Agree. Story is everything. Every sentence is a story in itself. I love social media for the stories it presents and the ability to interact in so many of them.

Robert McKee, on the other hand, is full of shit.

I’ve yet to encounter a organisation that doesn’t have some story to tell. Often they can’t see it themselves, but that’s usually because they are too close to it.

Stories are the currency of social media. And great content is the corner stone of every successful social media campaign I’ve ever seen. It’s what keeps people coming back to you time after time.

Without stories and great content all you have are bells and whistles!

Stories – children love them, adolescents love them, teenagers love them, so do adults. And in all formats.

As an ex-hack, I see story and appropriate content as crucial to the communication mix – whether you’re talking to your neighbour, someone you’ve never met via social media outlets, or to your clients and business associates.

Allan is spot-on with his “there’s always a story” view, too,
Good blog, as always, Craig.

Most businesses have plenty of stories they don’t want to be told! But equally, good crisis communications is surely about preparing a credible narrative explaining your client’s actions.

While largely agreeing with this thread, I still slightly cringe when a PR describes themselves upfront as a “story-teller” on their blog, Twitter biog etc. Partly, it’s my prejudice the best stories are the ones clients don’t want to share. But I’m also not convinced the vocabulary translates very comfortably for serious issues – like a shooting or a swine flu outbreak or a potentially dangerous product recall – you’d kind of rather hear from the police spokesperson not the police story-teller. Even if it’s perhaps a more worldly and honest definition.

But definitely interesting discussion…

I think you are talking about an important aspect of communication, but we should not confuse the message and the medium.

I give us all more credit than becoming lost in a story. But it is important to recognise that we are all influenced by them.

You are absolutely correct in that a story is a fantastic way of delivering a message, a principle, lesson or set of values.

The story is the vehicle or platform. It is a very effective way of delivering a message, providing useful information, explaining principles or teaching values. And we have some great examples from our life. Be they old fairy tales that warned us of the dangers of the deep woods and of walking the hidden paths, or the parables from the bible that provide us with moral guidance.

We don’t live a story, but we use them every day.

I dont think we believe in the story of your faith, you don’t believe in the story of Government. However a story often reveals a truth. And that makes the great vehicles for communication and persuasion.

We seem to be hard-wired to like stories, and more importantly to remember them and want to pass them on.

And there is more to be said about the crossover between stories and “memes” – and that is real social media golddust.

A key part of PR and public affairs is developing messages, along with identifying publics and choosing the best channels of communication, so it is important to tap into the power of stories.

We need to learn from them and ensure our messages are effective. Setting the scene, providing a structure and providing a direction for the listener. And that can be as basic as having a start, middle and end.

So we all lived happily ever after.

The End

Cracking post there Jason. I posted a reply over at your blog too. I think, if you go Seth Goodin/Grant Morrison about it, you can argue that everything is a story/myth right down to the myth of getting up, working hard and getting your just rewards and so on. But there is a danger of over-egging it because – and I realise my post veered straight into that territory – you can appear to be a pretentious git.

Which ties in with what Rachel Dunachie is saying…

Rachel, totally true. I think again this is one of those things that sounds good coming from the Zen-mouth of the likes of Seth Goodin. I think it comes down to the definition of ‘story’. When I’m in Grant Morrison/Chris Brogan kinda mode I can see story being everything in our lives, but I would definitely worry if the police spokesperson changed their name to police story-teller.

And from a corporate point of view, you are right: the best stories are never told!