The business landscape over the years has undergone significant changes. As technology and the fabric of society change, so do the strategies used to appeal to the masses. One of today’s most effective business strategies is “strategic storytelling.”
What is Strategic Storytelling?
Strategic storytelling is the art of telling a story that appeals to your audience. This might not sound unique, but the difference between strategic storytelling and simply telling a story is that strategic storytelling is designed specifically for your audience. Masters of this art can take in the facts of the story in question along with its intended reach and build a narrative that so seamlessly connects with the audience that it feels completely organic and natural.
More specifically, strategic storytelling focuses on engaging and connecting with audiences on an emotional level. The information disseminated via these campaigns is more memorable, persuasive, and relatable than the same information might be when relayed more straightforwardly. From creating compelling plots to developing relatable characters and even using vivid imagery to fully realize their vision, strategic storytellers communicate key messages and complex ideas effectively and cohesively.
Here are some key elements of strategic storytelling, along with some of its most prominent benefits.
Building Strong Emotional Ties
Strategic storytelling is most effective at relaying messages with strong emotional appeal. For example, a business interested in changing some key aspects of its organizational mission might use strategic storytelling to show employees why the change is important. The story will likely focus on the importance of the new mission statements, typically by illustrating the problem it addresses. For instance, a business seeking to expand its charity objectives to a new area of the world might use stories of suffering and hope from those areas to illustrate the need.
Whatever the objective is, strategic storytelling is designed to support them and elicit emotion from the audience.
Audience-centered Approach
Related to the above, strategic storytelling is an audience-centered approach to communication. Instead of focusing on extolling a business’s virtues in search of more sales, strategic storytellers give the information that matters to their specific audience – no more and no less. These are very targeted stories with clear target populations interested in specific products or services. Of course, some businesses might decide to launch something that improves their general image. In this instance, strategic storytelling is used to craft the image most resonates with their general customer base.
A business interested in capturing the interest of social movements might focus on human rights and what the company is doing to uphold them. If that happens to include a service or product they offer, then so much the better. Building a communication strategy revolving around the unique needs and desires of the audience is a good way to design an effective strategic story to tell.
Emotional Engagement
We’ve touched on this before, but it’s such an important part of the approach that it bears repeating. Strategic storytelling seeks to engage emotion, not “wow” critical thinkers. The strength of this approach lies in its emotional appeal to consumers, whether the audience is people searching for a specific product, journalists seeking to spread knowledge of their work, or politicians seeking to relate to their constituency. Through emotional engagement, strategic storytellers are better able to influence opinions, foster empathy, and inspire action.
Highly Memorable Content
One of the main benefits strategic storytelling offers is its ability to make a lasting impact. While straightforward marketing might interest someone in the company or product in question, they might be more inclined to search for similar products before making a purchase. This is often done to find the best deal, and if the business in question doesn’t have the best price, it might end up closing regardless. Strategic marketing aims to create emotional bonds for a business that transcend the desire for a good deal.
Effective strategic marketing builds a connection strong enough the customers are willing to spend a bit more to stay with the company in question. The idea holds true in areas other than business, too. Politicians use strategic marketing to build emotional bonds with their constituents that ensure they vote for them. Journalists hope to develop a connection that relies on trust and appreciation. The goal for journalists is to build a reputation for unbiased and comprehensive work that stands out among other providers.
Strategic Storytelling Examples
Before we branch out into specific fields where strategic storytelling is used and why it is often the storytelling technique of choice, let’s look at a few examples.
Huggies® No Baby Unhugged
One of the clearest examples of strategic storytelling in progress is Huggies® No Baby Unhugged marketing campaign. Huggies is a diaper brand based out of Canada and in direct competition with Pampers, which at the time was an incredibly pervasive diaper brand in the country. To usurp the “throne” and win more of the market share, Huggies decided to launch a campaign designed around the company’s core values. Among others, this includes the healthy development of happy children.
To build the best strategic marketing campaign possible and boost web traffic, Huggies ran more than 600 research studies into time spent hugging and healthier development. The studies found that the two were related positively, with children who received more hugs receiving boosts to their overall development, including brain development, immune system development, and vital signs, among many other development areas.
To use the results of its studies, Huggies developed the “No Baby Unhugged” initiative. The campaign sought to educate parents on the importance of skin-to-skin hugs and how Huggies, living up to its name, enabled parents to spend more time with their children. This was especially effective in the sales of the company’s newborn diapers. Even more impressive was the company’s click-through rate on its online advertisements, which rose higher than industry benchmarks.
Huggies was able to turn the raw data from hundreds of studies and its corporate brand into the perfect narrative to garner attention from the general public. That story was told so well that it dramatically increased sales, allowing the brand to thrive for years to come.
Google – Year in Search
Each year, Google releases a “Year in Search” video that recounts the most popular searches of the year along with the stories that drove them. While these tales could be incredibly sad and promote despair and a sense of injustice around the world, instead, the brand focuses on balancing the bad with the good. It creates hopeful videos from some of the hardest events the world has lived through. For example, its 2020 Year in Search video didn’t shy away from the political and social upheaval in the United States and worldwide. The George Floyd protests, which rocked the country, were featured prominently, as was the devastating impact of COVID-19. Celebrity deaths were acknowledged while their legacies were celebrated. Kobe Bryant’s shocking death was featured, for example, but the video focused more on his inspirational words and the good he brought to fans around the world.
