Storytelling. It’s ingrained in us. From the time that early humans shared stories around a campfire to the rich oral traditions of the indigenous peoples, to the modern-day storytelling forms of audiobooks, streaming movies and TikTok… we all love a good story.
The ability to tell one is not just the domain of novelists, screenwriters, and those with the ‘gift of the gab’, but is a skill to be embraced by B2B brands too. It helps attract investors in the start-up and scale-up stages, helps attract and retain talent, and helps carve out mindshare with customers and prospects — increasingly more challenging in the hyper-competitive arena where most businesses find themselves.
Companies that have embraced storytelling to break through in their crowded categories include HubSpot (inbound marketing), Drift (conversational marketing), Gainsight (customer success), and Gong (revenue intelligence).
So how does a brand go about crafting a compelling narrative? Lucky for you, Marcus Andrews (formerly at HubSpot, now Pendo.io) has created a process he calls ‘narrative design’. It outlines how businesses can develop a compelling story that will help them stand out from the crowd.
What is Narrative Design?
First, let’s be clear on what a narrative is. It’s the underlying story that represents your way of looking at the world. Narrative design is the deliberate crafting of that narrative, to help businesses succeed.
The narrative design process will help you develop a story that captures the attention of your audience, help differentiate your company, and ultimately help grow revenue.
It consists of five components:
Change: Articulate a major, undeniable change that is happening in the world of your audience.
Impact: Articulate the impact that the change is having on your audience.
Adapt: Describe how the audience needs to adapt to the change.
Challenge: Acknowledge and empathize that it’s going to be hard to make the change.
Help: Introduce what you’ve built to help the audience make the change, demonstrating that you are the expert.
It’s all about taking the audience on a logical, credible and emotional step-by-step journey. It’s the art of persuasion. And guess who came up with that? A chap called Aristotle back in the fourth century BCE. He determined that a persuasive argument uses a combination of ethos (appeal to credibility or authority), logos (appeal to reason or logic) and pathos (appeal to emotions). I just knew my philosophy course at University would come in handy one day!
Adapt or die
In the wild, it’s critical to adapt to changes in the surroundings in order to survive. So too in the business environment. A key part of the story is making the case that if your customers don’t adapt to their changing circumstances, they risk being left behind by their competitors.
A great tip that Marcus offers is to create a visual that illustrates the old way of doing things, and the new way that’s required to thrive. There’s a lot to be said for the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words”.
Where does this fit with Positioning and Messaging?
Think of a sandwich. It’s two pieces of bread with some filling in between. Okay, okay, I know there are lettuce wraps these days, but bare with me.
The filling could be something as simple as peanut butter.
Or it could be a heaping of thick-cut British chips sprinkled with salt, bathed in malt vinegar with a liberal spread of butter on the bread. Alas, the ‘chip butty’ from my old country (cancel carbs culture beware).
Or it could be something more elaborate such as a medley of thinly shaved parma prosciutto, provolone cheese, avocado mayo, artichoke caponata, bruschetta and black olives.
Hungry yet? I am. It's lunchtime.
The filling defines the sandwich. Otherwise, you’ve just got two slices of bread. The story you create from the narrative design process is the filling that sits between messaging and positioning.
Positioning is the base. It’s grounded in research and data that inform the story. The story provides the structure that the messaging sits on top of, and that then informs your campaigns, content and pitch decks.
All three elements are necessary to execute at the tactical level.
So who leads the narrative design process?
This isn’t just a marketing thing. It starts at the top. The CEO needs to be involved in shaping the narrative. They are, after all, usually the primary messenger of the story. Other key people will be involved in the building process (a small team is recommended), but ultimately, every team across the organization needs to know the story, believe in it, and ultimately bring it to life.
The CEO can work with a narrative designer (internal or external) who guides the company through the process including organizing the team, creating the narrative, and implementing it.
Want to dive deeper?
Here are some great resources to learn more.
Narrative design course: Marcus Andrews created the narrative design process for business. He has developed the Narrative Design Masterclass with the Product Marketing Alliance. It’s a hands-on course that walks you through the process, how to go about getting buy-in, and making it happen in your organization. I highly recommend it.
Strategic narrative podcast: Also check out the brilliant work on strategic narrative by Andy Raskin. A great place to start is to listen to his interview on the Everyone Hates Marketers December 10, 2019 podcast where he discusses storytelling for success with host Louis Grenier.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com