Who is telling the story?

The first slide was a question; my entire seminar revolved around it. I looked up at their faces and watched them start to think. I wanted to see if these young, would-be designers knew the answer. They thought about it for a while…

If your client’s business were a person, who would it be?

Who's telling the story?

When a business tells a story, it adopts a particular narrative. They (the business) act, speak, and portray the world from their perspective; this is their persona and way of doing things. The attributes of that persona, combined with the story facts, make a framework that tells me a lot about a business; from there, we where to start.

I use a framework to illustrate what’s at the heart of a business persona.

From the audience’s perspective, knowing who’s telling the story contextualizes the meaning. It legitimizes the story. When you look at posts on social media or read an article, do you ever consider who’s posting the story? When you search, does the platform matter to you? Do you check to see who the author of the article is?

Take, for example, these two memes (above and below), one has been used to sell fonts, the other to convey and share a feeling amongst like-minded people. Memes are inherently polyvocal—meaning the storyteller could shift depending on how the meme is consumed, shared, or repurposed.

I would say, that memes operate more like a co-authored story, where the creator and audience collectively shape its significance. In this case, the PangramPangram meme (the former) was made to promote a business. PangramPangram designs and sells fonts. A pangram is a sentence with all the letters in the alphabet. Font designers use pangrams to display samples of what all letters look like.

Now you know.

So what happens when there's no context?

I found this picture online one day (as you do); it immediately caught my interest. It’s from a 1960s book called Shindai: The Art of Japanese Bed-Fighting.

What beautiful photography; is this true? I wondered, so I went down the rabbit hole.

With a curious enough audience, narratives can thrive on ambiguity and absurdity. The lack of explicit context can lead to inspiration, entertainment, and even thought-provoking at times.

“But what happens if they don’t like the story?” Someone asked during the seminar.

Take, for example, satire stories; they are more engaging, but they require an understanding between the storyteller and the audience. When two people understand each other, there is room for ambiguity and absurdity.

Humour works especially well, but it’s risky.

For better or for worse, the story may get attention, but it doesn’t necessarily always lead to understanding; or guarantee fidelity. If the audience doesn’t get it, the story is ignored. Or it gets labelled as a lie, disinformation, and more of the Internet’s flimflam.

From my experience, who the storyteller is, shapes the outcome of a story. Regardless of the size or reach, a reputation influences the meaningfulness of the story.

Attention and understanding are not the same thing.

A new teacher asked me for advice after the seminar. They had a good industry reputation, and plenty of knowledge to share, but the students weren’t taking her recommendations.

“In the beginning, I think that’s to be expected; it’s difficult to take advice from someone you don’t know or understand yet,” I suggested.

Being good at something doesn’t necessarily make it a good lesson. In the same way, having a good business story doesn’t guarantee a sale.

Food for thought…

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This story was based on questions and insights uncovered at our last story design workshop. Get in touch to find out more about our workshops or with questions.

Co-publish with us on Instagram

Every few weeks, we release stories designed to get co-published as collaborator posts on Instagram. Each story is thoughtfully created, researched, and produced, giving original content designed specifically for Instagram. When you co-publish these stories as a collaborator with us on Instagram, these original stories appear on your profile while connecting your channel to new circles by pooling audiences. As a collaborator, you can also contribute appropriate images or videos of your business or personal brand to the story. It's a great way to access original stories that contribute lifestyle and wider idea-based narratives into your feed.

FAQs

How does this work?

Collaborator posts on Instagram allow adding up to four people to co-publish a story together. A story published this way appears on the Instagram feed of every collaborator. When you browse our story releases, if there’s a story you’d like to co-publish with us on Instagram as a collaborator, just email us at hello@publicworks.store or WhatsApp +94 777 647 096. We’ll get in touch with the details to make it happen.

What is a sole collaborator and a group collaborator?

A group collaborator is when you collaborate with a group of up to four more people who will be added as collaborators to the same story. This is great because the story you purchased to co-publish with everyone else will appear in all their feeds, introducing your account to new circles. A sole collaborator is when you pay extra and become the only collaborator to co-publish the story; this gives you room to supplement the story with more images/videos from your personal brand or business and have a higher degree of customizability.

Can collaborators add to the story?

Collaborators can submit photos, videos, and hashtags that align with their business or personal brand to supplement the story. Of course, the images or videos you submit must bear relevance to the story. If you submit images or videos to supplement a story this way, appropriate credits will be added to the caption, tagging your handle.