Instead of leaving the video at the bad, Google also focused on the good that came out of these events. The unity worldwide in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, for example, and how humanity came together in the face of unprecedented hardship as the pandemic peaked around the world were featured prominently. Strategic storytelling allows Google to create videos that accurately depict the year in question, including the bad that dominated the news while highlighting the moments of light that made the year bearable.
This campaign is strategic storytelling at its best. Google shapes the impact it wants to leave on viewers and creates the media that allows it to do just that.
How to Use Strategic Storytelling
We’ve gone over the importance of strategic storytelling and have even looked at examples of the technique in action. We haven’t talked about how to build an effective narrative that inspires your audience, be they customers, potential customers, employees, influencers, readers, potential voters, or someone else entirely. Building an effective strategic story requires some consideration. Let’s take a look at some of the key factors to keep in mind.
Humanize Your Product
The first step to creating a successful strategic story is to humanize it. The best example of this lies in the business realm. Research has shown that many people think of businesses not as soulless corporations that happen to offer a product or service, but as people. This is one of the reasons why they are so upset when the business they like does something to exploit their trust or goes against their personal values. Loyal customers feel betrayed and want an explanation and apology, just as they would in real-life relationships. In addition to customers seeing businesses as people, even the Supreme Court has ruled that, in some areas, they deserve the same rights as individuals.
What should businesses do with this knowledge? Well, if you are seen as an individual and retain some of the same rights people possess, then your strategic story should focus on humans and how the product or service in question impacts them. Instead of positioning yourself only as a competent manufacturing business with a quick turnaround, your strategic story should focus on the difference you are making in communities by providing quality products at an affordable price. This turns the conversation into a personal one that people can relate to. Note that marketing to the public sometimes differs from marketing to businesses. If you need to have two different stories, that’s okay – just make sure the B2B story is clearly separate from the B2C story.
Shared Purpose
One of the key elements in strategic storytelling comes from building a shared purpose. While following the tips above about humanizing your business and the products or services you offer is a good first step, truly effective strategic stories place the person or businesses in question in a partner role. They aren’t simply doing something for their customers/readers/voters but are rather on the same journey as them.
This example is most apparent in politics. Politicians seek to convince their constituents that they understand their needs. You often see stories about childhood poverty or abuse come to light during campaigns because it humanizes the person in question and creates a narrative about something voters can relate to. For example, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign focused on creating a shared narrative. The famous “Yes, we can!” chant embodies this approach. Obama wasn’t running for his own benefit – he was running for the benefit of everyone. He was part of their journeys, whether those stories were tragic, triumphant, or varied.
This is an approach that many politicians employ, albeit typically much less effectively. Convincing constituents that the politicians running to support their state in Congress are doing it to remedy pressing issues in the community is another good example. When successful, strategic stories highlighting local communities and relatable stories build loyal bonds between voters and politicians. When done poorly, however, this attempt can be disastrous. Voters often rightfully question how a rich person from a privileged background, as is often the case with politicians, can relate to working minimum wage jobs and living in income-based housing. When this situation occurs, the campaign is usually doomed.
The shared purpose in question must be genuinely relatable, not something you are clearly doing to attract customers, voters, or readers. If there is no substance to your claims of relatability, you might end up offending them, which is the opposite of what you are typically trying to do with strategic storytelling.
Lost Narrative
Losing the narrative is a serious concern. Building a strong narrative isn’t the truly difficult part of creating strategic storytelling plans. The hardest task is maintaining that story over time. One example of this is Starbucks.
For years, Starbucks cultivated the idea of being a “third place.” This refers to the idea that Starbucks is another common area where people congregate instead of going home or going to work. The company promoted the idea that visiting Starbucks should be as unremarkable as going to bed each night because it is just that integrated into customers’ lives.
Being third place worked well for Starbucks for a long time. They experienced incredible growth through 2000, then lost the narrative and floundered for several years. It wasn’t until the original creator of the narrative returned and guided the company back to its roots that things picked up again.
You must maintain your narrative. This means making decisions that support the image you create and following through on promises or actions that drive that narrative. Failing to do this often leads to lower sales in businesses and lower readership and constituents in journalism and politics, respectively.
How to Master Strategic Storytelling
Now we know not only the importance of strategic storytelling but also how to create an effective strategy, you might be wondering how you can master this art and use it to propel your business or personal brand. The answer here is actually pretty straightforward: make sure you have a solid foundation in communication.
Effective storytelling starts with concise communication techniques that not everyone has mastered. The most fool-proof way to gain this skill is to pursue an online master in communication degree. This kind of degree offered by St. Bonaventure University focuses specifically on communicating well with different audiences, even those that might be unfamiliar to the speaker, business, or writer in question. There are universal techniques you can employ to further your brand, but you need the educational background that universities like St. Bonaventure offer to truly thrive.
The other option to master strategic storytelling comes via long-term experience in the industry. Note that this is a much harder road to travel. Rather than seeking an education with programs designed to help professionals thrive, individuals traveling this road learn from trial and error. The problem here is that the “error” part of the equation can have real consequences for the business or individual employing strategic storytelling.
What do you think about strategic storytelling? We hope that you learned something new. Take the things you have read about today and start building a brand people want to love.
