Corporate storytelling v brand storytelling. What’s the difference?
471 weeks ago

Corporate storytelling v brand storytelling. What’s the difference?

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As someone who has been a corporate storyteller and publisher for almost 30 years I'd like to start a discussion about the difference between corporate storytelling and brand storytelling as I believe they are completely different things and that there's quite a bit of confusion out there about this.

Also, I’ve been inspired to write this Blog by Lucy Kellaway (yet again), the master of spotting and outing terrifically good (bad) corporate speak. Alas, she zeroed in on the description of storytelling not so long ago (Stories are best for the bible and in novels, not the c-Suite, and, while part of me winced, I couldn’t but help agree with her. She noted that:’ There is an inverse relationship between how often companies talk about storytelling and their ability to use words nicely.’

It also got me thinking about modern-day corporate storytelling. Of course, it’s all the rage and everyone is doing it including Nike and, more recently, Wolff Olins, who has just appointed Moshin Hamid as their chief storytelling officer. It occurs to me however, that a significant proportion of storytellers are former marketing and advertising people that have taken on the storytelling descriptor as part of their attempt to stay relevant. After all, if you’re not involved in discovering, capturing, telling and ‘socialising’ a brand’s story you probably wouldn’t have a job in either marketing or advertising these days.

To me this is marketing, advertising, native advertising, branding or promotion NOT storytelling. I might use some of the skills of storytelling, but that’s all it does.

Coming as I do from the corporate research and corporate history world I approach the descriptor corporate storyteller with a somewhat what different view. So, I went hunting around the storytelling literature to see if this was just my view or was shared by others.

As Robert Mighall, author of Only Connect. The art of corporate storytelling, comments

 ‘. . . these aren’t so much the stories that stand behind a company, as those it puts forward to the world. They say less about where the company has come from and everything about were it is going.’

 Quoting Robert again because I think he really nails the point I am trying to make: ‘Branding is principally the preserve of professionals who create and manage these valuable assets. Brands are largely abstractions . . . and are only made real when they are experienced and association or anecdotes are formed about them. These anecdotes might then be shared for the purposes of advocacy . . . and it is at this point the brand starts to live through story.’

In other words the brand/product/service comes first, customers/clients use it then share their experiences and these then form part of the brand’s story.

In the corporate world storytelling is mostly being touted and taught as part of leadership, as a way of connecting with employees on the one had and clients/customers on the other, in an authentic (yes, that word again) way. It’s a tool by which leaders and managers can build emotional connection . . . after all that’s what good stories do.

Corporate stories don’t need to be created and worked up in to an experience because they already exist, they are the culture, memories (both individual and corporate), client/customer interactions that have occurred over tens or hundreds of years. With any luck the company’s story has been recorded and preserved in a whole range of internal and external documents (and, nowadays, computer files and records). Of equal importance are the memories of the people involved with the business, which is why interviews with current and former staff, management, board members, clients and related people are critical.

Corporate stories only work if they are factual and truthful (aka ‘rea’ or ‘authentic’), if the story is told well – that is, if people can relate to them – and if they share the journey of the company, the good and bad times, how the company dealt with adversity and what it learnt (or didn’t), the achievements and failures, the joys and heartache.

As a corporate storyteller it’s my job to research and then recount companies stories, not manufacture them. The latter is branding and marketing, brand storytelling, native advertising and content marketing, something quite different.