The Role of Storytelling in Marketing and Corporate Communication

Your palms are sweating as you cast furtive glances from the corner of your eye. Then, the niggling wave of anxiety crashes wide open and raw as your mind fills with dread and goes blank. Yes. That was a barely surpassed yawn. Half of them aren’t even looking at my graphs!

With each passing sentence of your presentation, the faces before you moved from serious, to blank, to bored, to… nightmare scenario: sleepy.

The moment you stop talking, the moment hands are shaken and pleasantries exchanged, you and your amazing project will be no more than a boring, forgettable blip on their schedule.

And once more, you would have failed to secure the funding you need to get your project off to a flying start. You’ll have to disappoint everyone, one more time.

Can you handle another?

Should you quit?

Let’s rewind.

It’s the day before the pitch. You nervously read over the presentation you’ve been working on and reworking after every investor meeting when something suddenly hits you in the gut. 

How does this stand out amongst all the innovations and new ideas your potential investors will be pitched this week? You face up to the truth.

There is no way this presentation stands out in the sea of startups doing the rounds. And, honestly, most of those ideas are just as amazing as yours.

Here’s the thing, you know your company is different.

You’ve had a first-row seat to the passion and effort that went into solving this problem. You’ve seen the expertise of your team, their blood, sweat and tears, their laughter, their long nights, and their creativity work its magic!

You know the story

Buzzing with this realization you open up a blank presentation and begin rewriting your pitch. 

You go over and rapidly discard most of the slides containing graphs and numbers and charts and technical information. That can all stay in the report you’ve put together, you think to yourself making a mental note to direct your audience to the report during the presentation. 

You search frantically for just the right image, the essential information, you boldly format the quote hanging in the meeting room of your office… 

... you hit save. 

The presentation now has the backbone of a powerful narrative that takes your audience on a journey.

It shows the results of your innovation through the eyes of future users whose lives will be changed completely.

It talks about your commitment. 

It tells the tale of the first sparks of passion in your youthful mind that have started a life-long pursuit of excellence.

A passion that has provided fuel to the sleepless nights it took to get you to this meeting.

You’re at the pitch, but everything is different.

Your voice sounds different.

Your whole body speaks as you communicate with confidence and conviction.

You look up to see the investors’ eyes locked on your slides.

You have their undivided attention. Every mobile is on the table, facing down.

You’re standing out from the crowd.

You’ve made an emotional connection that has elevated your pitch from a dull report of facts to a powerful tale of boldness and possibility.

We all know that a startup in the clean energy sector, a startup in any sector, needs to find a way to set itself apart.

Infusing all your communication with unique storytelling (a uniqueness that we all have) can be the difference between being forgotten and becoming memorable.

Good investors bet on a solid project. Great investors bet on the founder just as much - if not more, than on the proposal in front of them. 

Your job is to inspire confidence in your vision for the future of your company but also for the future you want to impact with your company.

A well-crafted narrative is a crucial asset to have in all corporate communication and marketing. Even if all your competitors invest time, money and effort in creating their own story, you’ll still stand out and be unique. You will appeal to the right investor because your story is hard to fake or replicate.

Your presentation is over.

The handful of potential investors murmur amongst themselves. You got them. 

You got them to notice.

And it will take more than storytelling to get them to invest, but, your job for today is finished.

Congratulations on presenting a unique pitch and giving your audience something to remember.