Alan Kay, now vice president at Walt Disney, has said: "Why was Solomon recognized as the wisest man in the world? Because he knew more stories (proverbs) than anyone else. Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we're all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories."
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. Stories provide a tool for articulating and focusing vision. Stories provide a medium of communication, both internally within an organization and externally to customers, potential customers, business partners, business rivals, investors, and others. Increasingly, various companies are becoming aware of how stories can serve as a market research tool, a public relations and marketing tool, and a tool for learning and communicating important institutional knowledge about effective busines practices, adapting to innovation, etc. Stories provide a tool for conceptualizing and identifying challenges and opportunities. Stories provide a powerful tool for capturing and leveraging knowledge, one that is complementary to logical thinking, what we think of as "just the facts."
There's still another way to think about stories. Stories are evocative systems of patterns. They provide a map charting the way to the future. They include travel hints in the form of viewpoints and links to archetypal story structures and themes that inspire and motivate people. As pattern systems, stories reveal patterns and bring to the surface valuable information that might otherwise go unnoticed, unharvested.
Cognitive psychologist Donald Norman (1993) explains, "Stories aren't better than logic; logic isn't better than stories. They are distinct; they both emphasize different criteria. I think it very appropriate that both be used in decision-making settings. In fact, I rather like the ordering that often happens, usually accidentally: First the data and the logical analysis, then the stories. Yes, let the personal, emotional side of decision making have the last word." (p. 128) Norman explains further, "Stories have the felicitous capacity of capturing exactly those elements that formal decision methods leave out. Logic tries to generalize, to strip the decision making from the specific context, to remove it from subjective emotions. Stories capture the context, capture the emotions. Logic generalizes, stories particularize. Logic allows one to form a detached, global judgment; storytelling allows one to take the personal point of view, to understand the particular impact the decision is apt to have on the people who will be affected by it." (p. 129)
Stories are fundamental to the way people structure information. According to Peter Giuliano, "Using a narrative approach is what helps make the information tangible and memorabe." Similarly, Donald Norman (1993) explains, "Stories are marvelous means of summarizing experiences, of capturing an event and the surrounding context that seems essential. Stories are important cognitive events, for they encapsulate, into one compact package, information, knowledge, context, and emotion (p. 129)." This encapsulation, including especially the emotional dimension, are what make stories so important for identity design, for crafting and communicating identity. Stories provide a context for anchoring understanding and for assessing and integrating new knowledge. And stories are much more memorable than facts and figures.
Stories provide a powerful tool for stating and sharing your company's vision and purpose. Stories provide a shorthand, as Welles (1996) explains: "At the heart of every good business story there lies a truth that is simple enough for the management to communicate, and so recognizable that others can quickly connect with it. SatCon Technology, based in Cambridge, Mass., makes electromechanical products for markets from aerospace to autos. SatCon's work is complex and often theoretical, best expressed as a tangle of equations on a blackboard. But chairman David Eisenhaure can boil SatCon's mission down to a single accessible idea: "We bring a higher level of intelligence to machines." As a result, Eisenhaure says, SatCon can attract its share of gifted employees."
According to Welles, "Fortunately, it doesn't take a novelist to craft a company's story. To survive the early years, in fact, most entrepreneurs develop an instinctive feel for fiction, an ability to describe vividly to others a product or a business that has yet to exist. But like successful products, good stories don't end after the first iteration. They need to be told and retold, shaped and reshaped. Still, the stories worth telling contain basic elements that both engage the listener and remind the company of where it needs to go." Welles identifies these basic elements as follows:
Stories that Make Connections
Stories show us patterns, they help us to make connections. The key to how stories work upon our imaginations is that they provide meaningful connections --- stories can help you and your customers make those meaningful connections to your company's identity. Quite a number of companies, including Nike and Time Warner, want people to connect their company with basketball superstar Michael Jordan, so they hire him to represent them. Quite a number of companies hire celebrities to represent them. The ad campaign for Milk: Where's Your Mustache? is a great example of stories and connections. There are different versions of the milk story, linked to different celebrities, TV programs, and consumer situations. For example, Whoopie Goldberg represents the story of people who are lactose intolerant. Jenifer Love-Hewitt represents people who prefer fat free milk. People can relate to movie and TV stars, athletes, musicians, comedians, and even Garfield the cat and (my favorite) Kermit the Frog. Teenage girls can relate to Britney Spears. There's a whole cast of characters whose life stories are meaningfully connected to drinking milk.
Communicating stories
Welles points out that a story "can be much more powerful than any marketing pitch. In a perilous economy, a story can serve as a competitive tool that defines a company's sense of self and its place. It's not just a question of having a story that can open wallets on Wall Street or among other swanky investor types: you need a story to tell employees, suppliers, customers, and --- most of all --- yourself. By forcing its teller to reveal what is unique about a company's aims, a story helps a company's management, acting as a useful reminder that what matters most of all is focus."
