Telling Stories for Profit – Part 1
In their upcoming book, What’s Your Story?, authors Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker look at the power of stories and storytelling to drive business in the 21st century. In this first installment in a multipart series, RetailWire speaks with Ryan Mathews to look at the need for storytelling in business and how it has evolved in recent years.
It’s not unusual to think about storytelling in frivolous terms. It’s something we do to pass time, to serve as a form of entertainment. Sure, it might be fun but it doesn’t have any practical business applications, does it?
“The story form over time has been proven and demonstrated over and over again across all cultures to be the single best way to transfer information, belief, history,” Ryan Mathews, founder and CEO of Black Monk Consulting and author of the upcoming book, What’s Your Story (2008, FT Press, Upper Saddle River, NJ), told RetailWire. “Really all of what we know about ourselves comes down through stories because they are easy to transport. They’re easy to remember. They’re easy to repeat. They’re compelling if repeated well. Stories are the compelling driver in mythology, in religion, in culture and in everything else.”
According to Mr. Mathews, it’s easy for many to see the application of storytelling in terms of advertising, promotion, branding, public relations and merchandising. There are perhaps less obvious opportunities to use storytelling in areas such as recruitment, retention, morale building, investor relations and more.
“There are companies that are using traditional storytelling more or less effectively to promote brands and even to guide their internal operations. P&G has a corporate storyteller but unfortunately the company would not go on the record for the book,” he said.
What’s Your Story? is filled with numerous examples of storytelling for good and bad in corporate America. A number of points become clear in the reading: 1) the practice of storytelling has a dynamic role to play in corporate America; 2) stories change; 3) the nature of storytelling has changed dramatically in the era of internet and wireless communications, and; 4) companies need to formalize the process of storytelling within the organization to maximize results.
Referring back to Procter & Gamble, Mr. Mathews discussed the story behind Ivory Soap. “The Ivory story was, “Eureka, it floats.” It was the happy accident story. But, if you check it out now it is no longer the happy accident story, now it’s the end product of research and development, trial and error. They’ve changed the story. The facts haven’t changed – the soap has air bubbles and floats – but the story around the facts has changed significantly and it tells us a lot more about how the company has matured.”
Another example of a changing story is Ben & Jerry’s.
“They had a very consistent, interesting story about two hippie, trippy guys who loved ice cream and who took their money and gave it to good causes like folk festivals and world peace and all of that. When it got acquired by Unilever, all of a sudden it’s much harder to tell that story when you’re owned by a multinational.”
One of the new challenges storytellers face in the 21st century, according to Mr. Mathews, is that audiences are more engaged and vocal.
“In the age of the internet, everybody is critical about everything so you get the AdBusters, the blog sites that are trashing false claims and hypocrisy and so on. You’ve got the NoLogo people and all these things. It becomes harder and harder to maintain your story.”
In a growing number of cases, said Mr. Mathews, marketers have turned to the audience to develop and maintain the company/brand story.
“A group of very smart marketers have now realized that if the audience is turning to storytelling so the big twist in the 21st century is that the audience becomes the storyteller. So you have a whole group of companies that suddenly have become very active in becoming storytellers,” he said. “Think of Shedd’s Spread Country Crock and its promotion of sharing. If you tell them a story of sharing with somebody or a time someone shared with you, they’ll donate one meal for every story to America’s Second Harvest. The name (Shedd’s) becomes linked to the notion of sharing.”
Discussion Questions: What roles do you see for storytelling in corporate America? How have you seen business storytelling change over time? What companies/brands have impressed you with their storytelling ability?
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16 Comments on "Telling Stories for Profit – Part 1"
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One thing that strikes me about corporate storytelling in the age of the Internet is that whatever story you are trying to tell, you have to make it quick. Whether your message is to consumers or businesses, people of all types are multi-tasking more than ever before so your story has to capture their imagination quickly, and you have to tell the story succinctly. In other words, corporate storytelling has become in large measure the ability to give a good elevator pitch. It’s true for marketing, too. We’ve gone from 60 second to 30 second to 15 second ads, and who has time to read a 4 page spread ad in a magazine anymore?
I’m kind of the anti-elevator speech guy. A story needs to be short only if it’s boring and inconsequential. A truly good story engages on intellectual, emotional and spiritual levels.
