Potential functions of storytelling
Stories are a crucial means to communicate messages about nature conservation. This course helps you to use stories for:
- Getting attention and informing
- Changing behavior for conservation action
You can use stories for many other purposes, just to name a few:
- Building your brand
- Evaluation
- Fundraising
Getting attention and informing
Stories are a powerful means for getting attention for nature conservation and helping your audiences to remember your messages.
In order to inform, you have to stand out and engage. Otherwise, people will not listen. And if they listen, they will forget when you use only factual information. Even when they remember the facts, they won’t necessarily change their beliefs and attitudes.
Changing behavior for conservation action
Stories are a great tool to connect with emotions to engage your audiences and to get willingness to help for conservation action. Changing behavior requires empathy instead of cold calculation. Touching emotions is the key to move your audience from passive listening to engaged acting.
Other potential functions of storytelling
Storytelling to build your brand
Brand is the ‘name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s product distinct from those of other sellers’. Initially, Branding was adopted to differentiate one person’s cattle from another’s by means of a distinctive symbol burned into the animal’s skin with a hot iron stamp. Now a ‘brand’ it is broadly used in business, marketing and advertising. Examples of brands are Coca Cola and Apple. A brand—an intangible asset—is often the most valuable asset of an organization. (Wikipedia).
Storytelling and branding come from the same starting point: emotions and values. A strong brand builds on clearly defined values, while a good story communicates those values in a language easily understood by all. A strong brand exists in its emotional ties to audiences, stakeholders and employees, while a good story speaks to our emotions and bonds people together. Storytelling has the power to strengthen a brand internally and externally.
Storytelling for evaluation
Storytelling provides a powerful means to communicate about the results of a project from an audiences’ experiences and viewpoints. Storytelling can highlight both the strong points and weaknesses of a project, as well as any unintended consequences. Asking participants to provide a story about their experience of a project, generally brings out memorable or momentous aspects. A method to collect, analyze and evaluate stories that is used often in evaluating projects is ‘The Most Significant Change’.
Storytelling for fundraising
Getting people to donate requires touching their emotions. Cold facts do not make you open your wallet. Empathy is what is needed. And stories are a great instrument to create empathy.