There are many ways to communicate identity design stories. Some examples include: People, such as the leader of the organization; Advertisements; Vision videos and advertisements; Product placement (linking a product to a story); and Symbols or artifacts that symbolize a story that is linked to identity design. Advertisements, in a variety of media, are one of the main ways that companies communicate identity stories. The best ads seem to convey an identity story the most effectively; they even build upon and extend the identity story.
A prime example of this is the Taster's Choice coffee ads a few years ago which presented a tantalizing implied romance between two neighbors, a man and a woman, who meet when one of them has run out of coffee and needs to borrow some from next door. These ads became so sensationally popular for themselves and for the characters portrayed, that they evolved into a mini-soap opera. A newspaper ad promoting this advertisement mini-series from November 7, 1994 (an ad for an ad!) presents this teaser: Tonight, will a simple question reveal volumes about her past? During Murphy Brown on CBS. This series of ads became a phenomenon with a life of their own --- you can't ask for better identity design!
Characters can be very important to conveying a story and presenting an identity in advertisements. We have seen this in the furor over the Joe Camel character in cigarette advertisements. Another example of highly successful advertising characters is the California Raisins. Not only did these animated ad characters promote actual raisins for the California Raisin Growers Association, as toys, they became a marketing bonanza as well.
Vision videos are a relatively new form of identity design storytelling. Mok (1996) refers to this as "Using Science Fiction to Propagate a Vision." Vision videos feature scenarios that help cupstomers envision --- and become engaged by --- how technology can be used. "Using drama and science fiction to explain ideas may be a step outside normal business practice, but vision videos can inspire valuable ideas about where a company is going and what it wants to accomplish.Companies have been born around far-out concepts, and many of the scenes envisioned in vision videos a few years ago are now realities." (Mok, 1996, p. 92)
Mok (1996) explains that in 1987 Apple Computer produced the Apple Knowledge Navigator, a "vision video," to supplement a speech by then CEO John Scully. "In the video, what-if scenarios were acted out by a nerdy professor and his digital agent "Phil" in the year 2000.The dramatization showed Phil helping the professor prepare a lecture and work on a research project with fellow professor Jill Gilbert. Phil also reminded the professor to call his mother. Although the video was never meant to portray realistic possibilities but only to create an impression of Apple as a forward-looking company, it introduced into the public mind new concepts of what technology - and engineers - could do." (p. 92) This Knowledge Navigator vision video was really the first one. It captured the imagination of the entire computer industry so that other companies imitated it. And Apple has produced other vision videos. Mok reports, "It's digital technology's wonderland of possibilities that makes an identity based on dramatization and science fiction believable."
Another example of the vision video is AT&T's "You Will" television advertisements --- a series of mini-stories showing people using near-future telephone technologies and applications. Mok explains that with its "You Will" ad campaign, AT&T positioned itself "as a company with its pulse on the future, capable of bringing fabulous technologies to everyone, even if they didn't exist yet." (p. 92) The "You Will" ads appeared both in television and magazines. These ads are very compelling and appealing --- and memorable.
Identity Stories
Stories help to tell people what you and your company are all about. The story of how your company got started may be a very powerful strategic and marketing asset. One example of this is the story of how Steve Jobs and Steve Wosniak started Apple Computer in a garage. Hewlett Packard also got its start in a garage; the garage where the founders of Hewlett Packard started their company is now a national landmark. The high tech industry has lots of stories and myths that add to its appeal.
Individuals can have great identity stories: an example of this is Hilary Swank, the young actress who seemed to come out of nowhere to win the Best Actress award at this year's Academy Awards. and the founders of various dot.com and related web sites often have compelling identity stories. One great example of this is the two brothers who started The Motley Fool investment advice business. With their jester hats, these two have a very distinctive identity.
Customer Stories
There are other kinds of stories. For example, what are the stories customers tell about a product? We often hear testimonials featured in ads, but recently quite a number of companies have started to harvest stories from customers to use in advertising and promotion. A leader in this development is Coca Cola which has established a special attraction in Las Vegas centered around stories. The World of Coca Cola Las Vegas is a combination theater, museum, and store. It has a replica Coca Cola bottle 100 feet tall where you can take an elevator ride. A Storytelling Theater shows Coca Cola ads from around the world as well as true stories about Coca Cola from customers around the world. And you are invited to tell your story too --- a small studio is set up to record people telling their stories. Here is one story that was collected this way that shows the power and authenticity of this story harvesting strategy. A woman told a story of how in World War II, when her father set out to fight on the Asian front, he took a six pack of Coca Cola. He drank or shared five bottles of Coca Cola with his buddies. The sixth bottle he saved as a talisman of good luck, carrying it with him all through the war. Then he brought this bottle of Coca Cola home to an Iowa farm, where years later, it survived a tornado that hit his farm house. What a story! You can't buy advertising like this, but you can harvest stories. This story has now been woven into the other stories that tourists experience at World of Coca Cola Las Vegas.
