The State of Stories Today: Shaping Your Company’s Mission
Today’s most successful businesses are built on their story. It’s how you effectively break through the information overload we live in.
Companies with stories at their core beyond just creating a narrative around which to market their business. Their story shines through their products or service in all aspects and through every action. And it is action, not advertising, that makes them successful. The best-run companies, all the way from small startups to huge corporations, manifest everything — from product design to customer service to marketing — around their story.
Stories have been around for a very long time. Cavemen told the first stories on the walls of caves. Today, we post “stories” all the time on snapchat, or use a story to explain a crazy night out to one of our friends. We all enjoy a good story; it captivates us. This captivation is a mix of chemical reactions happening in our brains and throughout our body comprised of mostly three different hormones: Dopamine, Oxytocin, and Endorphins. Each has an acute effect on certain emotions.
Dopamine: Feel more focused, more motivated.
Oxytocin: Feel more human,bond, and be more relaxed.
Endorphin: Feel more creative, more relaxed, more human.
This analysis comes from David JP Phillips, a great storyteller himself. Have each of these hormones induced in his Ted Talk.
A story gets your whole brain working; it’s like fireworks in your head. And it’s quite a show.
What’s even crazier is that, “When we tell stories to others that have helped us shape our thinking and way of life, we can have the same effect on them too. The brains of the person telling a story and listening to it, can synchronize,” says Uri Hasson from Princeton.
If you want to go a bit more scientific with this idea check out this video on the Emotional Arc of Stories.
When you tell a story that people believe in, that people want to experience for themselves, your frontal cortex is going 100 mph, and for the people listening, their frontal cortex are lighting up too, not literally, but like the fireworks. And guess what our frontal cortex does? It’s the control panel of our personality and our ability to communicate, and so there is a science behind storytelling.
So how do we apply this to the workplace? In David’s his talk I learned about his method that we can all apply in our lives and at work called Functional Storytelling: Where we need to three things with our stories
- Need to believe in them
- Write them down
- Index the responses to them
Do these three things and you will start learn the ability to shape the way your audience, customers, investors, etc perceive what you’re saying and how they will respond. When you believe in the story you’re saying it’s authentic and even if it comes out choppy at first the emotion is there. I’d rather listen to a story said through tears or in between gasps of breath from laughing than a smooth monologue about an inspiring experience. That’s because it makes me feel, it’s the Oxytocin.
Before you can put the effort into your stories, you need to remember them. WRITE THEM DOWN. Writing allows us a unique connection to our stories and how we want to remember them. It makes us think step by step and to reflect on what parts had the most impact on the overall experience. You’ll also get a better idea of what you were feeling which leads into the last part.
Index the response you get. What were you and your audience feeling during and after the story. What parts pulled you in, what parts didn’t. In this case your audience could be one or two people. But ASK! If you can pinpoint the hormone that you think you are influencing than you’re set.
Build your armory of stories and understand how each story will affect your listener because it could be the deciding factor that a customer uses when buying your product, that an investor uses to make the leap of faith in your company, or the inspiration that your tribe craves in the pursuit of innovation and growth.
The last nuance to all this feel-good story telling advice is that, that’s all it is. Advice. “Marketing something to believe in” are all action verbs. There’s a reason for this. Your story has to be mobile. You have to be a storydoing company. Building from here is essential to a timeless brand.
From the StoryDoing company’s homepage, the concept behind it is simple:
“The premise of the project is that there are two kinds of companies in the world today: storytelling companies that convey the story of their brand, business or product by telling that story, usually through PR or paid advertising; and storydoing companies that consciously convey their story through direct action. StoryDoing companies use their core story as an organizing principle for activities throughout the company: new product development, recruiting, compensation, partnerships, as well as any communication that they create. Our hypothesis is that storydoing companies spend fewer dollars on paid media, and the dollars they do spend work harder which makes storydoing companies more efficient. This site contains the results of a first round of analysis of 42 different publicly traded companies. We’d love for you to have a look at the methodology, the criteria, and the results, and let us know what you think.”
Mastering these simple and powerful methods is important to learn how to stand out as a company with a mission. And remember, as humans, we are here to find meaning. We are also here to help others find that meaning in their lives and in the things they do. Everything else comes secondary to that “why.” We want to believe in ourselves and in the notion that we are here for a reason. We want people, companies and products in our lives that make it easier to do so. That is human nature. And so to market something to believe in . . . that is infinite.
