strategy and brand storytelling work for Coca-Cola and PepsiCo; American Express, Chase and 90% of the top 100 financial institutions in America
- Built the de-facto thought leader and research resource in the content marketing industry
- Paid 20,000+ journalists, editors, and photographers over $100 Million in premium brand content work
- Helped over 100,000 freelance professionals get work and tell their own stories better
- Dissected millions of data points to measure and study the attributes of brand stories that actually achieve results
Learn more about me »
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Turned researcher & author on the psychology & neuroscience of storytelling
All of the work I oversaw in brand storytelling—on top of my work as a journalist—started begging the question: Why? Why do some stories hit us so hard? What's going on in the human brain when a story hooks us? When a story inspires us to change? I began spending time with researchers—and eventually conducting my own research.
- Dissected 100s of psychology and neuroscience studies to understand (and debunk theories about) how stories spark emotion and create effects in our brains, including memory encoding, persuasion, and warmth vs disgust
- Worked with neuroeconomists like Dr. Paul Zak to study the effects of storytelling on oxytocin in the brain, and the feeling of “immersion” that happens when we experience compelling stories
- Got my brain electrocuted (multiple times!) by scientists and military researchers
- Worked with brainwave-measuring firms like Neuro-Insight to study how our mental states change when experiencing different kinds of stories
- Conducted the world’s largest psychology study on “intellectual humility," unearthing data on how learning and sharing stories makes us more open to different people, and to changing our minds
- Wrote about it all in the books The Storytelling Edge, and Dream Teams [see Chapter 7 "How Malcolm Changed His Mind" and Chapter 8 "Oxytocin, A Love Story"]
Check out more of my research »
Turned TV Showrunner and Tony-Nominated Broadway producer
One of the most important set of storytelling studies I worked on showed how people’s attitudes toward minoritized groups can be changed for the better when humanizing stories are told about those groups in entertainment. So I decided to shift from writing books to creating films, TV shows, and musical theatre.
- Founder of the filmmaking technology company SHOWRUNNER, winner of the National Association of Broadcasting’s prestigious Product of the Year Award for empowering filmmakers and TV producers to bring audiences to more powerful places using “virtual production” techniques (as seen on The Mandalorian)
- Creator, executive producer, and behind-the-scenes show-runner behind multiple television series and feature films, including 2 award-winning international films
- Tony Award-winning Co-Producer of the Broadway musical The Outsiders, and Tony-Nominated Broadway musical The Who’s Tommy; Co-Producer of several upcoming musicals including The West End adaptation of Burlesque.
Drawing on all of the above to craft custom keynotes & storytelling workshops around the world.
Storytelling is powerful. And I’ve learned—through scientific research and repeated personal application in multiple media disciplines—that the keys of powerful storytelling are not intuitive. And they're not what the standard public speaker has been saying on stage for the last 40 years (even those who have succeeded in creative fields themselves!).
That’s why I apply all of the above as a keynote speaker and workshop facilitator to help leadership groups and sales teams to use storytelling to achieve business results.
- What is the actual science behind great storytelling? Peeling away the buzz and the cliches and feel-good nonsense to get to first principles and hard applications:
- How to use storytelling to inspire, motivate, and get people on board with change
- How to use storytelling to hook prospects, resolve concerns, and close customers
- How to use storytelling at every stage of a customer’s journey from brand and reputation to discovery to engagement to brand advocacy
- Special courses and workshops:
- How to use storytelling to level up presentations
- How to use storytelling to build trust and psychological safety in teams
- How to use storytelling to get disparate people and groups to feel like part of the same team
- How to use storytelling for successful change management
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"Insanely addicting."
"A wunderkind."
"A maverick."
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