Shake it off: overcoming story stumbling blocks

Taylor knows.

There’s a reason the biggest star in the world today is a serious storyteller. She understands the grip stories have on us. The timeless power they have to persuade, the emotional response we have to them.

Stories play a different game with our brain to facts and data. They bypass our rational, thinking brain and cut straight to the emotional centre. And, as around 90-95% of our decision-making is based on emotion, it follows that stories can play a huge part in influencing our decisions. It’s also thought they could increase our ability to remember and recall messages by up to 22 times.

So a nice creative add-on? Hardly. Stories are legit behaviour change material. But, our love story with stories is complicated. Great comms pros understand the power of a great story and the impact they can help achieve, but they can also be pesky blighters to pin down.

During our recent webinar on storytelling, we ran a poll asking what the biggest barriers were for comms teams when it came to sourcing stories. For most, the biggest hurdles to sharing great stories were time and cooperation.

Another point made during the webinar was that sometimes people are reluctant to share their stories if they are very sensitive.

While featuring and showing the storyteller in a story helps with connection and empathy, there are techniques to tell them without showing the central character.

Voiceovers: The storyteller might be willing to provide their voice, but not their face, which you could use as audio or add visuals over the top of. If they don’t want their voice featured, you could record the voice track yourself.

Quotes and Text: Use the words of the storyteller as quotes or on-screen text to carry the story. Again, this can be done anonymously or without attribution but still carry emotion and power.

Animation: A versatile way of portraying a character, either directly or indirectly, and still creating an accurate, emotive tale.

Tracking down and sourcing stories is difficult in the blitz of a busy comms day or week – potentially the thing that keeps falling off the bottom of a never-ending to-do list. So what could be some quick wins when it comes to unearthing or sourcing a story that could support killer content or campaigns?

Online User-Generated Stories: Think comments sections, groups and forums. There’s a world of sharing online that could contain a seed of a story and it’s something today’s journalists know oh-so-well.

Story Spotting: Get geared up to listen out for phrases like “You’ll never guess what…” or “You’ll never believe this…” (and get teammates and colleagues doing the same). Stories can come from the most seemingly insignificant moments or details.

Provide a Platform: Creating deliberate opportunities for story sharing. Could you encourage meetings to open with a story? Could you provide a seasonal slot for people to share achievements?

Of course, it always helps if you have somewhere to start too. The Story Builder resource, based on the famous Hero’s Journey model used in so many Hollywood films, helps you structure your stories in the most effective way and can be used on all types of story – sign up for your free download.

And the Creative Catch of the Day WhatsApp channel provides a slice of creative inspiration direct to you daily, whether a great story, campaign or piece of content.

So, let’s pull down the barriers to sharing great stories, and produce some of the most memorable, effective comms, like, ever.