OUR GUIDE TO CORPORATE STORYTELLING S E RV I C E
B R O C H U R E
CONTENTS Introduction: What is corporate storytelling ?
03
What are the essentials?
04
Why it is needed?
05
Where it is needed most
06
Why has storytelling been rediscovered?
08
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The author
This Service Brochure is part of a series published by the Asia-
Pacific Association of Communication Directors (APACD). They
Robert Mighall // Author & Brand Consultant, Radley Yeldar
are intended as constructive manuals that give advice on practical challenges and topics in communications.
Robert Mighall is a writer, brand consultant and corporate storyteller. A former fellow in English Literature at
The APACD is cross-national network for in-house communication
the University of Oxford, his book Only Connect: The Art of Corporate
It aims to establish common quality standards and advance
in December 2013. He is a senior brand consultant at Radley Yeldar, a
as debates, seminars and workshops. In addition, the non-partisan
where his clients include GSK, Shell, JLT, The Share Centre, Pearson. For
useful services and information for its members, and publishes
www.ry.com
directors, managers and spokespersons in the Asia-Pacific region.
Storytelling brings these two worlds together, and is due to be published
professional qualifications within the field by organising events such
leading independent creative communications business based in London,
Association lobbies for the profession, offers practical advice, provides
more information about Radley Yeldar, or to contact Robert, please visit
Communication Director, a quarterly magazine devoted to corporate communications and public relations.
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THE EACD BRIEF GU IDE TO CORPORATE STORYTELLING Introduction: What is corporate Storytelling ‘Story’, something of a buzzword in marketing and communications, is finally storming that last bastion of the bar chart and the bullet point, the corporate world. Books are being published on it, and companies of all sizes and sectors have started talking about “getting their story straight”, where once such terms would have seemed alien. But what is corporate storytelling? Why is it needed now? And where should we apply its principles to achieve what ends? This brief guide attempts to provide some answers. Storytelling: the beginning Storytelling – as old as human history – is not entirely new to the corporate or commercial setting. In the US it has been promoted as a leadership tool since the 1990s, providing a more human-centric alternative to the hard-nosed, bottom-lined, persuasion arts traditionally dominating the US board room. Or there is the tradition that behind every great brand or business there is a founding legend, with the likes of Innocent, Google, Apple or Dyson lending iconic evidence to this claim.1
Yet I’m not talking about the leadership or legend-type of storytelling here. The stories increasingly being sought and developed by corporates are less concerned with wielding influence, and more with justifying the company’s existence. And these aren’t so much the stories that stand behind a company, as those it puts forward to the world. They say less about where the company has come from, and everything about where it is going, what it’s all about, and why this ultimately matters. As such, storytelling in this context is not unlike positioning a brand. They are very close, and can work powerfully in partnership. But there are also some key differences. Branding, as a practice, is principally the preserve of professionals who create and manage these valuable assets. These brands are largely abstractions, formed in the realm of ideas, and are only made real when they are experienced and associations or anecdotes are formed about them. These anecdotes might then be shared for the purposes of advocacy (or its opposite, defamation). It is at this point the brand starts to live through story. Story, on the other hand, is understood, practiced and exchanged by every culture on the planet, nearly every waking (and dreaming) hour of every day. It doesn’t need to
1 The ‘Leadership’ school of corporate storytelling has been pioneered in the US by Stephen Denning, whose The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action Into Knowledge-Era Organizations (2000) helped popularise the idea of using narrative to convince and influence mostly internal audiences. Paul Smith’s recent Lead With a Story: A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives That Captivate, Convince and Inspire (2012) extends this tradition. The Legends of great brands are showcased in the Great Brand Stories series, edited by John Simmons, now published by Marshall Cavendish, and featuring the likes of Google and Innocent.
