Transcript for Cutting Through podcast Episode 6

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Jonathan Holt   From once upon a time to happily ever after, or simply the end, stories give life meaning and help us make sense of the world. When adeptly told, stories can bring people together, go viral, raise temperatures, get tongues wagging, and even build brand perception. So, it's no surprise really that storytelling has become a mainstay of corporate digital communications. But do stories really add value on the corporate channels? Do your followers and visitors even want them? 

How can you keep your stories fresh and compelling as tastes and trends change? We'll get the story on storytelling in this episode of Cutting Through.

I'm Jonathan Holt, Head of Strategic Insights at Bowen Craggs, and joining me again in the virtual podcasting studio are Georgia Barrett, Vice President, USA, and Scott Payton, CEO.

Scott and Georgia, I'd like to start with a story that I think typifies a certain kind of storytelling that's on the rise right now. It's a story that pretty much everyone at Bowen Craggs followed with some curiosity for a few weeks recently, and which I think it's fair to say captivated a lot of people across the UK. Scott, would you tell us the one about the man-biting hawk. 

Scott Payton   Hi Jonathan and hi Georgia. Yeah, I'd be delighted to. So, I live in the countryside about 30 miles north of London and about just about a mile away from my house - I can see it... I'm looking out the window now - I can see the church spire of the quaint village of Flamstead, which is a classic English village. It's straight out of Miss Marple. It has thatched cottages. It's got a vicar who cycles around the village singing... you get the picture, if anyone watches The Vicar of Dibley, that's the kind of village it is. And there was a BBC news story a couple of months ago about a hawk, a Harris Hawk, had escaped from somewhere, moved into the trees of Flamsteed Village and was attacking tall men. It was attacking tall men. 

As a someone who is, in fact, a man who is quite tall, I was quite disconcerted about this, but it became a big global news, big national news story. It was on the BBC News. It was in The Guardian. It was on Sky News. It was on Breakfast TV. It was in The Daily Mail. The local pub in Flamstead became crawling with journalists who were looking for the latest angle on this story. So, yeah, it was a story about a hawk that was attacking tall men. It attacked 50, 50 tall men and other sizes of people as well. So that's the story. And it has, as I'll explain in a minute, it does have a happy ending.

Jonathan   For anyone who might be wondering what in the world does this have to do with corporate digital communications, all will be revealed momentarily. But one reason I think we all sort of followed along as this was playing out, this sort of minor somewhat comical news story was that there was an element of mystery there. Anything might have happened within a certain bound. It wasn't like the whole village was gonna be wiped out or anything like that. Mostly the hawk that was at risk, I suppose. But what did happen?

Scott   I found it interesting because it was it was my head that was at risk, but it did capture the British imagination. I was just trying to think why it became such a big story. And I think it did have - it was a story that was a little bit had an air of escapism about it. Escapism from the anxiety inducing main news headlines, what we've all been experiencing this year, global military conflict, trade wars, economic volatility. 

So, this was a bit of light relief, perhaps. And as you say, it did have an intriguing hook. And I think, as you alluded to, Jonathan, in the intro, there is an old adage in journalism, that dog bites man isn't news because it happens all the time. But man bites dog is news because it's unusual. And hawk attacks tall men is similarly attention grabbing.

And it did have a sense of mystery about it. Where did the hawk come from? Why is it attacking people? 

And also, I think, starting to look towards corporate communications, it brought out lots of human stories about real people along the way. There was a great story. We must put this BBC News article on the podcast episode page, there was a story about a 91-year-old man who had two woolly hats stolen by the hawk. 

There was a lady in Flamsteed Village who made a hawk-proof hat out of a wooden box. So, the tabloid journalists thought it was Christmas had come early because they were finding all of these wonderful human stories. And it did have a happy ending. It was caught. The Harris Hawk was caught by someone called Steve Harris, which was rather appropriate and hilarious, and the Faulkner who rescued the hawk, who's called Wayne, I can tell you. He comes from my village, very local. He's now rescued the hawk and retrained it. So, everybody lived happily ever after. Even the hawk.

Jonathan   Yeah, and as you say, it was the details, like the men who were tying their hats to their heads with shoestrings and that sort of thing. It made me wonder whether they want to be quite a brisk market and use slightly damaged and altered hats in your area for the foreseeable. 

Scott   We could do a whole podcast episode about my local Facebook group during the Hawk episode, but life is short, so we won't. 

Jonathan   Georgia, what is your take on the contours of a story like this and why people find it interesting? 

Georgia   I think it's just the suspense of ... What is going to happen and this is feeling of you're not safe walking around your own village because there's a hawk that might strike at any moment. It was also captured on video. So, I think that was quite... and I think that's maybe what got people's attention in the first place was this video of a man walking down the street and it's a Ring doorbell footage and you can see the hawk like swooped down and kind of get him on the head. It was just crazy.

