the compelling power of storytelling in business

The word “story” may conjure up memories of bedtime tales told by nightlight that start with “once upon a time.” However, no matter how a story is presented—book, movie, television show, script, video, magazine, newspaper, etc.—at its heart, every story is the same: an easy-to-understand way to describe how life ebbs and flows. 

But how can the same tenets used to create Cinderella be applied to business? How can something like storytelling, an ancient art form dating back thousands of years, become an essential part of your company’s success?

Simply put, by ascribing a story to your company, you provide an illustrated example of how, why and what you do, while assigning an emotional weight to your company’s journey. The result is the creation of a brand. How can you harness that emotional response to better communicate your company’s mission and overall goals? Let’s examine some of the tenets of storytelling for business and how they can be applied to your organization. 

Is a Story Really Necessary? 

Is it really important to create a brand story in the course of business? Isn’t it enough to have a great advertising campaign or a strong mission statement? 

Advertising will only take you so far, and your mission statement is probably not as widely read by your customers as you think. But your brand story is an active element to your company’s identity, not a passive one. It is the foundation of everything you communicate through every action and outlet, making it almost impossible to overlook. This is what sets your story apart from more passive aspects of your company’s identity, such as your website and marketing materials. Your story is also a great way to add emotional resonance to your brand. 

Emotional Resonance and Why It’s Important 

Our perceptions of things change when they evoke emotions. Think of recent TV commercials you’ve seen and the reactions they elicited. Chances are the ones you can think of either brought you close to tears or made you laugh. This is what makes the emotional part of your brand story so important. Tapping into the emotional component of our psyches makes us more loyal, more receptive and more invested. 

Scientists have examined the chemical effects of storytelling on the brain and how it impacts behaviors, including purchasing. According to their findings, throughout the telling of a story, our brains will manufacture three distinct chemicals: cortisol in reaction to tension, oxytocin in reaction to emotional connection and empathy, and dopamine in reaction to a hopeful and happy ending. 

When oxytocin and dopamine saturate our brains, we are much more open and optimistic and therefore more willing to make purchases. This is where the “feel-good” nature of advertising gains credence. By generating these emotional reactions, advertisers can trigger a consumer’s compulsion to buy. By communicating these elements in the form of a story, advertisers make it easier for consumers to elicit emotions, such as empathy and hopefulness, and this is what makes storytelling in business so powerful. 

Crafting a Brand Story and Why It’s Important 

Your company’s brand is a blend of messaging and circumstance. Some aspects of your brand are immutable: like the way in which your company does business, the ethical and moral beliefs that your stakeholders and owners hold, and how those beliefs inform your actions. 

However, there is an aspect of your brand that can be shaped and communicated in different ways. This is what you do with your mission statement, values, company goals, hiring, retention efforts and advertising. Everything your company puts out into the world, whether communicated formally through consumer-facing media or informally through company and employee behavior, is all part of your brand.

Knowing this, it’s even more essential that you create a brand story that not only communicates these aspects of your company, but also emotionally resonates with your consumers. 

Elements of a Brand Story 

All good stories follow a specific structure:

1. Inciting Incident: The event that kicks everything into gear
2. Rising Action: The complications that arise from the characters reacting to the inciting incident
3. Turning Point (Climax): The most heightened aspect of the story
4. Falling Action: The result of characters making a decision and carrying it out, and how that affects the situation
5. Denouement: The wrap-up or conclusion 

Your brand story won’t really be all that different. Let’s examine each of these and how they might apply to your company: 

• Inciting Incident: For most brands, this is what caused you to go into business in the first place. Maybe you saw a particular need for a service or product in your community. Maybe you were informed through your personal experiences or the experiences of someone close to you. Whatever your motivation is, the moment when you decided to take an active role in addressing this need and started your business is your inciting incident. 
• Rising Action: This stage can be long or short, but it’s all about how you addressed your need. How you structured your company, how you raised the needed startup capital, how you marketed your idea in order to gain support: each of these is part of your rising action. What are the elements of your brand’s creation that make up this rising action? The moment you settled on alogo or tagline can be a pivotal moment in this process. Your first advertising campaign or the launch of your website are other examples. 
• Turning Point: The easiest moment to associate with the turning point of your brand’s story is your company’s launch. This is when everything changes, and the experiences you’ve gained through the inciting incident and the rising action inform how you execute your turning point. This may also be a brand pivot, the launch of an innovative product or even the hiring of an influential team member. 
• Falling Action: With most stories, this is where things might slow down, but in business, this is where things enter an even more important mode: maintenance. The falling action is made up of all the things you need to do to maintain your business’ presence in the marketplace and among consumers’ minds. Ongoing marketing efforts, reinforcement of your brand’s story, continued introduction of new product offerings, outstanding customer service: all of these elements make up this very important maintenance phase.
• Denouement: The denouement is very similar to the falling action, especially when taken in this context. For your brand story, it’s best to view this stage as the long-lasting message you want consumers to take away from doing business with your organization. When customers have concluded their business with you and your company, how do you want to be remembered? The obvious answer is favorably, but look beyond that. Do you want to be remembered as the company with the most outstanding product, the most ethical employees or the greatest profit margin? The underlying message of your brand story should reinforce whatever this long-term message is as well. 

Storytelling in Day-to-Day Messaging 

Once you’ve crafted your brand’s story, it’s important to incorporate elements of the narrative in all of your marketing and advertising. All of your interactions should originate from a place that honors your brand story. One way to do this is to view your marketing campaigns as their own mini-stories. Start with the inciting incident, and walk yourself through the elements of a story in relation to this specific campaign. 

Here is one other important factor to remember: Just as your brand does not change per campaign or year, your brand story will not change either. Unless you want to undertake a very large re-branding effort, your company’s brand and brand story should be kept consistent for years to come. You can highlight different aspects of your story or communicate it in different ways, but the elements should always be born of the same foundation. This makes things easy for consumers, as they can quickly recognize your organization and its products, but supporting a story might be challenging for your marketing and communications teams, especially if they feel your brand story is dated. 

While your brand story will not change, that doesn’t mean it’s stagnant. Reframe your story using the technology and truths of today’s business culture. How has the advent of the internet and global connectivity affected the way you do business? How has your company’s mission and values evolved to more accurately reflect the needs and desires of your diverse customer base? 

You will address many of these questions through new advertising and marketing campaigns, and in the end, your brand story won’t really change at all. But if you find that your teams feel trapped by the vestiges of an old brand story, there is no harm in revisiting it and giving it a fresh look. 

The power of storytelling is one we learn from an early age. The lessons we learn and the stories we continue to tell, even as we age, illustrate just how deeply these emotional and empathetic moments resonate within us. For businesses, it further informs just how powerful a compelling story can be for their long-lasting success.