Storytelling: the oldest trick in the book, or just the latest buzzword?
Just as a picture tells a thousand words, a story can convey the essence of a brand and its messaging much more effectively than any bland corporate statement. The public relations industry is not alone in using content to tell stories: the advertising business knows only too well how to tug at the heartstrings through a cleverly told tale. Just witness this year’s John Lewis advert with Monty the Penguin – which even comes with a story telling app to continue the process.
However, while presenters at PR Moment’s recent fascinating event ‘Storytelling: the role of public relations as a content provider’ concurred that for consumer brands in particular it pays to ‘show’ not ‘tell’, at least one speaker sounded a note of caution that good marketing for B2B brands is not always just about good story-telling. Dave Stevens, Marketing Director at British Land, said that there are good reasons why B2B brands should not rush to jump on the storytelling bandwagon.
In particular, he said that the two approaches have different objectives. PR and marketing always have a purpose, while storytelling doesn’t always focus on what the business wants to achieve from a commercial point of view. Another risk is that companies begin to believe in the stories that they are telling above and beyond the day to day reality of the business. Thirdly, everyone can tell a story – so does the rush to get everyone out telling stories end up devaluing the PR and marketing discipline? “PR is about science, not alchemy,” Mr Stevens said. “You don’t need qualifications to tell a story.”
An example of how storytelling has worked well in practice was related by Hugh Davies, Corporate Affairs Director at Three. As the official maverick ‘challenger brand’ in the UK mobile telecoms marketplace, it was able to adopt different tactics from the competition to position itself in the minds of consumers. And with a massive jump in mobile data use, it made sense to focus on storytelling via social media and developing highly shareable and hugely successful content such as the #danceponydance campaign. “We needed to find more ways to show our customers that we can be human,” said Mr Davies.
Storytelling is currently one of the most discussed topics in PR – in fact as Dave Stevens pointed out there are currently 63 books about the subject available to those who are interested in learning more. But for B2B brands in particular, it seems that storytelling is best used as one of series of tools in the communications armoury, rather than the only game in town.