Storytelling has enormous value for those involved in marketing. Corporate storytelling is now a powerful tool for companies that have understood its importance and use it as the main means to empathize and transmit emotions to the consumer, the main recipient of corporate communication, with the aim of increasing the popularity of the brand and the the resulting sales.
The corporate storytelling carried out by companies is not only aimed at real and potential consumers, but is a strategy that is also implemented with their employees, with the aim of generating trust, sharing the values that represent the company and humanizing it. The ultimate goal? Increase the worker's sense of belonging to improve his work performance.
The advent of digital has allowed everyone to communicate and leverage corporate storytelling to tell and tell. Today even the small entrepreneur has integrated history into his communication strategy to empathize with his target, often small and affectionate.
Corporate storytelling is inspired by the narrative techniques of the 59 novels and each company story usually contains 4 elements that ensure an emotional connection with the audience:
- Hotspot : Any story begins with a problem to solve. In the context of business stories, this problem concerns the consumer who seeks the solution to overcome his difficulties.
- dilemma : is the point in each story at which the protagonist performs the first of a series of actions.
- action : is the development of events that accompany the protagonist of the story towards the happy ending. This stage is the focal point to create empathy with consumers.
- target : the resolution of each story and the reconstitution of a happy ending. All corporate storytelling needs to make this resolution explicit, which is made up of precise consumer choices and effective, emotional messages that underline its benefits.
The characters in a company story are usually:
- el hero – is often brand related and tasked with finding a solution to the problem.
- el adversary: opposes the hero's actions, it may be a flesh and blood person or a set of unfortunate events or challenging circumstances. In any case, the opponent represents the main obstacle that stands between the hero and the happy ending.
- their and helpers : Although they are not always objects in the physical sense, they represent everything that helps the hero accomplish his feat.
The fusion of marketing and storytelling has allowed us to change the way the company communicates with its interlocutors and also the way it presents itself in the market. The brand awakens feelings through its history, with the aim of building a deep relationship, an emotional connection, between the company and its target audience. It does this by giving life to a narrative universe where characters, places, values, themes and actions combine to communicate a brand message.
How much the pandemic has affected the way brands talk about themselves
If over time the way brands speak had remained unchanged, the global pandemic, due to Covid-19, has inevitably brought changes from this point of view as well.
The difficult moment that we have faced, and that we still face, has disrupted the lifestyles and daily lives of consumers, causing a real change of direction in consumer habits. Life has been completely interrupted and companies, which until recently had success stories, have had to modify their repertoire to satisfy new needs, new problems and a new daily life. Therefore, we have moved on to narratives with a focus on personal care. The days of consumption were now oriented towards home life, prudence, reciprocity, pain and the elaboration of mourning. As Andrea Fontana, sociologist of communication, says, we have gone from the winning self to the redeeming self, or rather, from the victorious self to the wounded self that rises after a "defeat" and wants redemption.
Some brands, to show empathy with their target, have opted for a temporary revision of the logo, such as McDonald's, which, to raise awareness of the importance of social distancing, has decided to separate the iconic arches.
In addition, the pandemic has also changed the characters of the narrative, today represented by the new heroes, namely, nurses, doctors and all the health personnel who in this fight against the virus have come to the fore, risking their own lives to save that of others. .
From storytelling to storymaking: the importance of taking a position
Covid-19 has challenged and forced the entire world to get used to a new normal that must be completely reconstructed and all of this has been a great test for brands, which have not only been asked to change their way of communicating and to say it, but to put the narrative into practice through real, authentic and coherent actions with corporate values.
And it is precisely in this way that we move from Corporate Storytelling to Corporate Storymaking, a broad, conscious narrative aligned with the problems of people who have never before directed their attention to sustainability, diversity, the environment, the protection of rights, care for oneself and others. For each story creation, specific narrative sets are created within which the story itself is embodied.
