Informed Storytelling: Marketing’s Brightest Idea

by Robert Rivenbark

As corporate creative professionals, we must navigate shifting customer tastes, economic fluctuations, competitive pressures, technological advancements, leaner teams operating across multiple time zones, and frequent corporate restructurings. It’s all too easy in this atmosphere for creatives to dilute what’s essential to marketing success: informed storytelling.

Informed storytelling bridges the gap between internal stakeholders and creative teams. It’s the medium that transforms strategic direction into emotionally compelling stories, focusing everyone on a unified vision. It recognizes and effectively communicates how and why customers can meet their basic human needs through your company’s products and services.

In short, informed storytelling consistently delivers powerful emotional appeal to customers over time, across all digital and video media—a tasty recipe for marketplace success.

Align the Troops

Everyone executing corporate marketing directives needs clear direction to score bottom-line impact. But creative managers, art directors, motion graphic designers, copywriters, and videographers can lose focus if marketing directives lack crucial insights.

That’s where informed storytelling comes in. It ties strategic thought to creative execution through a strong narrative. It recognizes that people respond to compelling stories, not to corporate chest-pounding.

Be a SME Whisperer

What is the best way to get internal stakeholders to embrace informed storytelling? Don’t wait till the kickoff meeting to get to know them. Cultivate relationships of trust early in the game. Schedule one-on-one meetings to let busy product managers and other SMEs know you and your team are there to help them achieve their KPIs.

Go beyond that. Show interest in your stakeholders’ personal goals, challenges, frustrations, and opportunities. Being a supportive listener encourages SMEs to be more receptive to the benefits of informed storytelling, which helps everyone on the in-house team succeed. It motivates customers, too. They buy with their hearts, not with their heads.

Why Customers Value This Approach

Three ways informed storytelling motivates customers to buy. 

Share these with your SMEs and stakeholders to get their support.

1. Clarifies Strategic Objectives as Narrative. 

Without informed storytelling, strategic direction devolves into vague, abstract KPIs that lack emotional punch. What a difference it makes when Internal stakeholders articulate what they envision strategically in terms of business goals, audience insights, market position, and brand identity. Then, the creative team can translate abstract goals into compelling stories that connect emotionally with customers, encouraging loyalty and fostering thought leadership for your company.

2. Arms Creative Teams with Context and Purpose. 

Creatives perform at the top of their game when they’re inspired. Informed storytelling gives strategic creative direction powerful emotional and intellectual context. Customers need to care about why they’re buying from you. Expressing that helps creatives generate trail-blazing creative that connects with customers. So, ask your SMEs and stakeholders to clarify your corporate story up front, in the creative brief.

3. Creates Brand Consistency Across Channels. 

In our web- and social media-focused era, customer preferences are shaped across so many different touchpoints, and your messaging must compete successfully with other companies’ products and services. That’s why consistently communicating your value proposition in terms of voice, visuals, and values is essential. Consistent messaging makes it easier for customers to recognize and trust your brand. It creates a unified customer experience that encourages loyalty by differentiating your brand, products, and services.

Everyone Wins with Informed Storytelling

Informed storytelling transforms fragmented, reactive internal stakeholder direction into visionary and strategically focused messaging that enables cohesive brand-building, long-term customer loyalty, and marketplace dominance. Foster internal stakeholder buy-in by getting to know product managers and other SMEs. Be a sympathetic listener about their challenges, concerns, and opportunities. That establishes relationships of trust, so SMEs will be open to understanding why informed storytelling creates win-win-win scenarios for everyone involved: internal stakeholders, the creative team, and customers alike.

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