Leading with stories

Unleashing the Power of Storytelling in Business: How to Connect with Your Audience and Build a Strong Brand

By Kim Lam

21 April 2023 5 min read

 

The article below is from our LinkedIn Newsletter Through the Lens by Ian Bryant, our Managing Director for the UK & Europe. Here you’ll find fascinating insights about leadership and management with some tips for the veterinary industry and your practice.

As an Executive Leader, I have a direct lens into all my teams and how people communicate, the different languages, vernacular, cultures, phrases, idioms, philosophies, frameworks and stories. One thing I find consistent and appealing with effective communication, is the art of storytelling.

In the words of Will Storr, novelist and award-winning journalist and author of The Science of Storytelling,

“narrative is how we experience ourselves and our life.”

In his podcast with Steven Bartlett on The Diary of a CEO, he explains the natural language of the human brain

“is the beginning, middle and end – a character overcoming obstacles”

Facts, figures and numbers are great indeed, but they don’t tell us who we are and where we want to go. They help and are equally important – sure, but we convince others and share our artforms through stories. It’s the way we connect. Through emotion.

Within every facet of life, both personal and professional, think about all the stories you’ve heard or told whether it’s for your health, your family, friends, relationships, career, daily activities, the judgement or decision made is based on the story. 

In a business context, I felt it important to hone in on this subject and it is inherently linked to the representation of how a brand or company symbolises itself. In the veterinary world, the logical purpose of a practice or clinic is of course to treat animals and treat the nation’s pets. But the way you represent yourself can be so much more than that. Storytelling helps to tell the community and your audiences more about what you stand for, what your values are and what you care about. It’s also a way to demonstrate that you’re listening out for their needs.

Tap into your natural empathy and tell persuasive stories

Who you’re talking to and your “target audience”, a key term in branding and marketing, is always important to consider in any form of outreach or communication. As veterinary practitioners, no doubt you already have an endless stream of compassion and empathy ingrained into your DNA.

Storr describes it as showing

“How you feel about yourself and the world…get tribal. Make it about justice, what are your values, who are your heroes, villains, motivators and demotivators?”

If you figure this out, you’ll create a strong sense of self and your brand as well as also having continuous content to post of all channels from your website to your Instagram feed. People don’t just buy products. People buy people. And characters.

One of my favourite examples is from one of our customers, Wallace Vets. Their ethos and mission lies in “Supporting their clients every step of the way.”

More than an elaborate strapline, the practice actually embodies this within their behaviour, ethos, way of being and output to their customers. A key demonstration of this is through their use of Rapport, a two-way communication module in their Practice Management System (PMS). Which allows them to email or SMS pet-parents on any veterinary matter. They use SMS to keep clients updated about their pet’s treatments every step of the way if they’ve had an operation for example. 

At Covetrus, on our own social media channels, we are deliberate in posting about non-product related matters because we believe in being connected and having conversations about topical, educational or ever light, casual matters that puts a smile on our target audience’s face. It helps to keep the brand front-of-mind and can organically attract sales in the long-term too. FOr example, we did an April Fool’s post and a Furry-Friend post– they’re two posts that have had a very high engagement! It is testament to the power of emotion and people can really rate these things.

Having the right blend and balance of professional promotion and thoughtful storytelling can take your brand a long way.

Frameworks for business storytelling

Case studies, statistics, numbers, figures, years of experience are good. But they’re not good to lead with. When businesses are pitching to win business, or for veterinary practices in particular, it’s great that your senior vet has x years of experience and qualified to the hilt with medical degree/s, certification and knowledge, treating different types of animals, has numerous awards etc. But what pet-parents really want to hear is your overall approach to pet-care and what kind of experience they’ll get when they visit your clinic. 

Under the premise of people wanting to be the hero of their own story, who have goals they’re trying to pursue, navigating the plots of their lives, it’s important for us as business owners and Directors, to help enable them in being that hero in the story of their own life. 

