In my recent round of Corporate Storytelling training, I realised I was learning as much as the participants.
Recently I had the good fortune to undertake some corporate storytelling training for this wonderful NGO, the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification. Unlike many, perhaps most small NGOs – or for that matter, larger ones – PEFC has recently drawn up its own comms toolkit, ‘Raising the Bar’. This toolkit explicitly aims to foster and encourage more storytelling within the organisation as a way of garnering more attention with its various audiences, both internal and external.
As the brief specified an “introduction” to storytelling, I not unnaturally decided that it would be a sensible idea to go through various NGOs stories ¨by way of example for the PEFC team, but also, I hoped, to inspire them too. The audience was mixed – all were connected in some way to PEFC, but it was far from the case that all the attendees were comms folk.
Fascinating responses
There were just over 40 attendees for the two-hour training sessions, with each session taking place five times. I felt a ‘compare and contrast’ approach was best, with each trainee issued with a handful of questions to guide them. The results were fascinating. I not unsurprisingly selected a number of stories that I both liked and disliked, and, I realise now, presumed that all the attendees would follow suit. Not a bit of it!
Our first look was at Charity: Water’s two YouTube campaigns. This was a fascinating example of how not to present information – and retain audience interest. This first video goes through a solid list of how difficult and dangerous it can be to collect water in many developing countries. But that’s all it really does – the family it depicts is not a real family, and we never empathise with them. The second video, on the other hand, is much more effective even though it is much shorter. Crucially, it also has no dialogue whatsoever, and doesn’t show any statistics at all. The producers had clearly learnt from their first experience, because this time the message is as clear and striking as day.
Clear and compelling campaign
It was probably with this first pair of comparisons that my own ‘audience’ was in most agreement. No-one liked the first video, or at least not much, and most said that they got pretty bored by the endless thumping out of statistics. The second video, however, was clear and compelling. And that explains why this second campaign was so much more successful.
The second pair of stories were both published by the UN Human Rights organisation (pdf), the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). I have to confess to a touch of pride here, as the second of the two articles was written by my own fair hand. Indeed, that second article was an expansion of the first, and my brief for that project had been to write a fuller and more engaging series of stories that had already been published.
Emphasising empathy the key to an effective story
In the main, the PEFC audience preferred my second version (although I did not let on that I had written it myself) but I was still surprised to see that several attendees liked the first version. It was taut, to the point, they said – and the longer version hadn’t followed up on the original idea, an anonymous woman stuck in the Ugandan prison regime. That, I hasten to add, was because I lacked sufficient information to do so! But there were also criticisms of my own piece as many thought it was too ‘wordy’ and lacked sufficient empathy and depth for the protagonists. This struck me as really interesting, because whilst I’d naturally hoped that the second piece would be preferred, I hadn’t reckoned for the fact that that certainly didn’t make it unblemished.
But the third pair of stories was what really struck me. Again these two were both written (as opposed to video), the first by the Catholic overseas agency CAFOD, and the second again by Charity: Water. I very much admire Charity: Water’s drive and storytelling ambition – in many ways they sent the benchmark – but sometimes they go a little too far for my taste. This was one of those occasions. The story, it seems to be, was too much about the narrator – that is, Charity: Water – and not enough about the protagonist, a woman who lived in a village without water. Indeed, sometimes the narrative veered into outright idealisation, as if the subject of the story could never do any wrong, or perhaps was barely a human being at all.
Witnesses to a true story
But I was most surprised by the response to the final story by CAFOD. This related the (true) story of a little boy who had to fetch water early each morning before going to school. But it also related how he was beaten up one morning for his water by an older man, an encounter that comes across very sharply in the narrative. The story is told in the form of a graphic novel which does not for one moment dilute any of its impact – indeed, it reinforces it, as in one segment the drawing gives way to a photograph, and we are reminded that we are witnessing a true story.
The story is told in the form of a graphic novel which does not for one moment dilute any of its impact – indeed, it reinforces it, as in one segment the drawing gives way to a photograph, and we are reminded that we are witnessing a true story.
Why did I find all this surprising? To my mind, this was one of the most compelling NGO stories I had ever read. It seemed to tick all the boxes: it was emotive, focused on a single hero-protagonist, avoided jargon and statistics, and it was clear who the mentor was. I also really admire the way in which the form switched from the ‘graphic’ to ‘real’, something I had never seen before.
Different responses to same narrative
Which was why I found the responses of some of the participants so difficult to fathom. Some didn’t like the graphic element, whilst others found the story to be too long. Some others thought it was too dark (visually speaking), while still yet others found it too difficult to navigate. For a while I was perplexed, and really couldn’t understand why some people had such a problem with it.
But then I remembered that that was the point. I liked it, and several others did too, but that didn’t mean that everyone could or should like it as well. It was all a matter of taste and what suited one person would not necessarily suit the person next to them. There is no one single story or even technique that it is bound to win everyone over. Sure, there are certain rules that is advisable to follow, but not even these have to be followed all the time, everywhere. After all, if there was one just one single story, or even one single type of story that would affect us all, then it’s pretty clear that a set of rules or guides on how to best write stories for NGOs would fairly quickly become completely redundant.
I liked it, and several others did too, but that didn’t mean that everyone could or should like it as well. It was all a matter of taste and what suited one person would not necessarily suit the person next to them.
Variation of stories important
It’s the variation that I realised was important, a variation of both style and substance. If we all liked the same things and the same stories, then it’s very, very unlikely that the nuance of the predicament of the lives of everyday people would be successfully got across, and it is precisely this individuation that stories need to so desperately grasp.
So do you like these stories too? What works for you, and as importantly – what doesn’t? I’d be very interested to know all these details. And of course the discussions that the series of stories inspired were perhaps the most important element of all. Would you and your team like to be the centre of these discussions too? If so, do get in touch for some bespoke Corporate Storytelling training.
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