Related to this, World of Coca Cola Las Vegas offers special events to help showcase stories. For example, in honor of Veteran's Day, World of Coca Cola Las Vegas displayed wartime memorabilia including a soldier's sewing kit, a soldier's Coca-Cola ration card, playing cards, 1940s Coca-Cola ad reprints and more. The display featured a reproduction of the special cablegram from Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to Coca-Cola Chairman Robert Woodruff, requesting the distribution of more than 5 billion bottles of Coca-Cola to American servicemen everywhere.
Product Stories
Jensen (1999) claims that increasingly, products will need a story to distinguish themselves in the marketplace. Jensen uses as an example eggs from free-range hens. As Jensen explains, consumers "are willing to pay more for the story about animal ethics, about rustic romanticism, about the good old days." Recently I bought a bookshelf that came with a story which was set forth on a certificate that came with the bookshelf. The certificate tells the story of how the shelf was made from wood that was salvaged from an old building (the Sears and Roebuck building in Boston) and recycled. This is a story about honoring old, authentic materials, recycling, and saving forests. It's a powerful story. If you can embed a story in your products and services, it will enhance their visibility. Your story may be related to your location or even the building that houses your company. Or it may be related to a story of family tradition.
Counter Stories
As you develop your story, think about possible counterstories. Nike developed a wonderful, inspiring ad campaign centered around women and girls following their dreams to be athletes. But critics of the company policies concerning overseas manufacturing developed a powerful counter story pointing out that Nike sneakers were sometimes made with child labor, including girls, in countries such as China.
Inhouse Company Stories
Stories are important not only for customers but for employees. You want your employees to understand and share the company vision. and you want to understand the stories that employees are telling about the company so as to improve cohesiveness and focus. Recently PricewaterhouseCoopers emerged as the result of a merger between Pricewaterhouse and Coopers and Lybrand. PricewaterhouseCoopers set about to collect stories from throughout its entire international operation as a basis for developing a common vision.
According to Brown and Duguid (2000) people tell stories in and about organizations for the following reasons:
Brown and Duguid (2000) point out that narratives constitute a form of persuasion. Narratives emerge through a process of selection and definition. Narratives are texts produced by organizational actors to affect organizational action. And narratives portray the narrators as credible and competent and their ideas as worthy and good.
Using Stories to Understand Your Audience
Stories can help you to understand your audience. Two strategies for this include user profiles and user scenarios. User profiles focus on fictional characters representing members of your target audience. User scenarios take those characters and develop a plot or storyline about how they will intereact with your product or web site. I once saw a fascinating presentation of these two strategies in the context of the web site for Blockbuster video. Members of a sample family (mother, father, and teenage son) were profiled in terms of the kinds of videos they were likely to want and the web site features that would mesh with their needs and interests. Then user scenarios were presented about how these characters would likely interact with the existing web site and a proposed redesign.
User Profiles: With user profiles you can develop fictional characters based on research about who your customers are likely to be, their demographics and other characterisitics. With these conceptual models, a theme is identified based on the business objectives and the needs and desires of the largest audience. This type of storytelling serves as a guide for Web site development within a creative framework and helps the client focus on the most important goals.
Ramp Networks User Profiles. (http://www.webramp.com/news/profiles/)
User Scenarios: A user scenario is a fictional narrative of a likely consumer using the product. User scenarios can powerfully explore the use of plot. Ultimately, these scenarios present stories about how members of the target audience might navigate the existing site and how they might navigate a site with the proposed design features. User scenarios help developers envision the product functionality from the viewpoint of the target market. They force you to think the way users act. Often user scenarios are based on research, including research based on anthropologists observing people interacting with technologies. For each user, think through a scenario. Create a character for that user, and give her/him a name, a context, and a purpose to accomplish on the site. Use a goal from the list of audience needs. Visualize a story about how the character uses the site to complete the hypothetical task. (CKInteractive, 1999) IDEO, Walt Disney, Chrysler, and Gillette are examples of companies that utilize user scenarios. IDEO's engineers prepare product storyboards that could pass muster at Disney. Gillette idustrial designers have prototyped razors, toothbrushes, and coffeemakers based on ehnographic research that turns household life into anthologies of product-based narratives. These companies are no longer merely prototyping innovative products; they are prototyping innovative stories about interacting with products. Some advantages of user scenarios include: (1) They represent requirements from a user perspective, and (2) They can be a powerful technique to identify "holes" in the unfolding of the story which require design adjustments and revisions.
What are Stories?
Stories are pattern systems. Stories represent a basic and powerful universal form through which people make sense of the world and their experiences.
