What is storytelling and how to apply it in your company

Tabla de contenidos

Storytelling means telling something with the structure of a story instead of listing facts. It is not decoration: it is arranging information so the listener wants to know what happens next.

Why it works

A list of features is forgotten; a story is remembered because it has tension. The mind holds on to things that have cause, consequence and someone things happen to. That is why a fact inside a story is remembered far better than the same fact on its own.

The minimum structure

  1. Someone with a clear goal.
  2. An obstacle standing in the way.
  3. A decision that changes the situation.
  4. An outcome different from the starting point.

That is all. Without the obstacle there is no story: there is a brochure.

The most common corporate mistake

Making the brand the protagonist. The protagonist should be the customer, the beneficiary or the worker; the brand is the one who helps. When the company puts itself at the centre, the story sounds like self-praise and the audience switches off.

In institutional communication this is even clearer: an NGO describing its own greatness convinces less than one showing a specific person solving a specific problem.

Where to find your stories

  • The most difficult client who ended up satisfied.
  • The day something went wrong and the team solved it.
  • The person who has held a role for years and knows things nobody else does.
  • The project that forced you to invent a new solution.

None of these appear in a corporate brochure, and all of them are more credible than any mission statement.

Storytelling on video

Video is the natural format for this because it adds face, voice and place. A two-minute interview with the person who lived the problem is worth more than five minutes of beautiful shots with music. The first thing to secure on a shoot is not the camera: it is knowing who tells the story and what is at stake.

Want your brand to look this good on video?

We produce corporate video, animation and photography for companies across Peru.

See the service