Storytelling
0
by
Asbjorn
Lonvig,
artist/designer
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to me - I'll reciprocate. Contact
me
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navigation.
"CORPORATE
VALUES"
By Michael Juul Jensen
Extracts from an article in
e-newsletter INSIDER
(www.insider.mondo.dk),
published by Mondo A/S.
Translated and edited by Asbjorn
Lonvig.
The good story
is met with sympathy
in a time, where the
noise of
messages is so extremely loud.
In USA the
corporate storytelling is
the latest tool in stakeholder-relations,
and in Denmark
the attention to this
tool is increasing.
In
storytelling the company has the
opportunity to illustrate it's potential,
a potential
that is not shown in
numbers and digits and
fancy business
visions.
Storytelling
is the opportunity to
communicate
the values and goals of
a company.
The good
story is easy to
remember and you want to tell it to others.
It is an
efficient tool to
communicate important messages to all
around a
company - customers,
suppliers, cooperators, competitors,
employees, the
press, politicians
and not least
stock-holders and
potential investors.
In
storytelling you have the tool to
describe not measurable values and
the
development potential of a
company.
Concerning
publishing these stories
the corporate web site and e-newsletter
of course are
evident. It's quick
and
relatively easy.
But it can as
well be done by
traditional means in the traditional media.
The point is
to tell a story that
makes it quite clear that
this exact
company is something
special.
Corporate
storytelling started - not
surprisingly - in USA.
Some years ago
Scott Rosenberg, the
managing editor of the famous
American
e-zine Salon.com, wrote in an article "Story Time":
"a
beginning wave of interest from the corporate world - which is
beginning to see
narrative and
storytelling as additional powerful tools in the marketing
arsenal. In a
business environment where 'branding' has become a
mantra of
power, many companies are beginning to think of
advertising as
an opportunity to tell their corporate story to the world.
And marketers
are looking for ways to capture stories from customers
about how they
feel about a company's products and services.
Storytelling
isn't just for kids any more - it's for CEOs, too."
PricewaterhouseCoopers
is one of the
companies that soon found out
the impact of
a
good story on a more efficient branding. One of
the partners,
Bill
Dauphinais, have said to "Fast
Company":
"Brands are
built around stories. And stories of identity - who we are,
where we've
come from - are the most effective stories of all. This is
a powerful way
to bring them to life."
Coca Cola has
established a
storytelling center i Las Vegas.
In "The World
of Coca-Cola" the
company percents an entire adventure world
in text,
sound and pictures
based on the Coca-Cola-brand.
Director
Channel Deborah MacCarthy,
Coca-Cola's College, says that there
is a
thoroughly prepared branding
strategy behind this untraditionally initiative:
"We wanted to
bring the brand to life, to tell the stories of Coca-Cola,
and to express
Coca-Cola's core values: fun, refreshment, and
specialness in
people's lives."
The director
of IBM's Institute of
Knowledge Management, David Snowden
says about
IBM's increased attention
on the possibilities in storytelling:
"Organizations
are beginning to understand that storytelling is not an
optional
extra.
Stories are something that already exist as an integral
part of
defining what that organization is, what it means to buy from it,
what it means
to work for it. These are the early days in
understanding
the use of stories in modern business. The results,
however, are
sufficiently good that we now know that there are major
benefits to be
achieved from the use of stories and from the
development of
storytelling skills."
In the
book "The Springboard:
How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge Era
Organizations",
Stephen Denning
writes about how he - back in 1996 - discovered the power of
storytelling
in motivating an entire
organization to understand visions and bring visions into effect.
In his work as
director of Knowledge
Management in The World Bank,
Stephen
Denning had for several
years
needed a better tool in promoting
new
initiatives than numbers,
reports, graphs etc.
At a meeting
with the management he
had the job to promote
a new
information system.
For the first
time he used
storytelling.
Here is the
story Stephen Denning:
"There was a
health care worker in Kamana, Zambia, who in 1995
was searching
for a method to treat malaria. The worker logged on to
the Web site
of
the Centers for Disease Control and within minutes
found his
answer. This story happened, not in June 2015, but in June
1995. This is
not a rich country, it is Zambia, one of the least
developed
countries in the world. It is not even the capital of the
country; it is
six hundred kilometers away. But the most striking
aspect of the
picture is this: Our organization isn't in it. Our
organization
doesn't have its know-how and expertise organized in
such a way
that
someone like the health worker in Zambia can have
access to it.
But just imagine if it had! We could get ourselves
organized so
that professionals have access to the resources
needed. Just
in
time and just enough."
According to
Stephen Denning this
very simple story had an astonishing
response from
the management. The
importance of having all information
in one place
only, accessible to
everybody even in the remotest corners was suddenly
very clear to
the management.
The following year a 'organization wide
knowledge sharing
program' was
implemented. The
experience was the point of departure of an intensive
interest in
storytelling, and in 2000
Stephen
Denning published the book
The Springboard
on this
subject.
Stephen
Denning writes:
"The
attractions of narrative are obvious. Storytelling is natural and
easy and
entertaining and energizing. Stories help us understand
complexity.
Stories can enhance or change perceptions. Stories are
easy to
remember. Stories are inherently non adversarial and
non-hierarchical.
They bypass normal defense mechanisms and
engage our
feelings."
Stephen
Denning writes first and
foremost about "springboard stories",
which have the
purpose to engage
people in organizational changes. But storytelling can
have numerous
effects inside the
company - not least in relation to
strengthening
employees engagement
in
the company.
At the same
time Stephen Denning points out the importance of that
management
listens to the
employees' stories.
These stories are very sensitive tools for measuring
good and bad
vibrations and the
degree of enthusiasm - or lack of enthusiasm - concerning
visions and
the management's
decisions.
STORYTELLING
The Asbjorn Lonvig
Storytelling Concept.
Colorful
simplicity art works combined with subtle and ingenious storytelling
to
pedagogically communicate important messages.
Examples
The story about The Wind-Mill Ballet and the
Wind-Mill Theater (in English).
Historien om Vind-Mølle Teateret (in
Danish).
Fifteen art
works combined with storytelling to communicate the values and goals of
a company:
The story
about SOFUS (in English) -
storytelling with pedagogical motifs.
Historien om SOFUS (in Danish) - storytelling.
.About different SOFUSes (in
English) - storytelling.
Om forskellige SOFUS'er (in Danish)
- storytelling.
The
story about Easter Island (in
English) - storytelling with other Asbjorn Lonvig motifs.
Other
examples:
The story about Vitus and Vitusia (in
English) -
storytelling.
Historien om Vitus og Vitusine (in Danish) -
storytelling.
Historien om Louis (in Danish) - storytelling.
Historien om Justus (in Danish) -
storytelling.
The story about GAS-ballet (in English) -
storytelling.
Historien om GAS-ballet (in Danish) -
storytelling.
The story about Nice Mr. Jacob from Chicago
(English)- storytelling.
Historien om venlige Mr. Jacob fra Chicago
(Danish) - storytelling.
examples of storytelling in
multiple languages
Do you want to
see stories in
French,
German, Spanish, Portuguese,
Italian, Korean, Japanese or Chinese
go to multiple languages.
FAIRY TALES
in 10
Languages
to Lucca and the
world's kids.
Children's Books
Online
Children's
Coloring Books online.
Mini posters of
main characters
NEW
UNIVERSE
examples
Universe of
fairy tale and
storytelling
motifs.