Don’t Forget Your Story

This essay is part of our New Year's series on what to expect in 2025, and can be downloaded as one compiled PDF for you to read at your leisure via the download form. Thank you

By Sally Payne, Partner at 5654 & Company

In our essays last year, we spoke about the importance of storytelling. This will always be true - a compelling, emotive story with a clear goal and exciting journey will always trump a list of stats and facts.

The importance of storytelling and selling a vision is not new, but it’s increasingly important to remember. Because the world is getting busier. And, generally, our attention spans are getting shorter. There has been a crescendo of books and articles in 2024 about how our brains are changing, making it harder to stay in the here and now – there is a reason the Oxford Word of the Year 2024 is ‘brain rot’. We have more stimuli, screens, and demands on our time than ever before. With more choice - of what to watch, read, wear, buy, support - decision fatigue is also on the up.

Your decision-maker audiences face the same challenges. It’s often easy to forget they are people too. When they’re considering the issues, they often think as consumers or citizens before they think as politicians, regulators or shareholders. There will be a huge range of information and decisions on their desk. Any event, meeting, briefing, or social content you serve to these audiences should aim to capture attention and engage on a human level first.

But an inspiring story won’t achieve your company’s goals alone. So, this year, we want to make three points.

First, it's important to keep front of mind why you want to get cut through. Organisations often have a huge range of asks and priorities for engagement. But almost always, the goal boils down to winning support. Support for an entity, or for a specific ‘ask’. To deliver your business strategy and commercial goals, you rely on third party support much more than in the past. Your regulatory environment is shaped by increasingly interventionist governments, who are themselves responding to increasingly volatile electorates. Your investment plans are increasingly dependent on decisions at a local or national level. Investors’ focus on ESG continues as this agenda becomes more like a new layer of regulation in its own right. And your talent pipeline is choosy, in demand, and wants to know what your company stands for and how you act. Your success is dependent on the support of others in all sorts of ways.

Second, at 5654, we know that building support - whether public or private - is complex. Just as you take a risk when you recommend a product or service to a friend, the same is true of a stakeholder choosing to champion your organisation or your campaign. For the decision-maker, it involves prioritisation, risk, trust and a decision to act. This year, we’ve focused our research on how support is won, and it comes down to earning social capital.

We’ve found the stepping stones to build social capital and will shortly publish our findings, including which sectors are doing better than others when it comes to earning confidence, trust and support.

Third, it's important to have a simple method for understanding how story development and support building can work for your organisation. We understand that every organisation has a unique set of aims, stories and values. But there are fundamentals which work for everyone. A story is critical, because winning the attention and focus of your stakeholders is competitive. But it must be paired with strong evidence and strong support. Decisions are made more easily, when your decision-makers know that they’re not alone, when they’re motivated by an emotive story, and when they are reassured by the evidence.