Are you a ‘Storyteller’ or a ‘News Peddler ’? Your Corporate Story Checklist

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By Andy Green

Stories are at the heart of life. Every sales pitch, media news, even your elevator pitch tells a story. Your Brand, its story and narrative, is the most powerful ingredient for your future success.

Your narrative sits above your communications’ strategy and tactics. Stories are like the pearls in a necklace, with your narrative providing the string, connecting the different elements together.

You don’t have a choice to have a narrative. You have a choice to manage your narrative to sweat as hard as possible for you.

People prefer Brands with a story. People prefer people with a story.

Most PR and Comms professionals may regard themselves as ‘storytellers’, yet in reality they are ‘news storytellers’ or ‘peddlers of news’, relating a series of facts but often missing out on crucial dimensions: the need to create an emotional connection between you, your target and your subject matter as well as identifying powerful themes at the heart of their story.

So, how can you find out if you are storytelling or news peddling?

Here is an easy 10 Point Checklist to help you:

Does the information you are issuing:

1. Identify a Brand Purpose - a mission, a sense of what you are doing has a greater meaning and relevance to the world - and to your target audience?
2. Create an emotional engagement, something to stir people’s hearts and potentially inspire action?
3. Provide a distinctive, compelling reason to read?
4. Convey a sense of authenticity that makes it more believable and trustworthy?
5.  Extend the consistency of your Brand and what it stands for?
6. Provide a sense of your past and your future to create a more powerful story of now?
7. Use a defined ‘Brand persona’ in the telling of your story?
8. Use a number of well-established techniques to provide extra drama and vitality in the telling of its story?
9. Form part of a Story Arc’ - a distinct platform that is a strand within your PR and Content Marketing programme?
10. Does your story contain distinct icons - things that people will remember long after the communications - to make you stand out and your story memorable?

Answer ‘No’ to any of these questions and you are undermining your efforts to engage, persuade or influence. By harnessing the tools of storytelling and understanding what Brands are and the mechanics of how Brands work you can transform the effectiveness of your work, create more powerful, impactful messages.

Are you a Brand Storyteller? Or a peddler of news?
 
Storytelling and Corporate Narrative for PR workshop, led by Andy Green takes place Tuesday 22 May.

Learn more here. 

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