Jonathan   Yeah, and when I was in journalism school many years ago, you know, we were taught that certain things are newsworthy. As you said Scott, one of them is if it's local to you or relevant to you in some way, which, you know, if you're going to walk out your door and potentially have a beak on your head, then that's pretty local.

But for the rest of us, it was probably more like the light relief angle. And this is where we pivot into trends in corporate digital communications because one of the potential trends that is emerging is around escapism within the media at large, possibly within corporate digital communications more specifically.

Right now, I think it's fair to say that the world is crazy, chaotic, scary, and just plain bonkers quite a bit of the time. And in the face of all that, it seems like some people, many people are kind of done with reality or at least are trying to find ways to limit their exposure to it.

And so, it seems like this collective urge has marketers and some news outlets reaching for light of fare. I don't think it's entirely a new trend, but it's certainly heightened right now. 

If you go on Google and search for good news stories, a whole range of websites devoted to feeding you good news, but also major news outlets and local news outlets, all with a good news kind of strand in their reporting. What should digital corporate digital communicators know about this trend, do you think?

Scott   I read an article from Vogue Business from a month or so ago on the impact of this trend on brand marketing. The article had the headline, “Why escapism is the new marketing currency?” And some blurb about the article on LinkedIn read that I'm just quoting now: "For years, authenticity has ruled the marketing playbook. Brands scrambled to appear real, relatable, and down to earth, leveraging influencer culture, behind the scenes content and raw, unfiltered storytelling to connect with consumers. But in 2025, relatability has reached a breaking point..."

It goes on to say that in an age of digital surveillance, economic instability and political unrest, consumers are seeking fantasy and escapism from culture and brands. The modern world bombards us with information, reducing reality to a cycle of crises and irony.

It's driving a cultural shift, one that embraces fantasy as a means of emotional and creative renewal. And brands should tap in to win consumers in 2025. This is about this is about brand marketing. This is not about corporate communications. So, for corporate communications and for people in charge of the corporate website, for example, as opposed to brand marketing, authenticity is, in my view, it continues to be a vital part of the mix. 

So, I don't think it would be a good idea to replace your video interviews with employees with pictures of unicorns, for example. So, authenticity has not gone out the window in corporate communications. But I do think there's still plenty that corporate digital communicators can draw from this new thirst for fantasy and escapism. 

Jonathan   Are there any live examples of companies that sort of fit the category in terms of offering content or stories that could be described as fulfilling escapism?

Scott   The best example I've seen recently is from Bosch, the German company Bosch. And it's a great example of how this marketing trend that Vogue Business talked about can intersect with the corporate website itself. So, Bosch has a campaign at the moment, a marketing campaign, particularly in the US, I think. And the campaign slogan is "The more you Bosch, the more you feel like a Bosch".

And it had a Super Bowl ad. I think it was Bosch's first Super Bowl ad and they'd hired Antonio Banderas to star in the ad. The ad and the campaign generally is deliberately surreal. It's deliberately bonkers, to use your word, Jonathan. And it features superheroes, rock stars and other kind of fantasy escapist characters. And as we record this in late April, this campaign is the main feature in the main banner on the homepage of the global corporate website. It's difficult to describe this campaign, but suffice to say it's bonkers and escapist and tapping into the fantasy thing.

And just another example on the corporate website, Unilever for a while has used highly stylised illustrations, which really made it stand out against the kind of often vanilla crowd of corporate websites when it comes to visual design. Again, kind of uses highly stylised visuals that I think to tap into this sort of fantasy trend broadly in a corporate context.  

Jonathan   A lot of the social media storytelling that we've talked about in the past, particularly TikTok and TikTok-like videos could probably be described as catering to this appetite for fun or escapism. 

Georgia   I think TikTok just in general is a form of escapism for people in their everyday lives and there's been a lot of research into how if you're feeling in a rut or you're just bored, that's how you develop an addiction to your phone as you turn to things like TikTok as a form of literal escapism from reality.  

There's a kind of way in which the videos that come companies make perhaps showing a day in the life of an employee is a kind of form of escapism if you're the person consuming that content.

Jonathan   And if it's done with a light-hearted touch and possibly even a dose of humour.

Most of the examples that you were talking about earlier, Scott, I think not coincidentally, particularly Bosch, these are consumer facing, mainly consumer facing companies. 

Therefore, there's a more natural pairing of marketing and corporate communications of lighter storytelling. Is this relevant for B2B companies? 

Scott   I think that it is relevant for B2B companies, particularly when it comes to engaging with jobseekers and employees as opposed to customers, because jobseekers and employees are going to be just have as great an appetite for humour from a B2B company as a B2C company.

