Blog

Marketers often talk about stories as if it were one thing. However, multi-stakeholder companies and brands need to consider different answers and priorities by streaming a series of stories to a variety of audiences at different times. The reason is simple. The things that make a brand attractive in one context are different from what they might be in another context. The tendency sometimes changes significantly depending on what people appreciate.

With this in mind, the Blake project developed the corporate storytelling workshop.

Building and communicating brand value through story

In this unique strategic storytelling workshop for a customer brand, experts from The Blake Project 5-7 use proven models, techniques and best practices in brand management to build the most beneficial story structure.

Through highly simplified exercises, the teams build a brand story structure that motivates the target customers, creates strategic clarity, builds an emotional connection and, above all, identifies the unique and authentic company characteristics that determine the overall implementation of the brand story.

This workshop can be held online or in person and is aimed at 8-15 people. It can only be equally effective with marketers or a cross-functional group. (Note: If the workshop end product is to be used beyond marketing, we recommend that other functions participate in the workshop itself.) Each corporate storytelling workshop is tailored to customer requirements. With the optimal mix of method education and hands-on creation, this workshop offers marketing teams a repeatable method for designing brand stories.

In this important workshop, marketing teams build new skills and develop a story structure that controls the entire brand and / or organizational storytelling. It manifests itself in a summary that often plays the role of the brand's creative mission to support teams. The requirements associated with this decision document lead to very critical thinking about what is really most important for the brand and its audience. By practicing this level of focus in the strategy process, the entire downstream execution – both the product and the marketing – becomes much more consistent and resonant.

Successful brands always need new points of conversation

For brands to tell all of their stories effectively, they not only need to identify the different story streams (and who they are addressing), but also have to look for common points of reference. To achieve a balance, sufficient consistency between the different streams is required to ensure consistency while at the same time making each story stream specific and credible in itself.

Working with companies and brands from Wall Street to Maine Street, we identified six streams of stories. Each is dealt with in the corporate storytelling workshop.

1.Product – The story of what you sell is the story for consumers why they should love what you offer. This story focuses on desire and distinction. It explains why your product or service should take precedence over bags and loyalty to competitors.
2. Leadership – The story of how and where you lead is often spread in the media and deals with influence, attention and innovation. Brands with strong leadership stories are current and interesting because they are the opinion leaders. These are the brands that break stories that turn heads.
3. Culture – This is the history of your work. It explains what all of your employees agree on and where you are going together. At best, this story sometimes inspires and guides a large number of people across large areas to work together in a way that is exciting and rewarding.
4. Community – the story of who you interact with and what you talk about. Each brand works with a number of communities – through their various sponsorship, philanthropic, and online activities – and each community needs to see aspects of that story that are specific and important to them. The choice of communities and the type of interaction speak volumes.
5. Ethics – the story of how you work. The reputation today depends more than ever on factors. Ethics typically included environmental impacts and the integrity of the supply chain, but the criteria now add diversity and security. These are important lines of action for regulators and government.
6. Investment – This is the story of how you are funded and what you return. The focus of the story depends on how you own it (listed, private equity, VC, private property) as the story has to be about investor performance and reporting expectations.

Find courageous ways to connect in the corporate storytelling workshop

When looking for new and bold ways to connect a brand's competitive, altruistic, ambitious, social, collective, and financial stories, the brand really needs to be treated as an interdependent ecosystem. one that is perceptually independent of the way it is organized in terms of corporate structure.

Such an approach aligns and balances the priorities of different interest groups with potentially very different agendas and offers a broader and more comprehensive context for discussions, exchange of views and decision-making. The most interesting thing, however, is that previously unrelated storylines can work more closely together and brands can therefore tell more comprehensive stories overall.

The results of the Blake project's corporate storytelling workshops have proven crucial for startups, emerging, regional, national and global B2C and B2B brands in the following areas:

• Capture engagement
• Define winning counts
• Respond to competitive threats through brand messaging
• Build an emotional connection
• Ensure that internal and external communication stays on the brand
• Perception that the value of products and services is high and unique
• Development of the next sales arguments
• Anchoring the brand culture with an “own” story
• Educate organizations and brands about best practices in storytelling strategy

Developing a compelling story for your brand is not an exercise in copywriting, but strategic storytelling of brands expresses the universal and differentiating truths behind your marketing.

Please send me an email to learn more about how this strategic workshop can help your brand use the power of history to move their target groups. (DELIVERED ONLINE NOW)

Brand Strategy Insider is a service from The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy that specializes in brand research, brand strategy, brand licensing and brand building