[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Once upon a time, there was a boy who was not afraid! From a tender age, stories are part of our universe. It may seem like a cliché, but the reality is that we grow up falling asleep to little tales that draw our attention, make us wonder and want to know more.
After all, telling stories is an innate quality to all of us. We may be more or less communicative, but we’re all storytellers.
And that happens because we’re all made of stories. The ones we lived ourselves, the ones we were told, the ones we imagined. It is through them that we create values, that we support opinions, that we engage, that we learn new points of view.
Although stories are part of everyday life, in adulthood, these are essentially related to entertainment. Namely, through movies, TV shows and books that allow us to “immerse” ourselves in a reality different from our own and that spark different emotions in us: fear, happiness, empathy, expectation, sadness or compassion.
The best stories make us go through different emotional states as the storyline develops, and that is exactly the feeling that makes us increasingly engaged and full of expectations.
But you probably knew that already. So why bring this technique to the corporate world and, more specifically, to the world of presentations?
We live in an era of on-demand television, Netflix and social media: we are exposed to contents as we have never been before. We have the possibility to choose the things we identify the most with, to define our programming and to continuously create content.
Then, we watch an institutional presentation and the speech is simply rhetorical, descriptive of data, facts and information. The speech is often too exhaustive and the audience doesn’t feel engaged. Sometimes, it even feels lost. That’s why it’s important to turn corporate presentations into stories that generate empathy. Stories that are worth hearing about.
Every day, there are hundreds of presentations that don’t truly express their potential. And the reason for this is that professionals do not take into account the basic premise of a presentation: the audience.
Now that we understand the fundamentals on this matter, it is time to be pragmatic, because all stories follow the same structural lines.
In this frame of mind, how can we develop a story that boosts our content?
First, we have to organise the story in three acts in order to create storytelling presentations:
Act 1
(Introduction; Central theme)
Contextualization: An Introduction to the central theme, to the main character in the story contextualizing a background problem.
Act 2
(Conflict; Climax)
Conflict: The concept/the character is confronted with an antagonistic force that questions their values and principles.
Act 3
(Resolution; End)
Resolution: There is an action or a decision that enables the resolution of the problem successfully.
Then there must be a conscious and intelligent adaptation of the content we want to present. We want the content to be adapted in a superb way so that it can be leveraged.
These are the main steps for the stories to make sense, thus becoming a complete and immersive experience for the audience, from beginning to end.[/vc_column_text][tm_spacer size=”lg:50″][/vc_column][/vc_row]