I guess why we're seeing less of it from B2B companies is because for B2C companies, there's a lot of kind of the marketing department is doing a lot of this stuff already and that kind of can link in with what the corporate communications department is doing. Whereas with a B2B company, it has to be sort of homegrown from corporate communications or from HR. So, it's probably less, there's less resources and there's less collective thinking behind it.

But on TikTok and other channels, we are seeing some examples of companies of all kinds using humour in different ways. So, I would urge B2B companies, particularly HR teams and corporate communications teams, that are thinking about job seeker and employee communications to, yeah, try to be funny.

Jonathan   The thinking about escapist storytelling made me wonder whether the inverse might be true in this particular moment. In other words, whether companies, some companies might be in unsettled times going the other direction. We could call it hyper realism. Stories and editorial that go to the darker side of things and address that head on. I wanted to check my theories and it didn't take long to find something that really seemed to fit the bill. 

So as exhibit A, I would offer up some of the stories GSK has been covering recently on its long running behind the science magazine on gsk.com. And here are a couple of headlines. It's insidious and it's getting worse. That's a headline on a story about the urgent need for new antibiotics. And then the whooping cough outbreak is a stark reminder of just how important lifelong vaccination is. That very matter of fact statement is a headline on gsk.com right now on an article that's byline to a medical doctor who's also a senior employee of GSK.

And that second example to me really seemed to be on trend. I think possibly we're inventing, I'm inventing a trend out of thin air here, hyper realistic corporate storytelling, but I'm not sure. think it's the thing. in the healthcare sector, the pharmaceutical sector especially, there are a lot of suddenly strains on the way they do business. 

Outright attacks on public health policy and things like that. So, my question is, what do you think about this? Is this really a trend? you been seeing this on the company's digital channels that you follow?

Scott   Yeah, I think it's probably a good time to look at the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, which came out earlier this year, and it showed clearly that among members of the public, businesses are considered considerably more competent and ethical than governments and the media. So, there does seem to be very much an opportunity for companies to be, as we've said before, the grownups in the room in terms of providing facts and evidence about important, potentially difficult issues amid the torrent of misinformation and mistrusted information from other sources. there's absolutely, this is definitely the time for companies to get serious and very, very detailed and factual about some issues in their storytelling alongside the other trend that we're seeing about escapism too. They're not necessarily contradictory.

Georgia   Yeah, it's a great opportunity for explainer content. And at a time when we're seeing lots of misleading content or like false information out there, there is an increasing thirst for the exact opposite of that. So, people want editorial and storytelling and just information that explains things concisely and with expert authority. companies increasingly are becoming that expert authority. 

So, companies are not universally trusted but they do have these pockets of expertise on very specific subjects. You know, be it if you are a producer of something and then you're an expert on that. So yes, we're seeing a growing importance of explainer content and this trend is kind of reflected in how lots of companies at the moment don't really know what to do with their YouTube channel.

So, we're seeing a lot of clients come to us and say that they have no strategy for YouTube, they don't really know what they're doing with it. So, the reason that ties in is YouTube could be a really good place to put explainer content. And that is because YouTube is increasingly popular as an alternative search engine. It makes up 6.8 % of the share of search. And to put that into perspective, chat GPT is 4.3 % of the share of search. Google is 83%.

So, more and more people are turning to YouTube to find out information about companies, industries, but also just general topics. And YouTube is also feeding generative AI algorithms. So, if you have an explainer video about a topic of subject matter, expertise and interest on YouTube, then that is, yeah, when people search for information about your company, that's feeding the algorithms that go to it. 

Jonathan  Well, it's really interesting that you go to the sort of explainer content because I think you know, there's a join, an overlap between storytelling and explaining content. I mean, on some level, they're not the same thing, but maybe increasingly they are, or that stories will work harder if they have a purpose like that. What I'm thinking of is I've been looking at Cargill, Cargill's Digital Estate, Cargill being probably, I guess, the world's largest food and agriculture company. 

And they have been occasionally publishing stories or articles which directly address difficult topics. And so, Cargill has been accused of practicing child labour and rather than shirk away from that ugly topic, they've actually published an article that has the words child labour in its title. And that has had the effect that if you go on Google and search for Cargill child labour, that is the top referral link or citation that Google's AI algorithm references. 

So, it's, think that's some evidence for your point, Georgia, that not only is explainer content, explainer storytelling, if we can coin a phrase, on trend, but it also is good for the company's reputation.

Georgia   Yeah, we're seeing it a move towards radical honesty. So, if we were talking at the start of this podcast about escapism and fantasy and that kind of storytelling content, there is the counterbalance, is radical honesty, blunt transparency, and laying out your positions as a company as clearly as possible without jargon having a definitive stance on all sorts of topics is really important for AI search. 

