Are you a storyteller or a story changer?
This National Storytelling Week is the perfect time to ask yourself how your organisation's story could be helping you to improve how you communicate with your employees and customers – and change the world.
Stories shape us. They help us to make sense of the world. So have you ever considered how your business could use its story to make sense of itself?
The world is changing fast and many businesses are failing to keep up. What’s emerging is an appetite for more emotionally intelligent brands whose products create a sustainable or social impact. Or a degree of honesty from those brands who aren't quite there yet, are aware of their shortcomings and striving to do something about it.
So where and how does your story come into play?
When I launched Brand New Story® I didn’t have a clue what brand storytelling was. I knew I wanted to create a purpose-led brand storytelling company in service to the greater good the moment I first heard the words ‘brand storytelling’. I just didn’t know what a brand story was.
So I went in search of a mythical brand story to help me (and others) figure out:
why we existed
who we were
what we stood for
who our customers were
why they needed us
how we could connect with them
and how they could connect with us.
Two years later I called the search off.
I had failed my quest.
Or so I thought.
Then the penny dropped. The story I'd been looking for didn’t exist yet. So I created it and Brand New Story® was born.
That was three years ago. Since then I've shaped, created and evolved Brand New Story® – and worked hard to get it out into the world.
You know how, when a film is being made, everyone involved in making it reads the script first? The director, producers, cast, crew… everyone? It’s the same with your Brand New Story®.
And this is what a Brand New Story® looks like.
Created over five in-house sessions it’s designed to look and read like a script.
It represents the heart and soul of your organisation and contains everything your organisation needs to bring it to life. Supporting everyone from marketing to internal and external communications, HR, sales, finance, operations, legal, product design, customer services – even your external suppliers and agencies.
Kicking off with that all important purpose – which is simply the story you're seeking to change – it also contains your vision, values, strapline(s), cast list, personality and tone of voice. Plus a wealth of highly targeted messaging that'll create an instant emotional connection with everyone who comes into contact with it.
Then, when you tell it, you'll:
Align everyone in your organisation and have them telling the same story from the word go that has a clear and consistent tone of voice, unique to you
Become an employer of choice who attracts, excites and retains your people
Remove the overwhelm your customers feel when having to decide between a bunch of brands that look and sound the same. You'll be different. Communicating to them in their world, not from yours will build trust and showcase your empathy.
It’s time to change the story of how you communicate
Most organisations default to a design-led approach when it comes to their brand identity, with a smattering of strategic thinking thrown in to back things up. Thinking that comes from the head, not the heart.
Your Brand New Story® speaks to – and from – the heart.
Right now, the world needs brave leaders who are prepared to step into and make decisions from their organisation's collective heart. That space deep within where their evolutionary story resides. A purpose-led story that has the power to shape them, their brands, their employees, their customers and the wider world... for the better.
How do I know all this?
When I was meditating last week that quiet voice within said:
‘All this time you thought you were shaping Brand New Story, Brand New Story was shaping you’
It’s taken me five years to realise I was never in charge of this company. This company has been shaping ME that entire time.
And, I'm guessing, it could be the same for you?
Right now there are thousands of stories in the world that need to change. Some of the biggest we must evolve include:
the story of how we produce and eat our food
the story how we travel from A to B
the story of how we dress ourselves
the story of our health
the story of where we live
and the story of how we power our lives.
Within each of these stories there exists Brand New Storys' waiting to be born. A vast collective of purpose-led stories that will transform all those toxic stories into healthy ones whose evolution our very existence depends on.
Your Brand New Story® is timeless and magical – and it’s already floating around in the ether, waiting for you to discover and tell it, before it’s too late.
But the clock’s ticking.
So many business leaders are running around like headless chickens. Headlining their organisational strategies with wishy-washy purposes even they don’t buy into, relentlessly casting their organisation as the hero of its own story (instead of their customers) and filling the world with boring content that fails to connect with people and does ZERO to solve the most pressing challenges of our time.
Imagine if every business leader found the courage to tap into their story and create one of the many Brand New Stories humanity needs in order to shape a better future and restore this beautiful planet we call home?
So my question for you this National Storytelling Week is not: 'Which story is your organisation seeking to TELL?
My question for you is: ‘Which story is your organisation seeking to CHANGE?’
