A few months back I had a very interesting conversation with a gentleman. In a fairly short period of time, we covered a variety of topics, starting with sports and slowly evolving to business and marketing. While the entire conversation was a fast-paced exchange of thoughts, one such thought has remained with me ever since the place storytelling has in all of our lives. At a point in our conversation, he challenged me, “think about it… before technology, before the Internet, how did we learn?”
The answer… storytelling.
Before we were afforded the luxury of looking up information on our smart phones or computers, all of life’s important lessons were told through story. Stories have taught us morals, history and in some instances, created memories from events that we were never present at.Immediately, I made a connection to marketing (of course). And it was true. As marketing consultants, our sole purpose is to help our clients create, develop, and share their stories. Take a company’s brand for instance; if cared for and nurtured properly, it is a continuously evolving story. A few weeks later, this notion popped into my head once again, however this time in relation to another passion of mine – music. I was watching a show where an artist or band appears in front of a live audience and bares all the evidence behind the songs they are about to perform. There is no concert-like theatrics -- just the band, their story, and their music. The name? You guessed it -- Storytellers. When you watch it, this raw truth is exposed, which normally would remain a close guarded secret between the artist and their creation. Needless to say, the stories are captivating. If I wasn’t sold after my original conversation, I was now. So, thank you to that gentleman from a few months back – thank you for sharing your story.
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