Well, not to digress too much from corporate communications, but I wonder whether we can validate this theory that storytelling is veering into very different but very complementary directions, escapism and realism, by taking a look at what's popular in popular culture right now. 

Scott   We're certainly seeing, as far as I can see, a fantasy boom in literature, film and TV at the moment. I don't think it's a coincidence that HBO has decided that now is the time to remake all of the Harry Potter books as a multi-series streaming TV show. And the Minecraft movie, which I have not seen, not my cup of tea.

The Minecraft movie, is a movie about the big computer game Minecraft, one of the biggest box office successes so far this year, as I understand it. And also, if you look at the there's currently a big trend in using generative AI, using chat GPT to turn yourself into an action figure. Have you seen that? All over LinkedIn, everywhere else. Or turn yourself into a muppet or a cartoon character.

So there seems to be a lot of fantasy in the kind of cultural mix at the moment. But at the same time, in parallel, there's a lot of thirst for gritty realism, too. Again, in the UK, on Netflix, there's been a hugely successful TV show called Adolescence, which is, I think, the definition of gritty and real.

I think Adolescence is very interesting because it was famously, they filmed it all in one take, so they did it like 12 times and it was literally just an hour and every single minute of the hour was covered in the TV show and then they did those six times. I think we see that in literature and a lot of the books at the moment that are popular are these kind of minute studies of everyday life.  

So, normal people like Sally Rooney. There's another book, A Little Life. It came out like in 2015, but it's really popular at the moment. I think due to Book Tok, which is self-explanatory of the TikTok engine of like promoting books which at the same time is also promoting fantasy genre stuff. Both of these things are really popular at the same time. 

Scott   I went down a rabbit hole over lunchtime and about a thing, a genre of literature and art that I hadn't heard of before called solar punk. Have you heard of solar punk? So, it's a bit like cyberpunk. So solar punk is it's all about it's about an optimistic future where renewable energy and a positive union between humans and the rest of nature kind of flourish. So solar punk. I do think that's so cyberpunk is it's kind of almost like the inverse of cyberpunk. 

So, cyberpunk was a sort of dystopian, gritty tech future, whereas solar punk is an optimistic sort of a response to climate doom, climate change doom. But I think solar punk is an example of a manifestation, a literary and artistic manifestation of fantasy and optimism as a direct response to fears about the future.

Jonathan   And all of these examples in some ways are reflecting and pivoting off of social realities, environmental realities, all the things that are going on in the world. these entertainment storytellers are taking note of the climate and telling their stories within that in the same way that corporate distal communicators do.  

I think I'll pick up on the Adolescence example too because I think it is, even though I haven't seen it from what I read about it and see about it, a really compelling example of how storytelling can not only through sheer inventiveness and sort of the quality of the storytelling capture people's attention but also really tap into the zeitgeist and not only that, but issues that are affecting people's lives. And from what I've seen, some teachers are picking up that series and showing it in schools as a way of facilitating discussion and thinking around some of the issues that young people are dealing with. So, I think that's interesting in a corporate digital context because it shows that stories can have a purpose and also be very good storytelling, which is not an easy threshold to meet. 

Jonathan   Particularly in a climate, like a business climate where you've got things being written by committee, lawyers having to sign off and all the rest, but some companies do manage it and have been managing it. 

Scott   Georgia mentioned YouTube, Unilever has had great success on its YouTube channel with a short video documentary that it produced in partnership with the BBC about sustainable palm oil production. And it was a documentary, well-produced short documentary about this important topic. 

And it's one of the most last times I looked, it was one of the most viewed videos on Unilever's YouTube channel. So that's just a great example of how you of how a company can either team up with the traditional media or borrow from the documentary filmmaking kind of toolkit to produce really compelling content about an issue and find a wide audience for it.

Georgia   I think the main strength of storytelling in a corporate digital communications context is the way it can be a vehicle to really simplify complicated ideas or to make the complex more understandable to a variety of different audiences. 

And we see that a lot with sustainability communications. It's like quite a lot of data and, you know, the editorial team are working with the internal reporting experts and then to try and unpack those in a way that is digestible to investors, ESG analysts, but also customers. 

So, there's a lot of questions around how do you do that? What stories do you tell around things like supply chain transparency, et cetera? And yeah, kind of reusing things because at the same time, these teams don't always have a lot of resources. So, if you do have an amazing story, how do you make sure that you are telling it again and again, in different formats on social media and kind of getting the most out of the content that you've created.

Jonathan   I'm glad you mentioned the resource strain that undoubtedly has affected almost all corporate digital communications teams that are trying to do storytelling. Because I wanted to ask about AI, which of course is promising all kinds of new forms of efficiency and productivity and even creativity. How is that affecting corporate storytelling so far? 