On a very simple level, stories are interrupted routines. Describe a routine and then interrupt it. Interrupting a simulation, or causing a slight alteration of a prototype to interrupt the routine of its planned use, is a powerful technique for generating new narratives. The report Weathering the Storm is an excellent example of this.
Stories serve many purposes. Stories show us patterns, they help us to make connections. They are tools for empowerment. Stories originate in problematic situations; they show the way out of these situations. Great stories provide us with a road map or treasure map, which outlines all of the actions and tasks we have to accomplish in order to complete the journey successfully. Stories also provide a toolkit for solving all of the problems that have to be solved along the way. We tell stories to eliminate suspects: who did what when or what caused this technical flameout? Good stories make you feel you've been through a satisfying, complete experience. Stories are a form of "expert system" for remembering and integrating what we learn. Stories are thought machines, by which we test out our ideas and feelings about some thing and try to learn more about it. Story archetypes help us to identify and understand the forces impacting upon us.
Jungian and cognitive psychologists (for example, Roger Schank) claim that stories are a fundamental part of human intelligence and imagination. We start with the mythic story patterns that appear in our dreams. Then, as we gain experience, we create stories to help us remember our experiences. Stories provide a convenient tool for remembering things. According to Rafe Martin, "Narrative is a complex, powerful, and mysterious tool, certainly one of the oldest technologies on the planet. Deep in the psyche, the world itself is a tale. Every story partakes of this mystery, every telling renews some recognition of this fundamental delight. At a practical level, stories provide us with given ways to organize, test, and simulate in the mind universal patterns of thought and behavior."
References
CKInteractive (1999). Process Audience. http://www.cki.com/htm/process_audience.shtml
Jensen, R. (1998), The Dream Society. New York: McGraw Hill.
Mok, C. (1996). Designing Business. San Jose, CA: Adobe Press.
Norman, D. (1993). Things that Make us Smart. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley.
Welles, E. O. (1996). Why Every Company Needs a Story. Inc.
Quotes about corporate storytelling
Stories are much more compelling than information. Stories differ from information in that they have a start and a finish; they talk about events, not conditions; they imply a deep relationship among the events; stories are about particular humans; and stories are told in a human voice. As markets once again become conversations, marketers need to excel at telling compelling stories. The Cluetrain Manifesto
The classic business story is much like the classic human story. There is rise and fall; the overcoming of great odds; the upholding of principles despite the cost; questions of rivalry and succession; and even the possibility of descent into madness. Mark Helprin
Having lured us into the adventure by fantasies and a taste, the great story then provides us with a road map or treasure map, which outlines all of the actions and tasks we have to accomplish in order to complete one of these passages, and a toolkit for solving all of the problems that have to be solved to accomplish the actions and tasks. Every great story will divulge a little more of this truth, and bit by bit each step of the passage is revealed. Again, all of this is going on without the story recipient's conscious knowledge that it's happening. James Bonnet
We were all warned that Algebra was going to be really difficult, whereas Einstein was told that it was a hunt for a creature known as 'X" and that when you caught it, it had to tell you it's name. Keith Johnstone
We tell stories because we have something exciting to tell. We tell stories to have fun, to entertain someone or keep them in suspense. We tell stories to let other people know what we're thinking. We tell stories to express our feelings. We tell stories to teach somebody something or to explain something. We tell stories to share ourselves to let other people get to know us better. We tell stories to give people enjoyment. We tell stories to get feelings out. We tell stories to use our imaginations. We tell stories to save our experiences forever. John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid in The Social Life of Information
Stories are linked beginning to end by the establishment of an expectation in the beginning that is satisfied in the end. Thus, good stories are characterized by a powerful principle of coherence. Stories hold their power over us as long as all the events stick to and carry forward the basic rhythm Kieran Egan
Throw your mind wide open, let your emotions run free. We work so hard to think as opposed to feel and imagine, and you've got to allow yourself to feel and imagine. Most of life's decisions --- personal decisions and business decisions --- are driven by emotions. Regardless of the guilt or innocence of the person, the attorney whose opening argument is in the form of the best story invariably wins. Virtually every great leader has been a great storyteller. You've got to let your mind run free. Peter Giuliano
Links
Location Based Storytelling: World of Coca Cola Las Vegas (http://www.nextexit.com/dap/woc/woc.html)
Always Interactive. Article about the design of World of Coca Cola Las Vegas and the contribution of storyteller Dana Atchley. (http://www.nextexit.com/dap/woc/hearth.html)
Should I? Discusses different slogan's like Nike's "Just do it."(http://metalab.unc.edu/stayfree/15/should.html)
Nike Advertising. discussion of Nike's Air Jordan advertising with links to images of ads. (http://www.middlebury.edu/~ac400/joshwebpage/nike.html)