The global brand landscape is changing. Companies, from tech start-ups to global multinationals, need to adapt to a host of new factors: the surge in technology, changing attitudes towards responsibility and individuality and growing power of both media and consumers. Despite all these changes, one of the oldest tools of spreading a message is still the best: storytelling.
Corporate storytelling – creating and spreading the story of your company – has gained relevance with the spread of the technology. As we know through successful viral campaigns, a good story replants itself, and people naturally want to spread and retell great stories. An example is Rovio Mobile Ltd. The tiny Finnish gaming company, which is best known as the creators of Angry Birds, a smartphone game, was able to spark huge online interest for their game through cocky Youtube videos on ‘conflict management’.
But storytelling is much bigger than viral advertisements. Corporate storytelling can provide a tool for articulating and focusing a company’s vision and reason for being. Corporate stories provide a vehicle for brand building and communication, both internally within an organization and externally to customers, business partners and investors.
Take Sandvik Mining and Construction, a global construction and machinery equipment maker with its headquarters in Sandviken, Sweden. Sandvik Mining and Construction recently organized a series of storytelling workshops for its China employees with an aim of sharing moments “when we help our customer build their business” based on Sandviks corporate brand values. Through the exercise – which Springtime’s China team helped to organize – Sandvik Mining and Construction was able to gather some truly moving stories of when their China sales staff went the extra mile to solve their customers’ problems.
In one workshop, an employee retold the story of his colleague who flew straight from a business trip in Italy to rural China when his customer ran into trouble. He later spent all night in the customer’s workshop fixing some equipment that had malfunctioned. He left the workshop in the early morning, with a working machine, a happy customer and smile; despite a thick layer of workshop grease and oil covering his new, Italian leather shoes.
Stories, including narratives, myths, and fables, constitute a uniquely powerful currency in human relationships. Stories speak to both parts of the human mind – its reason and emotion. Indeed, psychologists have proven that three times as much information can be transmitted and stored in the listener if it is told as an anecdote, fable or story than if the facts are presented. As the case of Sandvik Mining and Construction shows, while talking about solving a customer’s problem in abstract terms is nice. Being able to tell a story about it is often much more powerful and will build a strong image of the Sandvik brand.
As stories are easily retold, they provide great value. As is often said in branding, a brand is not only a logo. It’s “what someone says about you when you’re not in the room.”
Katarina Wendt Englund is a recognized expert in branding and communication. She recently talked about branding and storytelling “The story of your brand: how good stories build great brands” an event which Springtime hosted in Shanghai on March 17th. To share your story, or talk to Springtime about corporate storytelling, contact us.
