Storytelling in Business Part 1: Beginnings

This is the first in my Storytelling in Business series. (*Reprinted from 2020 on my other website!)

I’m pretty sure it started with Scott Harrison, the founder of charity: water. I remember watching a video where he tells his story of how he founded his well-digging charity — he was a nightclub promoter looking to do more with his life — and how he wanted to use storytelling as a way to be different from other charities. Instead of not knowing where your dollars go, he wanted to send donors stories of the people their contributions were helping.

Here’s his origin story (not the one I watched, but close enough) from the charity: water website:

Stories in business? Does that…work?

I’m a trained fiction writer, so I certainly know how to tell stories: narrative arcs, character development, plot tension, point of view, all of that. But there were a combination of things — realizing that business school case studies were really just stories, stumbling upon Scott Harrison’s talk, attending something called the STORY conference, taking a psychology of creativity class — made me realize that there is a place for storytelling in business.

That was about five years ago, and since then I’ve written a few papers and given a few presentations on the topic, but more than that, I’ve noticed it being used by brands in successful ways, and have employed storytelling myself in my freelance writing. And it really does make a difference.

I’ve been wanting to share what I know with the world, so here we go!

Storytelling in Business Series

Over the next few posts, I’ll be writing about the following:

What is storytelling in business? Character development, narrative arc, POV, setting… That’s the stuff of novels, or English majors, not something that belongs in the business world, right? But brands have discovered incredible engagement benefits in employing stories in their marketing efforts — so much so that companies are now hiring “Chief Storytellers.”

Is there data behind this? I’m a creative writer, so the only time I’ll play with science is to talk about all the studies that show how your brain fires up brighter when you hear a story, as opposed to just data or information. When you hear or read a story, your brain also produces more chemicals that trigger a deeper call-to-action response in you as well. The benefits of storytelling are indeed backed by science.

What is the Hero’s Journey? Frodo gets the ring. Neo follows the White Rabbit. The Pevensie kids go through the wardrobe. The greatest stories follow the Hero’s Journey framework: our protagonist gets a call, travels to a new realm, goes through trials and tribulations, vanquishes an enemy, and returns to the world changed. How does that apply to business? In so many ways — from framing a business’s origin story, to how they can explain their value proposition, to how a writer constructs copy for their communications.

How can I incorporate storytelling into my writing? I’ll show you.

Do you have any examples of brands doing cool storytelling? Oh my gosh. SO many. We’ll have fun.

Ok, dish: Anybody really bad at their storytelling? There’s no such thing as “bad,” only “opportunity for learning, growing, and improvement.” (Yes there are. Stay tuned.)

I’m excited to share all the knowledge I’ve collected on my journey (see?), so I’ll be back next Marketing Monday for more!