4 requirements that every corporate story must meet

In my opinion, a good and distinctive corporate story must meet at least four requirements, which we will explain in this blog. You can then immediately apply this knowledge to analysing, compiling or polishing your own corporate story. A corporate story is the core story that distinguishes your company in our dynamic world. It is your strategic compass for the future and the starting point for all communication. A corporate story therefore represents the spirit of yourself, your company or your product or services and conveys a feeling with which those involved - both internally and externally - can and want to identify. Thus defined, a corporate story has an extremely important function when it comes to your reputation. All the more reason, therefore, to make firm demands on it.

1. A corporate story is about real values

There is still quite some confusion about what real values are. Many organisations use rhetoric such as 'We put the customer first' and 'A deal is a deal' and call these their values. But these are not values. They are principles. Important principles, but they alone will not win the sympathy of your customer or anyone else. You will, by looking for your real values - also called ideals of meaning: why do you do what you do? What are your deepest motives? Defining such a meaningful value is very simple, as something that is worth striving for. Indeed, the why of your thinking and doing. It could be 'respect' or 'equality', for example. Or 'sustainability'. As a mnemonic device, a value is always a noun and never a verb.

2. A corporate story is a story

This is also an indication of what a corporate story is not. It is not a popular edited policy document. Nor is it a more elaborately worded vision of the management. Nor is it an 'About Us' on your website. With that a corporate story must be a real story, it must also contain at least the classic story elements. Elements that are expressed in the so-called "Freytag's Pyramid" or "Drama-arc" which is still used by the world's greatest writers and storytellers of literature, drama and film; the protagonist goes on a journey, undergoes all kinds of experiences, overcomes challenges and emerges from the journey purified.

3. A corporate story is about emotion

A corporate story must above all be about emotion. For it is emotion that makes a corporate story binding and captivating. So it is also the emotion that determines whether a reader or listener can identify with you, your organisation or your product or service. How do you bring that emotion into your corporate story? Quite simply, actually. By asking yourself what specific story elements do to you and what they trigger.

4. A corporate story is reflected in all communicative expressions

An important function of the story is to strengthen the identity process in the organisation. This only works if the story is incorporated in all communicative expressions, so that (parts of) the story emerge and are used everywhere. Consistency is therefore an important condition for success. Through constant repetition in all forms of communication and in all possible ways - we are talking about storytelling - the corporate story helps people to connect with your organisation's story and to actually participate in it.

Getting Started

Do you want to start storytelling right now? You can start by taking a look at our websites storytellingpeople.nl, storytellingpeople.com or corporatehistory.com.

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For more than 30 years Storytelling People has been recording corporate stories and bringing them to life with storytelling and community building.

Storytelling makes the abstract corporate story accessible in stories by and for people.

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