Storytelling — The Key to Giving You the Competitive Advantage
Before video, before books, and before written language – there was storytelling. Oral storytelling is how history, culture and civilization was passed down from generation to generation. These thousands of years later, it is still an important method of communication. A good story conveys a message quickly and entertainingly, more importantly it’s memorable.
Good storytelling in business is just as important. Branding is all about telling your brand’s story and marketing is a storytelling process. Nothing sticks in your mind (or the mind of a consumer, client, or vendor) like a good story. It is memorable and easy to understand.
Nevertheless, telling a good story is far from easy. It takes thought and structure for information to be transformed into a story. This is especially true when it come to business research and analysis.
How many times have you seen research or analysis from a vendor that is simply a bunch of words stating, “this went up 5% and that went down 10%”? In truth, that kind of statement is neither analysis nor storytelling, it is just a statement. It is not memorable and much easier to create than doing actual analysis and much, much easier than building a story.
A more robust research firm will utilize good storytelling techniques. Their storytelling will lead you down a path. You will start to see the facts come to life. You will be able to foretell the potential outcome of the research and analysis before you get to the end of the information being presented. It will make an impression, will stay with you longer, and it will be easy to remember and fully use in your job.
When analysis or research is presented in “research speak” or with simple “up and down percentages” the only people in your organization that will understand the full meaning of the work are those with experience “interpreting information.” However, when storytelling is incorporated you can pass the research on to those in your organization that are inexperienced with data-heavy information. With storytelling, they will fully understand and can utilize the information in their everyday job function. Now your research purchase is available for use by every department in the organization. The sales team can utilize the section that best fits their needs. The marketing department can quickly take a storyline to build-out promotions and materials. The public relations group can easily write press releases highlighting key facts and storylines that will resonate with your customer base. In essence, your research purchase is doing double duty, increasing your return on investment, and adding value by increasing your advantage over the competition.
The FUSION team are experts and highly experienced at building a storyline for your research, data analysis and trade communications. Let us show you how storytelling can benefit your bottom line.