The good arguments for why it is so important to use storytelling in corporate communication look like this in a nutshell.

Storytelling is important because…

• It brings images, senses and the people behind into the communication
• A good story conveys emotions and creates identification
• This makes the communication relevant and catchy
• It gives you the opportunity to differentiate yourself from the competition
• That information in narrative form is remembered three times better than ex. a power point with figures, analyzes and statistics

Who should tell the story and to whom?

There are several actors who can contribute to the storytelling in the company. You can look at storytelling from two sides; the formal and the informal. The formal stories are told by the management, and the informal ones are those that are created internally in the employee group, among customers, suppliers or other business partners. We will return to them.

The formal narratives are chosen, created, adapted and formulated based on what management thinks is relevant. It is important that they are perceived as genuine in relation to the organisation, so that the management does not lose credibility. The story of how the company was created and how it has grown conveys the organization's value set and culture. This type of core narrative must firstly be true, but it must also be written so that it is not a listing of events in chronological order in order to work as intended – namely to attract new customers, business partners, get more media coverage, etc.

Internal use of the stories

In the introduction of new employees, storytelling is a powerful tool. The employee will become familiar with the stories at some point, but if you tell them organized as a welcome, you convey the company's values and culture to the new employee immediately. It is a good starting point for a good start. On the new employee's introduction tour around the various departments, a fixed point may be that the employees must tell the good stories from their department. You can also have a history bank on the intranet, and ask the new employee to keep informed here. By telling stories internally, it simultaneously strengthens all employees' attachment to the internal brand, and they gain an understanding of what is unique to the organization. The stories help to gather and create community.

When working with strategy, the core narrative is an important tool, and the values are put into words through the employees' informal stories. The actual work of finding and telling the history of the organization is valuable in itself, and the finished core narrative is the culmination of the work.

External use of the stories

When you want to show the outside world what the company stands for, storytelling is a good starting point. The stories can be part of the branding, and you don't have to limit yourself to the core story, but you can also make use of stories about customers or business partners. The alpha and omega of storytelling for external use is to tell the truth. Sure, there will be details in the stories that cannot be researched, but the stories must be based on true events, otherwise you have a credibility problem.

In recruitment, storytelling is also a used tool. On a company's website, we can meet the employees when they speak about their jobs and their workplace. The company's values are often clearly expressed in statements from the employees, and work better than a list of values set up in point form.

Systematic storytelling for companies

When you have decided that storytelling should be part of the company's communication, here follows a model with four points that you can work your way through. The model's floor plan is taken from Strategic communication for practitioners (pp. 216-217).

1. Goals: You have to make it clear what the storytelling will be used for. There are several bids; internal organizational development, branding process, for marketing, for the introduction of new employees, for profiling towards potential customers or business partners. In all these cases, storytelling is a good tool.
2. Identification: All stories that can crawl and walk must be found. Here we are back to the informal stories, which should be collected and made part of the overall narrative. This can be done, for example, by the employees in groups telling each other their best memories, experiences, anecdotes, etc. It can also be done through interviews with both current and former employees, customers, suppliers and other business partners. In this phase, as much as possible must be collected, and not sorted.
3. Selection and processing: The stories must be prioritized based on the objective of what they will be used for. The stories will be of varying content, from anecdotes to longer cases with real content, descriptions of conflicts and dramas with a clear redemption and moral. The stories are processed without changing the content to simply create drama. A good story is not constructed and it will seem unreliable if it is made up.
4. Distribution and use: The stories must be produced in the forms for which they are selected; print, visual, oral. It can be advantageous to tell the stories orally internally, as they live best from word of mouth.

How to build a good story

The narrator model is one of the models you can use with advantage when building your story. The model, which now exists in many variants, shows how a good story is told and increases in tension. The vertical axis is the voltage and the horizontal is the time.

The estimate
Here the scene is set and the story opens. The receiver must be captured and made to want to linger. If you work with visual media, images and sound can be good means of introducing the story. If you work with text, the images must be created through language. The plot in HC Andersen's The Ugly Duckling is a good example of how words create images:

It was so nice out in the country; it was summer, the corn was yellow, the oats green, the hay was raised in stacks down in the green meadows, and there the stork walked on his long, red legs and spoke Egyptian, for that was the language he had learned from his mother. Around the fields and meadows were large forests, and in the middle of the forests deep lakes; yes, it was really nice out there in the country!

Presentation
Time and place, as well as the environment and the actors involved are presented here. We get to know who the main actor/character is and we get to know what is at stake. The basic conflict of the story is estimated, and everything that appears later in the narrative must be presented or hinted at. If we read further in The Ugly Duckling, the presentation here contains a description of how the mother duck lays and incubates her eggs in this beautiful scenario. One by one the eggs hatch and out come the most beautiful ducklings. But one egg is missing, and Mother Duck can't understand why it's taking so long. Finally the egg cracks and out comes the ugliest gray duckling.

Deepening
Here we can gain even greater knowledge of the main character's character, so that he or she wins our sympathy and the action moves forward. In HC Andersen, the elaboration looks like this: the ugly duckling is cannonballed in the henhouse because he is different.

Point of no return
The term originates from the childhood of flight, and describes the place on the route across the Atlantic where there is no longer enough petrol to turn around. Now there is no turning back! So also in the story. Now the main character can no longer turn around, and neither can the recipient. Now it's too exciting to pass up, and we'll have to see how it ends. The ugly duckling has now run away from the hen house and is escaping alone into the big world.

Escalation of conflict
It's getting worse and worse. The opponents counterattack, the main character changes character and has to show new sides of himself in order to survive. The duckling is unhappy, fighting for his life and about to give up.

Climax
On a hanging hair, our hero overcomes the opponents. He finds what he is looking for, wins or loses - depending on what the conflict is about. For the ugly duckling, the transformation into a beautiful swan is the climax and the solution to the problems.

Fading
The story lands, and an ending is made, which is usually harmonious, but it doesn't have to be. The classic pattern is that the hero returns home, or that they lived happily ever after. Justice may prevail. The ending is also used to establish the point or moral of the story - this can be done directly or indirectly. In The Ugly Duckling, we get more morals at the end, and we learn that the duckling is now the most beautiful swan ever, and that he is finally happy.

When you have to find the elements or people that can be included in a story, it is a good idea to use the actant model. It has been developed from studies of folk tales. The fairy tale has the strength that you can find the roles in a more or less clear form, and are therefore easy to identify. As we saw with The Ugly Duckling, a fairy tale both in its form, but also with its gallery of characters, is easy to relate to and, not least, easy to get into.

The subject is the main character and he goes after the object. In the fairy tale, it will often be a princess who is given away by the king - the giver. Often the protagonist is also the recipient. There will always be opponents to overcome in the fight for success, and he can get help for that along the way.

There are many companies that work with storytelling in daily communication, and it should not be seen as the definitive answer to all communication challenges, but more as a good and useful tool, which is used in combination with others.

Read more:

Storytelling: Tell the good stories and be successful