Georgia   I think that's a great question because I think it's having a huge effect and it's kind of a twofold impact that it's having. So firstly, AI is making the corporate website just more important as we were saying earlier, like the source of truth about your company. So, there's that. But then the kind of bigger question is what can your storytelling and your website give that the AI overview cannot provide?

And the answer is the nuance and the richer detail and yeah stories allow you to go beyond just a synthesised overview. 

Scott   I totally agree with all that. And I think there is a when it comes to using AI to produce stories, I think companies need to kind of trade quite carefully because resource strapped restricted communications teams now have these magic tools available that can write stories automatically. 

And I think if that is done without proper human oversight and intervention, that's going to lead to a proliferation of samey, unengaging stories that don't do a good job at cutting through to target audiences or engaging target audiences. So, as we see, as we continue to see a proliferation of AI generated stories, it's a big opportunity for companies to be really distinctive and human with their storytelling. So, using AI, as we often say on this podcast elsewhere, great support tool for first drafts and for proofing and so on. But don't let an AI be your story creator and editor. mean, on the on the positive side. 

I do think AI is going to be likely to continue to make it quicker and easier and cheaper to produce really visually compelling stories or certainly use producing things like interactive graphics and data visualisations, which have been which to date have been incredibly expensive and time consuming to do well. So, using AI tools to make your human stories your human overseen story is more interesting and engaging. 

Georgia   Yeah, I think it's that thing of like thinking about what can you do that an AI summary cannot. So, the infographics is a really good example and like different ways of presenting information. But also, yeah, telling the real stories from real people. And a good example of that is if you are a jobseeker and you type into Google, what benefits would I get if I worked at Verizon? 

Google will give you a list of those benefits, but the Verizon corporate website will give you a video of several different people explaining the real-life impact that the benefits have had for them. So, it's that kind of added dimension is what the kind of this sort of storytelling can give you.

Jonathan   It occurs to me that in a time when so much is increasingly being generated, so much content information is being generated by AI and that is kind of altering the way information is presented and formatted and all the rest and the way that people interact with it. 

It may be that companies need to go over and beyond in emphasizing when things are actually human. And I saw an example of this just this morning on ProPublica, some of their in-depth reporting has sort of short bullet point summaries at the top of the article, which could to the eye now for people who are used to reading things on chat GPT and elsewhere, looked like it was AI generated. So, they explicitly say underneath it, this summary was written by a real human journalist. I just thought that was an interesting development because six months ago, it wouldn't have been necessary to say that.

Well, let's take a short break and when we come back, we'll talk about one more trend in corporate storytelling right now, which is the idea that companies can bypass media and tell their stories direct to the public. And we'll take a look at who corporate stories are actually for according to the data.

[Interlude]

Let's pick up one more trend in corporate storytelling or at least something that has generated some fresh buzz lately, which is the idea of corporate communicators going direct and bypassing traditional media. Georgia, can you break down the debate around this?

[End of Interlude]

Georgia   It's this idea that, we don't need the media anymore because companies are communicating directly to people and they're doing that via podcast, social media, on the corporate website, Bosch have said on their media contacts page on the corporate website that they welcome bloggers and influencers. 

So, there's this kind of growing acknowledgement that what we view as media is expanding to include people who are maybe not traditionally seen as journalists but then I heard a counter argument to all of this which came from the former editor-in-chief at BuzzFeed and he was saying that if you want credibility there is still some credibility to be had about if you're a CEO going on CNBC for example and actually having a serious interview with a kind of quote-unquote real journalist as opposed to going on a podcast where you might get some softball questions. 

Jonathan   In a way it pairs with the idea that external validations are increasingly important as a way of helping companies to build credibility. So, it does raise the question of whether companies are really there in terms of being actual media generators in their own right in every case. If you've got a reputable publication covering your sustainability efforts. 

For example, arguably that bestows some kind of precedent that you cannot give yourself. But it does seem to be an open debate and an area that's evolving. I I find the going direct debate to be a little bit of a red herring much like some of other things we've been talking about. 

These are not entirely new trends, but they have a new emphasis right now. What I'm thinking about is that in 2013, the Coca-Cola Company turned its entire corporate website into a magazine. And I think that was really ground zero for modern corporate storytelling as we know it now.

And around that time, the person who instigated that radical, in the end somewhat short-lived, redefinition of what a corporate website could look like, came to a Bowen Craggs conference and told those assembled that he was determined to kill off the corporate press release. And 12 years later, I think we can say that that hasn't happened. Most companies still have press releases on their websites, but storytelling is absolutely part of the program now. I mean, there are very few companies that aren't trying to go direct to audiences with their articles and editorial information.

What I'm trying to get at is how is all of this changing the media landscape really? Where do press releases fit in to the new reality right now? 