It’s not about the company being the hero, but more about the recipient being the hero. Hence why reeling off your award winnings as an introduction is less effective than emotionally connecting with a story about your passion and care for animals which has resulted from your childhood exposure to farm animals and connection with horses for example.

Taking a leaf out of Christopher Booker’s novel The Seven Basic Plots, there’s a meta-plot of master structure that involves the following elements:

  • Anticipation: A call to action and introduction to the landscape
  • Dream: Having a vision that the main character sets out to achieve
  • Frustration: Things start to look a bit wobbly, with setbacks and adversity
  • Nightmare: Where all things may appear to be lost – bold action is required
  • Resolution: As a result of the actions, the day is won or lost and the hero/villain is prominent

Our marketing team at Covetrus also use a framework called PAS. That is showing the Pain, Agitation and Solution. It helps build the pain (or desire/dream). It emphasises the agitation (same as frustration and nightmare). And it shows a solution (akin to resolution in the above metaplot).

My personal favourite is “The Rule of Three” and they always appear in childhood stories, like Goldilocks and the Three Bears or Little Red Riding Hood. It’s easy to achieve too. The PAS framework embodies it, as does Past, Present and Future Principle or where there’s an ascending progress where each event is of more significance than the preceding or in logical steps e.g. 1, 2, 3.

In The Diary of a CEO, the episode with Will Storr also uses the great example of Nike in their storytelling efforts. For a large global shoe brand, they engaged in socially conscious advertising around the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movements back in 2020. And indeed, where one may ordinarily ask, “what is a trainer company doing posting about this political matter?” and of course, it’s because they know they have a corporate, social and moral responsibility to engage in much more beyond the products they sell. They are also helping the hero, the activist and the world community achieve social justice.

The story of the veterinarian 

In our own efforts, there’s the story of the veterinarian with big aspirations to set up their own business or those who wish to manage their existing practice in a more efficient way; even in an extremely turbulent environment in the UK post-pandemic and within the grips of a Cost of Living (Col) crisis. Using the metaplot master structure, at Covetrus, we know this is the dream and we want to help them achieve it. The nightmare/frustrations that exist are already laid out, coupled with a global veterinary shortage and exacerbated mental health issues. The action and resolution required; and how we market ourselves is that our cloud-based Practice Management System, Ascend is there to make Vet’s lives easier. 

Through the power of Ascend, we enable veterinary staff at every stage of your job. From check-ins, to updating records, consulting and payment and billing, making it a frictionless experience. Consciously built with a veterinary-first design, prompting the logical next steps, Ascend guides and glides its users with ease into managing each client with ultimate simplicity and care.

Through built-in predictive intelligence, there are no more heavy clicks, multiple steps, waiting around or using lots of different windows. We use automated workflows, saving Vets bags of time and provide more efficiencies around clinic operations. All of this is done in a highly intuitive “social-media-like” interface with bright, happy colours that does wonders for daily use. 

We help vets become super heroes in their own story and in their daily work lives at the practice (we already know they’re heroes for saving our furry family members lives!). We also embody critical philosophical values at Covetrus that are part of our storytelling, including things like “Be Passionate” and “Never Settle.” Cumulatively, all these values add to our personality and how we communicate to and with the world.

Critical reminder:

You also don’t have to be a large global company to make a difference either. Whether you’re a freelancer or a small veterinary practice, personal and professional brand identity can be told and built up through the art of thoughtful storytelling. If anything, as I mentioned at the beginning, my gratitude for all that I see through the diversity, colour, languages, cultures and international teams means that I hear all different sorts of stories. I know their power. So keep telling stories, keep sharing. Be experimental, be vulnerable and don’t be afraid to fail at storytelling either. Authenticity, trust and connection is the most important thing to me personally and for any company I work for or with. It’s the only way to sharpen our voice, learn lessons and get ahead.