Someone going in to buy a Porsche doesn’t say to the sales person “Give me your elevator speech about this car and give me the short brochure.” She’s more likely to say “Tell me again the story about the downforce and how fast I can take sharp corners.” And then she asks for more brochures and the DVD.
In a romantic moment we don’t say to our partner “Give me a soundbite about why you love me.” We want them to go on and on about how wonderful we are.
When a prospective client wants only an elevator speech I almost always assumes he also wants a quick fix–preferably one that doesn’t require him to change.
Maybe we find ourselves in the era of 10 second sound bites because 10 seconds is all what is being said deserves.
Stories are indeed powerful. Yet, as was pointed out, we do live in the hyper-critical, immediate-response world created by the Internet. P&G must be one of the only corporations to have an official storyteller, and yet they weren’t willing to talk!
Perhaps stories are best utilized for the internal purposes listed: morale, team-building, recruitment (I would add strategic planning–that is, getting everyone on board in fulfilling purpose, mission and goals).
A different, but important, twist on the role of story-telling in business is in the art of internal and external business communication. Whether trying to sell an idea for funding internally, or convincing a retailer to add a new product to the shelf, it’s all about telling a compelling story. It is the difference between “fact-based selling” and facts.
In dealing with our own clients we see the same things. You can present trend data all day long, but when you start out with “when I was talking to the detergent buyer at Kroger last week” everyone starts to listen a little harder.
A note on Al’s comment. My sense is that this a Yes AND No issue. Yes messaging has to be quick but content should be constant. So, storytelling should be the core of the messaging although the messages themselves are quite perishable.
Tagging on to Al and Ryan… I see a lot of companies abandoning their core “stories” in attempts to reach new generations of consumers or to take advantage of new media options, but it’s usually a big mistake. Oftentimes, stories are closely associated with company founders: Colonel Sanders; Famous Amos, etc. Wendy’s ads, for example, have been adrift since Dave Thomas’ passing. (Currently, they’re trying to tell a story using a guy dressed in red pigtails…I can’t quite follow the plot.)
Of course, when a founder/icon dies, it presents a problem. Recent efforts to resurrect Orville Redenbacher have just been plain creepy. However, the attention being played to “Orville Deadenbacher” in the blogosphere may actually create a new “storyline” that could result in an unplanned boon for the company. Maybe, in the internet age, it’s important to leave flexibility for consumer-generated storytelling, as well.
Storytelling is a beautiful, rich and time-honored method of perpetuating human connections and cultural history over time and generations. It is also, has been pointed out, highly effective within organizations to help demonstrate founder’s vision, norms and values. Storytelling usually is based on fact, but almost always has liberal doses of myth and wishful thinking thrown in, too.
The problem with much of today’s external corporate story telling is that it is increasingly recognizable as pure PR and propaganda. Even the perfectly respectable word “story” has taken a credibility hit via the tongue-in-cheek phrase, “that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.” For any corporate storytelling to be useful short term (and especially long term) it must be viewed in the harsh light of its essential honesty and truth. I hope that Ryan’s book will help corporations to better understand that and give them the tools to honestly evaluate their “stories.”
As a professional speaker and trainer, I learned a long time ago if you really want people to remember something, tell them a story. Remember, we think in pictures not words and stories paint better pictures.
Smart companies like Southwest Airlines, Disney, Ritz-Carlton and Nordstrom have been using stories for years and in a number of different ways…
1. To stand out in the market place. Everyone has a story about these organizations.
2. They tell them in lots of professional settings, not only to attract customers but also to reinforce the message to their internal customer
3. They use them to develop and maintain their culture.
4. To pass on the learning to future generations of what works and what is expected.
Absolutely spot on in terms of the need and power of stories. I find that I can know something important for years, and talk till I am blue in the face, and nothing happens until I have a story that intersects with my audiences own story. Then stuff starts to happen.
I find it interesting that Ben & Jerry’s and Shedd’s Spread are both owned and managed by Unilever. People buy products because of the benefits that they deliver. Stories need to change to keep the brands and their benefits relevant to consumers.
If it’s a choice between telling a memorable story or explaining the theory, the story wins. Great propaganda always generates memorable stories. Biggest corporate obstacle: lots of advertising/pr stories have no credibility. Furthermore, great stories are sustained over long time periods (decades). They don’t disappear when you change ad agencies every 2 years. And great stories need great characters: El Exigente beats Sam Breakstone.