Scott   I think that in our experience, many media relations departments, they haven't really kind of changed their processes or approaches for many, many years. While the media landscape has changed around it and while other parts of the business are going direct to audiences or while audiences are going direct to the website to get information, the sort of the fundamental infrastructure of media relations departments has been quite slow to change. generalising wildly. But I do feel like there are many, not all, but many media relations departments that are stuck in the 1990s and are kind of doing things how things have always been done in a way that doesn't necessarily reflect how the world is changing around it. Having said that, I don't agree with the idea of killing off the press release because I think the press releases do continue to have a role, but not the role they had in the past.

Jonathan   I saw some analysis on a website recently saying that just issuing a press release and expecting that to get your message out is not going to work because that is no longer the way media relations operates. But how does media relations operate? Because that left me wondering what the new reality actually looks like.

Scott   They're increasingly important for feeding generative AI search tools, so they have an important SEO role.

So, a good press release service remains a core part of ensuring that the corporate website is, as we say, the mothership of truth about all aspects of the company. So, the rise in AI search actually kind of leads to a kind of a new renaissance in the importance of the press release, you could argue. But alongside all that, there is definitely

Georgia talked about the importance and the value of explainer content, of explainers, and we've seen that there is an eroding trust in the media and government to provide the truth about topics, and there's a growing thirst for companies to be in the grown-ups in the room. So, one thing that if I was running a media relations department, what I would do is to tap into the fact that, as Georgia says,

Companies are experts in the things they make, the things they design, the things they research, the things that they advise on. So, on the corporate website, making sure that journalists visiting the site have the details, the contact details and biographies of the range of experts available to interview or available to take part in podcasts that the company has on offer will increase the chances that your company's experts will be providing the facts and the information and the insights in the changing media landscape. 

So, I just generally think that companies should just really look at where people get their information from, what kind of information they want, and be a bit more fluid and adaptive on their corporate site and elsewhere just in terms of how they provide that.

But still do press releases, don't kill them because then ChatGPT can read them and not be wrong.

Georgia   I mean, we're seeing companies already making their internal experts available for comment within the media section. So, Nordea has a list of their internal experts. if, you know, they've said, if you want to interview or reach out to them, here are their details. So, it's very transparent. And I have another kind of reverse example of that, which is leveraging your internal expertise as the kind of media or the news team.

So, one company that we work with has a storytelling form internally where the sustainability reporting team can submit requests for content to be created. Whenever they have an interesting story, there's a form that gives all the details that need to be provided in order for it to be turned into a compelling story, such as what audiences need to be taken into account, all the details that are needed. So that's an example of the kind of two different sides of the business, working together to get that expertise out into the world in a kind of good storytelling format. 

Jonathan   And so, you know, one takeaway from that seems to be that part of the evolving role of online media relations is about relationships. I mean, maybe that's obvious. Media relations has always been about relationships, but ways in which the digital channels can facilitate direct connection rather than just broadcasting information. 

And you know, it raises the question as well, pivoting into the next sort of area that we're going to talk a bit about, which is who are stories for? Of whether some media professionals may value corporate storytelling as a source of information. I mean, we wouldn't expect a reputable journalist to simply parrot what a company is saying in its stories. 

But if those stories are fact rich and are actually interesting and relevant to the world at large, to what's going on in the company and the world around it, then some media people may find that interesting as a source of background information of nothing else. And in fact, we can see that in surveys that Bowen Craggs runs on corporate websites. Journalists are among the smallest group that takes the time for obvious reasons, because they've got lots of other things to do to fill in those surveys.  

But some of them do, and some of them do explicitly mention stories and finding them useful. So, let's talk about that. Let's talk about who corporate stories are for and who's most amenable, which groups are most open to reading corporate stories or listening to them or watching them, whatever form they might come in.

Jonathan   I have been having a look around some of the comments that come in, in surveys as I just mentioned. And I even did a bit of quick analysis based on people who mentioned stories in their comments when they're filling in surveys.  

And among those people over the last year or so, around a thousand comments in total, 50 % of them were jobseekers. 17 % were employees, 13 % were customers or potential customers, and then less than 1 % unsurprisingly from the media among other smaller groups. You know these numbers hardly reflect the demographics of who fills in a survey. 

But still, that seemed to me like a somewhat telling indicator of the appetite for stories. I think you've both had a look at this too and are often analysing survey responses. What do you find in the data or in people's comments that tell you about the appetite for storytelling from companies. 

Scott   One thing that is, I think, overlooked is the fact that the corporate website, which is designed extensively as an external communications channel, incredibly, generally speaking, popular and a highly valued resource for existing employees. I think companies should not dismiss or underestimate the importance of the corporate website as a source of information for employees, particularly global companies. 