Why collaborate for stories?

We started offering the option to purchase our original stories as collaborator posts so that more people can share great content at an affordable rate. It also allows everyone to pool community resources and engage with wider circles.

What kind of images or videos can collaborators submit?

Relevant, within Instagram guidelines (under 60-second videos in MP4 format), and with clear usage rights for the content.

What can’t collaborators control?

Who the other collaborators are (unless you’ve snagged the sole collaborator spot😌), what videos or images other collaborators submit, the order and exact cropping of images and videos, and how many out of the images or videos you submitted will be chosen for the post if you submit more than one.

Got more questions? Just ask us. Email us at hello@commercialstories.com or WhatsApp +94 777 647 096. Currently, Instagram only allows adding 4 collaborators per story; we follow a first come, first served basis.

What language means to business

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk

Ever felt like you’re not getting an idea through because it’s beyond the limits of your vocabulary? Or that an idea is not grasped by your audience because it’s not presented with the right words? Clients with internal content teams often approach us with this problem. We create language catalogues that help them stay authentic and efficient in their communications; this is particularly useful for companies that have transient teams. Let’s unpack why language matters so much when sharing ideas.

It’s hard to even imagine interacting and making sense of the world without words. It almost seems that words are the very architecture of ideas. Is it possible to form or communicate ideas without words? You can definitely feel and experience without words. But, experiencing is not the same as deriving an idea. Experiencing music is not the same as processing it and deriving an idea from it.

Oscar Wilde called language “the parent, and not the child, of thought”, suggesting that thinking is shaped by our words.

But, we know artists and musicians who think in image or sound. The mathematical genius Daniel Tammet processes numbers by thinking in landscapes. Other interesting evidence is in how hearing-impaired people, who are cut off from both spoken and signed language, form ideas without the help of words.

Mundurucú, a remote Brazilian tribe, has only words for numbers up to five. When studying their capacity to understand the concept of a number higher than five, it became evident that for many Mundurucú, the idea of greater than five was a difficult one to grasp. Although some showed signs of understanding the idea of ‘something bigger than this’, they were quick to categorize it as ‘a lot’, rather than attempting to define it more specifically.

We can certainly process an idea without words; using comparison, physical memories and associations with shapes, and colors, perhaps even symbols, sound, and movement. However, some ideas can only be conceived in the presence of the word.

Mundurucú’s limitedness in grasping simple numerical concepts shows that although ideas can be actively processed without words, they may not be fully understood in such cases. Certain ideas or concepts— most certainly numerical ones, as the study with Mundurucú suggests— cannot be grasped fully without the clarity and definition that a word would lend. That is to say, there are certain kinds of thinking that are possible only with words.

So, what does this mean for businesses? Words help us quickly define and zoom in and out of ideas. Access to a vocabulary that accurately portrays the origins and cultural associations of the business, and considers relatability with the audience means efficiency in communicating. It also means consistency in vocabulary, creating the ‘brand voice’ or the persona that audiences emotionally connect with.

When we work with businesses that have internal communication teams—often transient as employees move in and out of the company—we create brand language catalogues. A brand language catalogue helps ideas to be communicated without being limited to the individual vocabulary or linguistic expressions of the employee handling the content creation at the time. They’re story-building tools that help businesses stay efficient and consistent.

We also create visual language catalogues to create sharable boards that portray the look and feel of a business using imagery. But, this insight story is only about written and spoken language.

Let’s decode the function of a language catalogue using this example that we created for Podi Scene documentary film promotions. When we create language catalogues we first have a quick conversation with the client and do a little research on their platforms to find out the typical correspondence that they have with the audience. Depending on the research insights and the client's brief on the requirement, we identify what types of language samples would be most useful to their company. In the case of Podi Scene, we prioritized descriptions for aesthetics, moods, qualities and experiences because it is a brand that often expresses appreciation. We also paid close attention to language for handling complaints because it was important for Podi Scene to maintain good relationships with people from diverse viewpoints and backgrounds as they interacted with the film and the ideas it highlighted.

A brand language catalogue is essentially a collection of written and spoken language that allows you quick access to categorized sections like greetings and sample responses to compliments or complaints. It’s like having a toolbox at hand’s reach for building narrated or written content while staying on-brand with language.

If you want to learn more about how we can help your business coin the language that’s right for it, get in touch.