Storytelling is a method in which facts, ideas, products or information are conveyed to people by means of invented or real stories. Through the entertaining and emotional means of expression ‘story’, the communicated information should be attractively presented, therefore well received and remain in the memory in the long term.
Where and how is this form of communication useful?
Storytelling is used, among other things, in knowledge management and employee training in companies to convey data, values, goals or knowledge to employees in a very targeted manner. In children’s and adult education and journalism, the narrative form is used to convey information in a simplified form or as metaphors or examples.
Psychotherapy uses stories to illustrate problems and work out solutions. In the areas of advertising, PR and marketing, the easy catchiness and emotionalizing effects of stories are used to anchor messages in the memory of consumers and users by means of various varieties of storytelling.
The most important areas of application of storytelling
- In the field of knowledge management, security regulations can be explained using a comic strip with a fictitious employee as the hero.
- Child and adult education uses Role plays to illustrate problems in class.
- Journalism uses a fictitious human fate to explain a crisis situation, for example.
- We probably all know all of us in advertising Commercials with sympathetic protagonists and plots that move you to tears.
- In PR and marketing, for example, storytelling can be used to present a company history.
Objectives of storytelling
Information about products, data and processes is becoming increasingly important and more and more authorities are courting the unfortunately limited receptivity and attention. This makes it all the more important to convey complex issues in an easily understandable and memorable way.
With storytelling, messages, facts and data can be conveyed in an easily comprehensible way and anchored in the memory. In many industries and areas of companies, however, this is as vital as it is complicated, because the information to be communicated is not only becoming more complex, but also increasing in scope.
The many faces of storytelling
Storytelling tries to present information in a simplified and clear way. In this way, the interest of the audience is aroused and at the same time the message is stored effortlessly and sustainably in the memory. The main goal of storytelling is therefore to simplify information, to prepare it in an appetizing way and thus to convey it to the addressee in an intellectually easily consumable way.
Storytelling has many faces and takes place in many media.
This can be a speech in front of employees or a multimedia show at a well-attended international congress, but also literature, songs or TV commercials or advertising videos with an audience of millions use the mechanics of storytelling for successful communication.
The Internet in particular allows and supports multimedia and, if necessary, interactive storytelling with media formats as diverse as sound, text, video, images. Online versions of newspapers and magazines present reports in which they present stories by means of images, texts and sounds in such a way that the user can navigate them interactively.
The user can not only simply watch a video, read texts or listen to audio files, he can also help shape the course of the story and freely choose the depth of its information. The New York Times provides a nice example of this narrative style with its interactive story.
These ingredients or properties have or need a captivating story
- A reason
- A hero/heroine
- A conflict with which she begins
- She triggers feelings in her listeners
- It goes viral. That means it will be told on!
So you should never tell a story without reason, i.e. without cause. If you only want to tell stories because this form of communication is trendy at the moment, you will fail. A good reason provides your ‘narrative’ with the necessary driving force. You can find powerful reasons for a successful story in the brand core, in the mission and when you trace the driving values of your company.
Think of a performer, a ‘hero’ with whom your audience will like to identify.
Let this main character tell and live through your story as a representative. He doesn’t have to be a superman or superwoman, it’s enough if he or she is an average consumer, employee of your company or user of one of your products.
Introduce this actor with all his human advantages but also weaknesses, so that the listeners/viewers can easily identify with this character and are happy to follow him into the depth of his narrative.
A particularly attractive lure to captivate an audience is conflict, a dramatic aspect. The American teacher of creative writing, Robert McKee, therefore claims, not without reason: “Stories come from the dark side.” That’s why an ideal starting point for a captivating story is always a problematic situation or life situation.
In this aspect, this crucial ingredient, lies the secret of the tension that we urgently need so that we are really listened to attentively. Do not address the problems of your brand or company, but focus on the problems of your customer or user, for whom your product or service is intended to make his sometimes difficult life easier. After all, your story should entertain.
Emotional involvement is useful, even indispensable.
Even if the reason for your story is that you ‘only’ want to inform your audience, your story should still arouse feelings, empathize with your listeners, make them suffer and make them laugh from time to time.
Like a good joke, which is basically a mini-story, good stories are told. They go ‘viral’ and begin to lead a life of their own. Some people still know this from fairy tales. They have been passed down orally through generations and have lost none of their captivating effect. They have even been revived in ever new, modern forms and media formats. Social media offers completely new opportunities and options to spread our story.
Translated into ‘marketing speak’, our five ingredients now read like this:
- a brand as a meaningful ‘Reason Why’
- A user, customer with whom you can easily identify,
- a problem, a dilemma, a conflict that demands a solution
- Emotions, feelings that need to be awakened in the audience
- a narrative style that carries the potential of viral spread: e.g. social media
Summary
Storytelling is popular in all kinds of industries and disciplines. Journalists, educators, therapists and, above all, the marketing and advertising industry use this method to convey messages and information with the help of stories.
Stories are ideal for activating their audience, involving them emotionally, getting them excited about something or binding them to a service or brand in the long term. With the means and abilities of history, information or advertising messages reach their recipients more easily and are remembered more sustainably.
Storytelling in its different varieties is suitable for very different media channels. The medium of the Internet in particular is suitable as a platform for telling stories – including interactive ones. Thanks to the possibility of processing short videos, texts, sliders and animations, social media in particular allow many entertaining and memorable narrative styles, exciting multimedia presentations and entertaining forms of reportage.