Life is emotional. So is business, whether you want to admit it or not. Sure, you might not be able to cry at your desk everyday or throw temper tantrums in the break room, but emotions do come into play in business.
Organizations use emotion to make you care about their products, services, and causes. They use it as a form of persuasion, which is the art of making you desire something you might not otherwise.
Emotion persuades you to buy, subscribe, follow, donate, act. It’s emotion that motivates employees and boosts productivity. It’s emotion that increases fundraising campaigns. It also helps leaders and boards of directors embrace change or investment opportunities. It’s what hooks venture capitalists (that and numbers—they do like their numbers). And it’s what makes capitalism work.
In one way or another, emotion is how businesses achieve their goals. The way they wield those emotions is with story.
Story can educate, inform, entertain, inspire, persuade, motivate, instruct, and move people. It captures people’s attention. It sticks in their brains. It changes them.
Good stories grab an audience’s attention and holds it until the point is made. It doesn’t matter whether if it is for a business or in a novel. Story works, when done well.
Story trumps all other forms of business writing—white papers, articles, marketing, web content, and the like. They are all made better when paired with storytelling techniques.
This is great news for writers. We love stories and can find the thread of plot among the facts, statistics, rhetoric, jargon, and agenda. We know how to take those bare, soulless bits and spin them into a tale that will hook the audience and make them pay attention. Statistics can’t do that. Not alone.
The reason story cuts through the boring facts is because of emotion. Forget the algorithms. Those only work on an intellectual level outside of feelings, which automatically undercuts the ability to persuade.
Story brings the reason, but, more importantly, it brings the why.
Why should someone buy this product? Use this service? Why should they care? Why do their dollars matter in this cause? How will their lives be better with this widget? How will someone else’s life benefit?
The why is the key to all story. Why does what is happening matter to the protagonist? In the case of business writing, the protagonist is the target market. They are the every person who will relate to the story or be moved by it.
There is a reason politicians always tell stories about regular people in their speeches. It humanizes a bill, platform, idea. It gives it depth and tugs at the heartstrings, which is what is necessary to convince someone to believe, to join, to support, to buy. That is the true power of story in the public realm, outside of its normal trappings and mediums. That is the power of a story written to persuade. And businesses have been using that power for decades.
Think about that old Ikea commercial with the lamp. Do you remember that one? In it, Ikea shows an old lamp that is being thrown out. It makes you care about the lamp in 47 seconds. Then it tells you how silly you are to care and to go buy a new lamp at Ikea. The twist and spark of humor worked. It turned the story on its head and was highly persuasive. If you haven’t seen the spot, go watch it now.
That is the power of story. It is the power that all businesses use. All successful businesses, at least.
This is why you should add story elements to all business writing, no matter the form. Yes, even those boring white papers. Every type of writing benefits from story elements and techniques. The trick is to know how to apply them and when.
In a story, the protagonist strives for a goal only to be blocked along the way. The story shows the struggle between what the protagonist wants and what is real. It also allows the reader to take part in the journey, becoming emotionally invested in the outcome, and reveals reveals a bit of truth, which allows the audience to understand better. But it also lets them laugh or feel or be inspired.
In a business piece, the story might show a protagonist’s life before and after using a certain product or service. It might talk about how a law affects them. No matter the tact you use, the story must focuses on people, not products, services, bills, or statistics. The story must highlight the benefits to the user, not the features of the item. It’s always about people, not things.
Story is human. It’s how we relate to each other and share our history. It’s how we reflect humanity and engage with one another, which is why it is the best way to make an impact.
Businesses need story to succeed. As a writer, it is up to you to find the story and bring it to life in every project, even the nonfiction, corporate ones. Don’t save those techniques for your novel alone. Use them to strengthen your corporate offerings.
It is more important now than ever to diversify your portfolio of services. Adding corporate storyteller to your list will help you survive difficult times, like a global pandemic with interminable lockdowns, or rebounding from one.