Corporate Storytelling

Capture the formative

Telling stories does not sound like a trustworthy approach that one can expect in a serious business environment. Rather, storytelling sounds like fairytales and nicely arranged, perhaps even invented circumstances.

Yes, the term storytelling is strained. However, the term is quite justified. For example, in journalism and corporate communications. However, only as long as its content is committed to truth and facts. For this reason, storytelling has also become established in the information journalism of serious media. In strategic, long-term corporate communications, this is just as crucial and should increasingly displace the persuasive approach in marketing communications.

Facts meet emotions

The recording of abstracts, characteristics and facts forms the core of a strategically relevant content. This can be the development story of a company, a product, or a person as well as of anticipated future situations, which is particularly important in change management processes. This provides orientation and identification. Even with the personal presentation of an individual, an independent story sticks much better than the listing of important life stages.

Stories consist of facts and generate feelings. They respond to both hemispheres of the brain; therefore, they are much catchier and stay better remembered. What is supposed to have a lot to do with the structure of the human brain. With the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system more specifically - details, however, are known to the neuroscientists!

Strategic storytelling plays a meaningful role in corporate communications. It illustrates the business purpose – cognitively and emotionally. The purpose, which is directly connected with the company and remains identical over the years, enhances orientation, identification, and traceability, and also conveys motivation and at best instills pride within the organization.

Content that sticks

The company values that continue to shape the corporate brand, for example, have evolved from Lego's touching founding history. Self-confidence and revolutionary ideas of the founder of the Swatch brand have also  remained part of today's group identity. Equally impressive, but almost unknown, are the achievements of the microbiologist and researcher Dr. Maurice L. Hilleman, the inventor of over 30 vaccines in the second half of the 20th century. Impressive stories can also be found in companies operating in the business-to-business sector. At Tecan, for example, the innovative, ambitious spirit of the four engineers who founded the company in 1980 for technical analyzers is still reflected in the company's culture and values.