Once Upon a Time:
The elements of a great story
For small businesses hawking homemade soaps and corporations selling
expensive electronics, the elements of a good story are the same.
Keep It Short …
There is a reason no
one wants to listen
to Aunt Rita telling
stories about her
cats over supper,
according to Paul
Smith, author of
Lead with a Story:
A Guide to Crafting
Business Narratives
That Captivate, Convince, and Inspire.
“She ends up going
on for 20 minutes
about a two-minute
anecdote,” he says.
“Good stories should
be short and concise.
You can tell a story
with context, action
and a result in three
to four minutes.”
… and Simple
A good storyteller
doesn’t use a lot
of jargon or complicated language.
Storytelling strategist Judi Ketteler
believes the best
stories are the ones
that can be understood by a kindergartner. The reason:
“It means you’ve
cut away all the
jargon and boiled
the story down to its
most basic form,”
she says.
Use Emotion
Including details
about overcoming
challenges, celebrating pivotal moments
or racing against
the clock helps keep
listeners tuned in.
“Even in business
stories, there has
to be an emotional
component; otherwise, stories are
boring and unmotivating,” Smith says.
Practice
We’re not all natural
storytellers, Smith
says. Practicing
telling your stories
helps to ensure
they have maximum
impact. To help its
executives perfect
their content and
delivery, Procter &
Gamble hired Hollywood directors to
teach storytelling
techniques.
the more we want to know about the businesses
we’re supporting.”
Research shows that we prefer to support small
businesses that struggled to succeed. Neeru Paharia,
an assistant professor at the McDonough School of
Business at Georgetown University, notes that focus-
ing on the modest beginnings and the struggle to build
a business helps establish an “underdog narrative”
that consumers find relatable.
It might be one of the reasons that Nantucket
Nectars, a big beverage producer owned
by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group, still
promotes itself as a business that started
with “a blender and a dream.”
“A lot of companies use underdog
narratives in their branding, stories of
starting in a garage with few resources
and a lot of challenges,” says Paharia.
“Consumers relate to these narratives. A
lot of people feel like underdogs and want
to support companies that are in similar
situations. It’s rooted in the American
Paharia co-authored a research article
in the Journal of Consumer Research on
underdog narratives, which found that
companies that use stories of overcom-
ing challenges, pursuing a passion and
achieving success despite tough odds
stand out from the competition and develop con-
sumer loyalty. The approach has been used by several
national brands: Clif Bar includes its underdog story
on its wrapper, telling how founder Gary Erickson
went from living in a garage and making test bars in
his mother’s kitchen to running a multimillion-dollar
business; in 2011, Adidas launched an “Impossible is
Nothing” campaign to share the underdog stories of
famous athletes.
Nantucket
Nectars, now
owned by Dr
Pepper Snapple
Group, still tells
the founding
partners’ story.
Inspiring Change
It’s not just consumers who need to hear business
stories. Paul Smith, author of Lead with a Story:
A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives That Captivate, Convince, and Inspire, believes that storytelling is an essential leadership technique—as long
as it’s done right.
“If you’re trying to decide on a five-year strategic plan, you don’t need a good story,” Smith says.
“But when you have a new strategic plan and you
need the sta; to understand the vision, buy into it
and work toward it, then you need a good story.”
