Training communicators to apply the science of storytelling.
Dimension design and manufacture in-store marketing and merchandising solutions, along with creating the branding strategies that make them successful. Over the past few years, they’ve grown from strength to strength, but their communication sometimes lacked the resonance it needed to grab their audience’s attention and hold it tight. We created a bespoke, interactive storytelling workshop to help them harness the power of story in their communications – and propel their business to future success.
The challenge
In three hours, demonstrate the effectiveness of storytelling to Dimension’s communicators, help them understand their organisation’s character and how to apply it to stories, and share top tips for overcoming writer’s block. We’ve all been there…
What we did
We began by exploring how well-known organisations use character-driven stories in their communications to resonate with their audiences. We delved into stories that had given products more value and boosted revenue, and those that had turned the tables on an audience’s perception of a brand. Trust and authenticity are a huge part of how big businesses land big success stories – so we taught them how to make people fall in love with the personalities behind a brand. The impact? A more genuine, honest, and empathetic tone that spoke from Dimension’s creative heart.
Understanding the science behind storytelling is crucial to understanding why it’s so effective. After explaining how storytelling ticks, we encouraged the team to explore Dimension’s own character in an activity that saw them identify their business’s unique tone of voice, before rewriting some of their own work that hadn’t previously hit the mark. We demonstrated that plain language isn’t boring language – and taught that getting a clear message across quickly and easily makes for a more engaged audience.
Character-driven stories take a while to build, and writer’s block is a natural by-product of writing. But it can have detrimental effects on the time we spend on a project, and the revenue the business generates. We curated a discussion around top tips for overcoming it, and left them with exercises to help them beat back the blanks in the future.
The triumph
The session was a lot of fun – for us and for Dimension. A quick secondarysession revealed they were going to make a lot of changes to their writing – and look for the story in everything. And our follow-up deck provided them with a useful tool to refer to whenever they need a storytelling nudge or to conquer writer’s block.
“The session was fantastic, and we could see the team were engaged and really understood what was being explained!”
“Thanks once again for the fantastic session and deck you guys provided for us, we’re seeing improvements and more consideration in the way the guys are writing their design intents.”