How are stories told today and what role do they play in your business? Effective storytelling is not only a useful marketing tool, it can be the secret superglue that binds your team together lifting performance and passion. We share our stories of building and using the story of your business.
Hear the full audio of the event here:
https://soundcloud.com/champers-advisory/the-story-of-your-business-champers-advisory-masterclass-3
2. Story of your life and your business
• What are the top stories your business
has created recently?
• What will you be telling at Christmas,
then when you retire?
• What stories are being told to new
employees?
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3. I’m going to tell you a story
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4. Telling stories through the Champers framework
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Work
Enjoy
Succeed
Celebrate
Define vision
Create roles
people are
excited about
performing
Ensure everyone
understands what they need
to do to do a “great job”
Reward
achievement of
success with
moments that
reflect the vision
5. Creating a story for your team to get behind
• Stories are not only a way to communicate the past, stories can also
paint the future and galvanise a team behind your vision
• One final story, a story of the future, a company we are launching
Lexa.Tech
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6. Recap
3 points I’d like you to leave with
1. You need to play an active role in writing the story of your life, your
business
2. Stories reflect and re-enforce the vision and values of your business
and creates the performance culture
3. The ability to paint a picture of the future you want to happen will help
take you there
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21. 4) The Logline
A land lubber sheriff tries to kill a giant shark to protect his family
and seaside resort town.
A young man is transported to the past where he must reunite his
parents before he and his future are no more.
When an egotistical TV personality is doomed to relive the same
day over and over he is forced to learn humility in order to win the
girl of his dreams.
23. Build a brand and
create a
community
Alter perceptions
and reposition the
brand
Engage customers,
employees and
partners
Tie existing
marketing activity
together
24. 1) Creative briefs
Deliver a concept that brings
the story to life.
Through photography, video,
design, advertising,
copywriting.
25. 2) Content
Find ways of engaging your
audiences.
Websites, sales collateral,
graphic design, visual aids,
research reports.
26. 3) Test the story
Involve the team.
Encourage colleagues to tell you
their stories to feed into the
broader narrative.
27. 4) Campaigns
Use the right tools and
channels to get the story
across loud and clear.
Content marketing, social
media, PR, digital marketing.
One day you will retire and spend a lot of time looking back over your life, telling stories about your best times.
What have been the defining stories of your business over the last few years, think of 2.
I love hearing these stories and would love to hear yours.
They don’t belong to you but all of your employees and can help onboarding and ongoing culture development, delivering a team working at peak performance.
Cadbury’s boeur war 1899 Victoria
Monarchy asked for
Treat boxes to send to the troops
Quandry as Quakers did not support war
Duty of care to staff to keep them employed
Terrible atrocities on the front line, bring some happiness to their days
Decided to take the order but donate the profits to charity
Story offers a real example of the way the company was ran and some of it’s core values in practice
WESC at the core of the way we work, 50 points we cover on each point, this is how we use the framework to tell stories and grow a performance culture
Sometimes the best way to get a team behind you is to paint a picture of where you are going and what is means to them.
I’ll tell you a brief story of Lexa Tech, a company we’re building.
Hopefully I’ve set the scene for how storytelling can be powerful in your lives, in the end it’s all we’re left with.
They can help bring your team together and show how you are living by your core values.
They can set the scene for the journey you’re about to embark on
Ofcom
IBM
Canon
Phillips
Eli Lilly
Motorola
Nortel
3Com
Success in business is all about developing mutually beneficial, long term relationships with people (rather than the companies they work for).
The cold hard logic found in facts and figures only gets you so far. To clinch the deal you need to spark an emotional connection with your audiences/customers. And the best, quickest and easiest way to create shared empathy between humans is bthe same as it’s always been. By telling a story..
Life happens in the narratives we tell one another. A story can go where quantitative analysis is denied admission: our hearts. Data can persuade people, but it doesn’t inspire them to act; to do that, you need to wrap your vision in a story that fires the imagination and stirs the soul.
London Business School
5% remember stats30% remember stats plus story65-70% remember story
Budweiser's heartwarming 2014 Super Bowl commercial (in which a puppy befriends a horse) has been ranked the most popular ad ever to air in the 50-year history of the NFL's premier event, according to a study from TiVo. Because it tells a story.
Neuroeconomist Paul Zak’s research indicates that our brains produce the stress hormone cortisol during the tense moments in a story, which allows us to focus, while the cute factor of the animals releases oxytocin, the feel-good chemical that promotes connection and empathy. Other neurological research tells us that a happy ending to a story triggers the limbic system, our brain’s reward center, to release dopamine which makes us feel more hopeful and optimistic.
In one experiment after participants watched an emotionally charged movie about a father and son, Zak asked study participants to donate money to a stranger. With both oxytocin and cortisol in play, those who had the higher amounts of oxytocin were much more likely to give money to someone they’d never met.
Penn State College of Medicine researchers found that medical students ’ attitudes about dementia patients, who are perceived as difficult to treat, improved substantially after students participated in storytelling exercises that made them more sympathetic to their patients’ conditions. And a University of Massachusetts Medical School study found that a storytelling approach has also been effective in convincing populations at risk for hypertension to change their behavior and reduce their blood pressure.
Widely recognized as the leading trial lawyer of his time, Moe Levine often used the “whole man” theory to successfully influence juries to empathize with his clients.
Seeking compensation for a client who had lost both arms in an accident, Levine surprised the court and jury, who were accustomed to long closing arguments, by painting a brief and emotionally devastating picture instead:
As you know, about an hour ago we broke for lunch. I saw the bailiff come and take you all as a group to have lunch in the jury room. Then I saw the defense attorney, Mr. Horowitz. He and his client decided to go to lunch together. The judge and court clerk went to lunch. So, I turned to my client, Harold, and said “Why don’t you and I go to lunch together?” We went across the street to that little restaurant and had lunch. (Significant pause.) Ladies and gentlemen, I just had lunch with my client. He has no arms. He has to eat like a dog. Thank you very much.
Levine reportedly won one of the largest settlements in the history of the state of New York.
Stories connect people to a company or organisation which would otherwise seem to them cold, dry or outlandish. Stories have a message - obvious or otherwise - that cries out for a behavioural change in whoever’s listening to them. So whereas facts and figures educate, stories inspire action.
The language of storytelling is equally important.. Anyone can write in vague, dull corporate-ese with terms like ‘value-add’, ‘efficiency’ and ‘premium’ so. But it pays to be different. Few businesses talk in a language that people want to listen to or read. Be professional, yes, but don’t be afraid to set yourself apart. The easiest way to do that is to keep it short, concise, to the point.
This is all about cutting through the chaff to find the essence of what makes your business unique and interesting.