What Does Storytelling Mean in the Context of Business and Marketing?

Storytelling is:

• a way to establish communication with other people (customers, suppliers, employees, etc.),
• a way to convey knowledge and experience,
• a way of capturing the mind and heart of another person, specifically a buyer, business partner, or sponsor.

You have to remember the only correct definition of “storytelling”:

This experience can be both positive and negative. The experience and the moment when changes occur in a person as a result of this experience make the story successful. 

Therefore, it is necessary to remember that every element is important: experience-change-person. Without at least one component, there won’t be an interesting and effective story.

A good story in itself creates value for a brand. So don’t neglect this opportunity.

Storytelling and Business: Two Types of Stories

There are two types of stories in business:

1. Stories that tell about how the brand was created, about the technological and technical processes of production, about the characteristics of the product, about raw materials, etc. This information is interesting to you and people who are similar to you – other businessmen and entrepreneurs. But for a potential buyer, such a story is boring and uninteresting.
2. Stories that tell about experiences that were related to a product or service. You can also read more about this in the article about visual storytelling. These are the stories that capture the heart and mind of the buyer.

How and Why Storytelling Works

Storytelling & Science

Let’s look at why a story has the power to captivate a listener and hold their attention. What happens to the human brain during storytelling?

When you work, two zones are used in the brain: for perception and analysis of received information. And it looks like this:

But when you start listening to someone’s story, a real explosion occurs in your brain:

In the article about visual storytelling, I already mentioned the phenomenon of “neural connection”. This is it. Listening to a story, we experience events as if they were happening to us at the moment in real life. This is the power of storytelling.

Storytelling & Psychology

Nobel Laureate in economics – psychologist Daniel Kahneman identifies two systems of thinking in the human psyche:

• System 1 is an automatic system that requires little effort. It’s like a background soundtrack in our head: “What to cook for breakfast?”, “Where should we go tonight?” And other simple decisions that we make every minute.
• System 2 requires attention and effort to make informed decisions.

While we are awake, we have both systems working. At the same time, system 2 seems to be in sleep mode with minimal energy consumption and approves all decisions made by system 1.

So, the task of the storyteller is to take the listener from system 1 to system 2. Then you can interest the audience and force them to focus on the story, and even make sometimes irrational decisions.

Storytelling as a Branding Element: How to Create Brand Story

Once you’ve figured out how storytelling works and why you should use it to promote your brand, you need to answer the question: “What do you want to achieve with a story? What are your goals?

The answers to these questions will help you not to go astray in the future, because you will understand exactly where to go and why. On this basis, you or your employees will collect and analyze data.

Step 1. Collect and analyze data.

Step 2. Creative work. It is one thing to collect data, statistics, and facts, and conduct analysis, and quite another to create a story about a brand based on the information received.

Most likely you will be a little scared and a lot will seem incomprehensible, but as you work, everything will fall into place.

Step 3. Now try to find the “golden grains of sand” in your business: those elements that make your business stand out from others, some of its features that will make your story unique and fresh.

Step 4. When collecting and analyzing information about your business (profits, losses, cost of raw materials, deadlines for completing work, etc.), you most likely have already found and identified some interesting observations:

• perhaps there was a conflict situation (between you and employees, for example),
• something unexpected may have happened during data analysis,
• a stressful situation
• identify the characters for the story (employees, suppliers, customers).

You can use these notes to create a story for your brand.

Сообщение Storytelling in Business and Marketing: How Storytelling Works появились сначала на Think and Write.

Table of Contents

• What Is Storytelling
  • Definition
  • Impact of Storytelling
• The Phenomenon of Storytelling Popularity
• The Main Characters of Storytelling: Protagonist and Antagonist
• Different Sides of One Story

What Is Storytelling

Several people are sitting around the fire. Each of them tells a fascinating story about incredible events, brave heroes, great love, suffering, and unbearable grief. The narrator is focused and immersed in the world of the heroes of the story. All you can hear is his voice and the crackling of the fire.

This is the picture that appears in our heads when we hear the word “storytelling”. Only in our time, this picture has changed a lot. If earlier stories were transmitted by one person to another or several people orally, now the sources of stories are the Internet, books, television, films, and TV series.

Definition

Translated, “storytelling” literally means “telling stories.” It is a way to create empathy and establish an emotional connection with your audience.

Through stories and fairy tales, we learn about the social and cultural activities of people. This is a unique way of simply transmitting experience, cultural and moral values, norms of behavior, and a way of teaching these norms of behavior.

Storytelling is not about telling a story, it is about the interaction between the storyteller and his listener or listeners. This is what differentiates storytelling from, for example, theatrical performance. There are no barriers between the narrator and the listener. The storyteller and his story can directly influence people.

Impact of Storytelling

The world of stories allows us to better understand ourselves and others. This is a unique way to develop understanding, respect, and gratitude for your own and other cultures. Stories help create positive attitudes towards other nationalities and religions.

Through stories and fairy tales, we gain knowledge about other people’s life experiences and understand how much we have in common – common values and common problems.

Storytelling is a kind of exchange of emotions and a way to evoke these emotions.

The Phenomenon of Storytelling Popularity

Why is storytelling gaining momentum and increasingly being used in completely different areas of our lives?

The answer is simple: people care about people. We are interested in what happens to other people. It can be compared to watching the television show “The X Factor”. People watch the show not for the sake of beautiful singing, they are interested in learning about the life of each participant, getting to know his personal story, and understanding what kind of person he is. We empathize with some of the participants, sympathize with others, and are angry with others. History is what’s truly interesting!

At Stanford University, studies were conducted on several groups of students. As a result, scientists concluded that people make decisions based on beliefs and principles, rather than facts and evidence.

As an example, we can cite vaccination. No matter how much research is conducted, evidence in favor of vaccination is presented, and rumors are debunked, it does not help in convincing opponents of vaccination.

Another example is the fear of flying on airplanes. People prefer to travel by car; they are afraid to fly. At this point, the brain forgets about car accident statistics. In a person’s head, there are pictures from the news about plane crashes. This is how the human brain works. You can read more about Stanford University research in the New Yorker “Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds“.

The Main Characters of Storytelling: Protagonist and Antagonist

There are two kinds of characters in every story: the protagonist and the antagonist.

The protagonist (“fighter”) is the main character, who, by the way, is not always positive.

He is opposed by an antagonist (“rival”).

Most often, the main characters are people, but natural phenomena, inanimate objects, and even emotions and ideas can also play the role of protagonist and antagonist.

In addition, each story has its structure:

• an introduction,
• a main part
• and the end.

Different Sides of One Story

The same story can be told from completely different sides. Let’s take an example: there was a car accident. The victim will have his own vision: his car is broken, he is confused and terrified. The person responsible for the accident has his own story: he experiences fear and shame but does not feel guilty, because he was blinded by an oncoming car and unintentionally jerked the steering wheel. The police officer who arrives at the scene of the accident will have his view of the story. The ambulance driver and the witnesses to the accident have their own stories. And only after hearing all these stories will it be possible to draw a conclusion.

The topic is very interesting. There is a lot to think about and write about.

P.S.: If you are interested, share the article on social networks! Bye!

Сообщение What Is Storytelling and Why Is It Important? появились сначала на Think and Write.