Book review: MAGNETIC STORIES
Connect with Customers and Engage Employees with Brand Storytelling
Genres:
- Business
- Communication
- Marketing
Review posted on:
18.07.2023
The number of pages:
208 pages
Book rating:
2,5/5
Year the book was published:
First edition published 2021
Who should read this book:
- Business owners, marketing managers, and CEOs who want to implement storytelling into their internal and external communication and culture overall.
- People trying to find ideas where to find stories and use them properly to promote their business.
Why did I pick up this book and what did I expect to get out of it:
People have different ideas of how to successfully implement storytelling into their businesses. Some approaches are more successful than others. So why not learn from someone like Gabrielle Dolan who has been doing this for several years with clients ranging from small to big international companies as also foundations. The other option is to guess and learn by doing all of it yourself. And that can be a lot more costly than getting a copy of the book Magnetic Stories and reading it.
From what I have read on the cover of the book and from the table of content I expect to learn about the types of stories a business should have on “stock” and sharing with its customers, visitors, and employees. How those stories need to be structured, and how a company should go about teaching its employees about storytelling and developing their communications skills. Of course, I would also love to “see” some more and some less successful examples.
My thoughts about the book:
The issue that I have with “Magnetic Stories” is that it is not so much about stories and storytelling as it is about strategic communication of a company to its employees and customers. I expected more information on how to structure a story based on the experiences provided by a company to its employees and customers and how to distribute those stories as efficiently as possible on all possible channels. Instead, we get a list of five types of stories that a company should collect and distribute to all stakeholders, and some minor reasoning why that is good backed up with some case studies. My issue with the case studies is that some are stories while others are just descriptions of events that happened. My reasoning for defining case studies in such a way is that not everything is a story. I disagree with the author that every event that happened and you are now telling is a story. A story must have a specific structure – The opening, the incident, the crises, the climax, the falling action, and the resolution. In some of the provided case studies, some of these story elements are missing and because of all of this I feel like the title and introduction to the book are misleading and the book does not deliver what “was promised”. In or after the chapter where the five types of stories were defined I expected the author to elaborate and break down case studies for each of the story elements and to show how to create “Magnetic Stories” from real live events. Sadly that was not the case and I don’t recollect if the author even once mentioned anything about story elements.
On the other hand, if you don’t have such expectations (but then I don’t understand why such a title) and you only look at the content and what it provides from the perspective of strategic communication the book has some good advice. Many books that talk about business storytelling don’t go that much into educating employees about the effects that storytelling can have on their success and the success of the company. While in “Magnetic Stories” Gabrielle talks quite a lot about that and gives some good examples and instructions on who and how to educate in your company. She also provides guidelines on how to get your employees to share their experiences with each other and with customers and most importantly to collect them so that each and everyone can maybe use someone else’s “story” if need be. Another good piece of advice was that even though if a company shared one of its stories in one media/channel it doesn’t mean it can’t share it again in a different media/channel and if need be rework it a bit differently. In the end, I got a little bit of value from the book, it’s just not what I was expecting.
If you pick up this book please let me know your thoughts about it.
A short summary of the book:
Gabrielle starts with some examples of why stories are important and how their emotional plea can affect your decision about buying something. She then continues explaining which five types of stories a business should have on “stock” and share with its customers and employees. They are:
- The Creation stories – how and why your organization started
- The Culture stories – employees living the company values
- The Customer stories – amplify the customer’s voice
- The Challenge stories – how your company deals with internal and external challenges
- The Community stories – how does your company help the community
- Define – First companies need to know what message they want to get through to their customers. What do they want their brand to be? Sometimes this is difficult to define. So if you are stuck at this step take the other approach and define what your brand is not.
- Teach – At this step, you teach your employees how to find stories and share them in a concise and engaging way. It is important to know which employees need which level of education of the matter. One of the main things to keep in mind though is that senior executives should be involved in the training. The training must involve the practice of sharing stories.
- Collect – When looking for stories from others many make a big mistake by saying “Tell me a story”. Most people then think that what they did or achieved is not big enough to be considered a story that others want to hear and decided not to share what may be a perfectly good story. So next time instead of saying “Tell me a story”, say “Describe a time when you…” or “Tell us about…” or “Give us an example…” Once you collected enough stories from your employees you can do an analysis and see which values are already embedded and part of your brand and which need a bit more of work.
- Communicate – Communicate internally and externally, in written and oral formats on all channels. Share your stories to help connect and engage with people. Remember just because you told your story in one format on one channel it doesn’t mean you are done. Tell the same story on every channel, just do it properly.
- Create – Understand that if people have a positive experience they will share positive stories. The same goes for negative experiences. Use this knowledge and create circumstances that are in your favor.
My notes from the book:
- A brand is the cumulative result of a company's actions. Just like an individual, your brand will be affected negatively or positively by what you do and what you say. Not by your intentions, but by your behavior.
- Every single employee in every organization can affect the brand positively or negatively every single day. So choose carefully, train methodically, and take care of your employees. Your actions and those of your employees over time will determine your brand.
- Sometimes it's helpful, when defining what something is, to define what it is not! Brand storytelling is not about a logo or a product, it is also not a tagline or a timeline of your company. It's not a slick corporate video or a tv commercial, and it's not a brochure or your purpose, vision, and values stated on a page. And it is definitely not just one story!
- Every decision we make is based on memory! And we only remember things that grab our attention. Stories grab attention.
- How and why the company started should always form part of a company's brand. It should never be forgotten.
- You can turn case studies into stories, just focus less on the numbers and more on emotions.
- Understand how your actions can generate stories, whether it be interacting with customers or employees. Also, it is very important that you educate employees about the power of stories. This means teaching employees how to find stories and share them in a concise yet engaging way.
- When collecting stories make sure you also include people with different tenures, hierarchies, departments, and locations, and not just different gender, race, or age.
- When you will do an analysis of the stories being told at a session or otherwise in your company you will have a good indication of which values are already embedded and are a part of your brand. You will also know which values need a bit of work.
- Don't make the mistake of sharing stories once in only one format. Find places to share them in newsletters, emails, and other printed publications.
- Rituals help tell stories. Inspiring leaders establish rituals to connect their team to its core narrative, using them to reflect, remind, reinforce, and reignite their collective identity.
- When you ask people to tell a story people seem to draw a blank. Using the word "story" makes them think it has to be this big grand event and they then dismiss all the examples they are thinking of. Instead of "Tell me a story" say #describe a time when you...".