And it's a great forum for providing stories about employees from across the business that can make a very geographically dispersed organisation feel a bit more like a community. And I think that's very much the case existing and potential employees are highly important audience groups for stories because if I was looking for a, if I was sizing up a company as a potential place to work, then I'd certainly look to that kind of editorial content, particularly first-person content written by real employees or video testimonials from real employees to build up a really rich picture of what life is really like inside the company. So that kind of human storytelling, think jobseekers and employees have to be high on the list as a target audience. 

Jonathan   It comes back a little bit to what we were talking about earlier about what makes a story and why is it relevant. If you belong to the company, then that story is relevant to you. Then stories from that company are definitely going to be of interest to you. You want to see yourself reflected. And we can see in survey responses, some employees of companies kind of chiding the digital team because they don't feel the stories are being given as much visibility or being made as much of as they could be. So that speaks to an appetite and also a desire to feel pride in the way the company is presenting itself and its story. But who among companies that we follow do you think is doing job secret employee storytelling particularly well at the moment?

Georgia   Best practice examples that come to mind come from Target and also Verizon and also Nestlé and these are all companies that are really embracing that inside out communications and not only that but they're really embracing the short form vertical video format they have a lot of direct-to-camera selfie style videos that just feel more authentic and they're easy to produce, they're very quick to consume. A lot of these stories on the corporate website also are supplemented with social media presences. 

So, Target has the Team Target Instagram, Verizon has Inside Verizon. These are Instagram communities where employees are showcased and you can make connections with people. So yeah, I think those are quite vivid examples of an internal community that is also shared externally with the world. 

Jonathan   Well, to go back to the survey comments again and just make a general observation, there is genuinely an appetite for stories from companies, from a variety of audiences. 

Now, I say that with some wonder because I've often thought that there really isn't a natural appetite for storytelling and I think when companies started going with gusto into this area there probably wasn't but now that it's become such a mainstay of corporate communications, I think perhaps it is if you build it, they will come scenario perhaps. 

One of the audiences that expresses appreciation in surveys for company stories is customers, as I mentioned earlier. And, you know, that fits a natural evolution that goes back a long time where companies have always, if they're B2B, told stories in the form of case studies, and if they're B2C, through marketing campaigns. 

But the very best corporate storytelling that exists now today is of a slightly different kind. whereas those older forms of marketing driven storytelling were usually about convincing someone to buy something, know, almost hitting them over the head with the benefits of making a purchase. 

These new or newish forms of corporate storytelling are more to do with the company's broader impact with products and services and things like that. It's about reputation building and capturing imaginations, maybe to eventually sell things. And this is a role that the only, in a way, only the central digital team can fulfil because they're the only ones who have a vested interest in the big picture of the company's reputation, what it wants to be known for, as opposed to marketers who are out there in their niches trying to sell things to people at a more specific level. So, my question is, who's doing customer storytelling well right now?

Georgia   I've been having some thoughts about TikTok recently and I think TikTok does kind of masquerade as that bigger picture like the broader impact you know you'll have loads of videos about wellness and lifestyle but in reality, it is actually selling you things like it's promoting wellness and lifestyle but it's actually selling you products that make you be you know that improve your lifestyle so okay so it's going to take me a while to like figure this out. So an interesting example of customer storytelling and TikTok comes from Unilever; so they have their product Cif which - as you may know - it comes from, it's like been around since the 60s. It recently went viral on TikTok and there's a whole side of TikTok dedicated to cleaning and a lot of health people. So I've got some statistics from Unilever, a third of Gen Z get their cleaning and laundry advice from TikTok and over half of TikTok users have bought a household product after seeing it on TikTok.  

So TikTok is almost like the modern-day shopping channel, like you're constantly watching people use products and it's very subliminal marketing. But I think what's interesting with what Unilever has done, they've seen that this is a popular trend. They're actually tapping into that explainer content in that they have an area of expertise, it's cleaning. Not only do they sell products, but they also have a lot of expertise around how to use these products. So, they've launched this thing called Cleanipedia, which is all about expert knowledge on household cleaning. And they're working with these individual influencers and content creators. And Unilever gives them the cleaning knowledge and then these influencers disperse the cleaning knowledge out into the world.

So yeah, I think it is this kind of explaining the trend that we're seeing but on a sort of different level and there's a quote from the guy in charge of this he says it's created a gateway for our brands to build credibility with Gen Z consumers by sharing relevant and authentic content and it's translating into sales so I think there's this like connection between the explainer content a byproduct of it is sales and marketing but they're also, it is brand building, is storytelling, is authenticity. 

Scott   That's really interesting. And I think that's a great example of really creative thinking about new platforms, about changes in culture, about what people want and thinking coming up with a really completely new way of providing content that is directly responding to cultural change and technological change. 