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“ S T OR Y ” I S U N DE R S T O OD , PR AC T IC E D A N D E XC H A N G E D B Y EV E R Y C U LT U R E O N T H E PL A N E T. I T D OE S N ´ T N E E D T O BE TR A NSL ATED I N T O A N E X PE R I E N C E , A S I T I S A L R E A DY O N E , A N D R E A DY T O BE SH AR ED. be translated into an experience because it is one already, and is ready to be shared. By consciously applying the principles that define this universal human currency, some of the work of brand building and expression can be carried out and perfected. What are the essentials? At its most basic, a story is an explanation. It is simply the best means humans have to grab attention, convey information that makes sense, and impart some relevant social or emotional truth. Storytelling, be it for entertainment or commerce, needs just three things to do this: clarity, coherence, and emotional connection. I. Clarity Clarity ensures the company’s narrative grabs attention, and what it offers is clearly understood. There is constant competition for our attention, a myriad of messages besieging
us on every side. Without the singleness of idea or theme a story demands, the company narrative will go unheard. What a company does might be highly complicated, in many different places, for a wide variety of people. Yet the more complexity involved, the more simplicity is needed for the story to do its core job of explaining. An effective way to achieve this simplicity, as well as ensuring the story remains relevant, is to focus less on what the company does and more on why this ultimately matters. Too many companies develop fact-obsessed boilerplates fixating on their scale, scope and footprint, whilst neglecting to consider why anyone might actually care. Clarity of benefit and singleness of focus starts to lift such statements into the realms of storytelling, emulating the greatest narratives of page, stage or screen whose central premise can usually be summed up in a sentence. II. Coherence Coherence ensures that clarity is carried through with conviction, providing the thread that binds the parts of the narrative together. The human brain seeks pattern and order, and intuitively senses when something doesn’t quite add up.2 In entertainment stories this means the right events in the right order leading to a satisfying denouement. We unconsciously bring the same demands to any calls on our belief, and feel similarly unsatisfied when a communication designed to convince us lacks coherence. There’s a reason why integrity is such an important ideal in the corporate world, because the order it demands is funda-
2 On the psychology of storytelling, see Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (2012), and Brian Boyd, On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (2009).
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mental to all our dealings with our fellow humans. It simply means ‘holding together’, and integrity in the ethical world is the equivalent of coherence in the realm of ideas and their expression. Coherence of story is a far more effective way of demonstrating integrity than simply listing it as a value. If the story holds up, then we are more inclined to believe the company will hold up to ethical scrutiny. Story demands a coherent thread, but it also provides one. Developing a clear corporate story helps a company maintain that clarity through all its channels and points of contact. Companies that tell a single story to all their audiences are far more likely to inspire trust than those that partition their messages or tone for different stakeholder groups. In the glasshouse of modern communications, this is increasingly difficult to justify. Any duplicity or multiplicity of message suggests a company is either speaking with a forked tongue, or is confused about who it is. Either way, it is less likely to inspire belief than the company that provides a single coherent account of itself to all its audiences everywhere. III. Emotional Connection Trust is also at stake with the final essential ingredient of storytelling: emotional connection. This is what story does best, and where it leaves the facts and figures, list and diagrams out in the cold. For it is on the emotional level that
E M O T IO N A L C O N N E C T IO N I S PE R H A P S T H E M O S T V I TA L DE F I N I N G I N G R E DI E N T F OR S T OR Y T E L L I N G .
trust is built, and no number of tabulated facts will convince without that connection. Business may be measured by results, and those results may easily (albeit deceptively) be given a numerical value; but any business operates by and for people, whose choices and affinities are influenced much more powerfully by what they feel than what they think or can measure. Emotional connection is perhaps the most vital defining ingredient for storytelling. Yet it is the hardest thing for so many companies to embrace. A tour through the homepages of the FTSE100 companies simply tells us that they are “leading” in their particular fields; “global” in their footprint or ambitions; and provide “solutions” for their various customers. Fixated on the cold, hard, factual what of their worlds, they fail to demonstrate their vital connection with ours. The warm, living, breathing world of human needs, desires and dreams they are ultimately there to serve. No matter how purely business-to-business a company is, it is still part of a chain that touches people. In fact, the more removed the company is from that world, the more effort it should put into specifying why what it does matters. And so, whilst storytelling appears to finally be making its presence felt in corporate communications departments, there is still a long way to go, and rather stubborn pockets of resistance to embracing what it can achieve. Why might that be? Why it is needed Whilst most companies would like to think they have something unique to offer there is comfort in conformity. Wishing to be taken seriously by their peers, they all end up sounding like them. “The facts speak for themselves”, some might
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