And I think that's going back to that. And that stands in stark contrast to many media relations departments which do seem to be stuck in the 90s. More of the kind of creative thinking of like that Unilever example, the best one. I think there's so many opportunities to come up with completely new ways of cutting through and providing content, narrative content, storytelling content, useful content, explainer content that isn't part of a traditional model. So, I love that example.

Jonathan   Let's finish off with a round of such a good story roundabout in which we each share a storytelling discovery that we think should have a wider audience, a wider attention. And I guess I'm thinking more of non-corporate examples here that might spark some inspiration for corporate digital communicators. But feel free to share an example directly from the world of corporate websites and social media if that's what you prefer. As usual, I'll go first to avoid the last word.  

My example is from ProPublica, which I mentioned earlier, but I just wanted to sing its praises as an innovator in the form of online journalistic storytelling in a way that I think there's a lot that companies can learn. What they're doing is focused on trying to, as they would see it, guess, tell the truth about big things that are happening in our world. I suspect that they're often the bane of some corporate communicator's existence because they are investigating and reporting things that would come across as negative to companies. For example, they have one of their leading articles right now as an investigation they did into the working conditions and pay of Nike employees in Cambodia. The reason I'm flagging it is because I think it is kind of the mirror image of what companies should be doing on the hyper-realist side of things to tell their stories.  

Really clear information, human storytelling that emphasises captioned photographs, documentary-level detail, and if you look closely at what they're doing, there are some quiet innovations that would be really easily replicable by almost any digital team. For example, they tailor the headers that they use according to what's relevant to the piece. Sometimes it's a looping video, sometimes it's a custom animation or a custom illustration. 

Georgia, what's your “such a good story” takeaway?

Georgia   Well, it's very related to what you just said. Puma? Puma? Never know how to say this word. They are doing some innovative things. We've already mentioned their Forever Better microsite on this podcast, but they have a Behind the Factory Door series, and it's a mini documentary series where content creators go into factories in Bangladesh and Vietnam, and they speak to the people who work in the factories and also go back to their house and have a meal with them. So, it's, I think, an example of the kind of documentary approach and yeah, authentic. I guess it's debatable how successful it is, but I think it's moving in the right direction of the whole concept is to open the factory door and go in and see what's actually happening in real time with cameras and people.

Jonathan   Sounds fascinating. Scott, what's your... such a good story takeaway?

Scott   In a galaxy far, far away from corporate communications. But it is. I've been an avid video game gamer since the 1980s when I was very little, very young. And I remember in 2013 that a game was released called The Last of Us. And it was the game was produced by a company called Naughty Dog and it was on the PlayStation 3. And it was the first game that I played that had I felt had an incredible, very kind of grown up, very moving, very complex narrative. It had a really complex grown up story running through it. And it was a video game. was an interactive, a powerful interactive story.  

And I think it's the first time that my beloved video games medium had managed to kind of to mature and grow up and to deliver an interactive narrative that is that can rival some of the kind of dystopian future narratives that you see in films like 28 Days Later and other media. So, it is very gratifying to see that 10 years later, it's now a massive hit, hugely successful HBO TV series, but it got me thinking that the web is an interactive medium.  

And I do think that thoughtful content creators in corporate communications departments can actually take inspiration from video games as well as kind of interactive narratives from the New York Times and so on to create, to tell stories and to create narratives, interactive narratives on their court websites in ways that can't be done in other media. Slightly random, but that's what I was thinking.

Jonathan   Well, I don't find that random at all. I think it's a potentially exciting new area that I suspect we'll be talking about in future podcasts. Well, thank you both. This has been fun. I don't think I will be looking at the movie listings for a while without thinking about realism and escapism.

Scott   Don't watch Minecraft the movie, apparently, it's terrible. Other opinions are available. No. 

Jonathan   Apparently, it is, but that doesn't seem to be an impediment to its great success, which says something about the moment as well that we're in.

Georgia   There was also a Super Mario movie last year. Yeah.

Scott   Yeah, that was massive hit as well. What do we think about Harry Potter? 13 years after the Deathly Harrows Part 2.

Georgia   Unnecessary and I think people need new stories. Like there are so many new stories we need to stop remaking existing stories.

Scott   I totally agree.

Jonathan   And there's a backlash to its maker, to its creator at the moment, and threats of boycotts. There's no escaping the culture wars, even in escapism. 

That's it for this episode of Cutting Through. As always, you can find links to articles and best practice examples discussed in today's show, plus a variety of further reading at bowencraggs.com/podcast. If you liked what you heard today, please consider sharing the podcast with a colleague. All episodes of Cutting Through are available for download on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. We hope you'll join us again next time. But for now, thanks for listening.

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