Case Stories
& Studies
Story coaching gets results.
Enterprise Community Partners:
When Brand Storytelling Informs Culture, Communications and Leadership
Enterprise Community Partners:
When Brand Storytelling Informs Culture, Communications and Leadership
For more than 30 years, Enterprise Community Partners has touched millions of lives by creating hundreds of thousands of homes — and investing billions of dollars — in communities nationwide.
Challenge:
Because of the breadth and depth of Enterprise’s work as a collection of for-profit and non-profit organizations, the Enterprise Marketing & Communications team sought to develop a clear, concise story of who Enterprise is and what it does.
Approach:
First, we did a 360 degree intake, interviewing key leadership, partners and communicators on the team. We read all relevant documents, books, and viewed media that was relevant to the story. Along the way, we iterated key concepts and developed a core story and messaging that would create one dynamic central narrative that could be shared across many platforms.
We reshaped their origin story to clearly anchor its rich organizational roots, communicated its success, and illuminated its vision. In addition, we coached their leadership and used the story to train team members on telling the story in their own way from their own angle in the organization. We worked with the Marketing & Communications team to develop core messaging, design elements and a video to communicate the story to internal and external audiences.
Results:
The core story has enabled Enterprise to connect its many parts to one central story and give life to it’s mission, vision and values.
The story became became central to their website, was read by their CEO in an all-hands meeting as well as in a movie by Edward Norton, the grandson of the founder.
Messaging drawn from the core story has appeared in various materials, including speeches in front of Congress, advertisements, animations, congressional testimony, the annual report, executive blog posts, and the organization’s strategic plan.
LinkedIn:
A Diverse Cultural Experience Crafted into a Global Brand Story
LinkedIn:
A Diverse Cultural Experience Crafted into a Global Brand Story
It’s no easy task for a tech company to create an attractive distinction through culture. And yet that’s just what LinkedIn set out to do with InDay.
Every month, LinkedIn provides one day for employees to transform themselves, their teams and their community.
Challenge:
With thousands of employees around the world and hundreds of different experiences each month, InDay was a story that was difficult to tell. Retellable was brought in to increase the visibility and cohesion of InDay events while building core messaging and a retellable story that would inform the many thousands of ways the story is told around the world.
Solution:
Retellable defined the landscape through a multi-stakeholder, 360 degree story audit exploring the many narratives and insights that inform InDay, including how the culture is described, how it has changed, and how events are shared both internally and externally. We then shaped a versatile, retellable core story for the InDay relaunch (including video script, messages and tagline) that embodied the company values while reflecting the magic of the LinkedIn origin, brand and product.
Results:
A retellable story that was reinforced through the thousands of global experiences, email communications, executive leadership speeches, and videos.
A way of holding together the many themes in one design, including core messaging and tagline at the center of a greatly successful global relaunch of the program.
Facebook:
Storytelling for Recruiters
Facebook:
Storytelling for Recruiters
Part of Facebook’s mission is to “make the world more open and connected.” And connection comes from the center.
In working with Facebook’s University Recruiting, Retellable supported their ongoing goal of securing the best talent in the world in a competitive race with other Silicon Valley tech firms. Facebook enlisted us specifically to motivate and educate recruiting team members to effectively represent their values and connect with candidates through storytelling.
Solution:
Over the course of a yearlong engagement, we worked with the University Recruiting team to help identify, shape and disseminate the essential stories that bring Facebook’s unique values to life. We coached leaders one-on-one and as a group, found and developed leadership stories and built storytelling capacity among recruiting team members, helping the team own and share authentic, compelling stories that would deliver critical messages and overcome impediments.
Results:
Team members learned how to better find and shape stories of their own and of the organization as a whole.
Team members discussed and repeat stories, amplifying stickiness and instilling a greater sense of company’s value and distinction.
Team members now use these stories in selling candidates and in management.
Leadership and on-boarding integrated storytelling in their jobs and at meetings.
Hawaii State Department of Health:
Public Health Story Training
Hawaii State Department of Health:
Public Health Story Training
Business Challenge:
Leaders at the Department of Public Health/Injury Prevention division in Hawaii were having a hard time talking about injury prevention without getting stuck in big problems – or swamped in data. Whether it was talking about drowning prevention, traffic safety, or suicide prevention, they needed a way to deliver their messages and connect all of their different communications with media, funders, and the populations they served.
Solution:
Retellable designed a highly-interactive two-day course to strengthen the story skills of leadership and build their capacity as story coaches. We began with pre-work which evaluated existing competencies and challenges, as well as interviewing a sample of participants to determine what course of training would be most valuable.
The training began by building on what participants already knew, and building a shared understanding of how stories work. The group developed their techniques through teachings and exercises that largely focused on finding, shaping and sharing stories from their own lives.
Once the participants had developed a foundation of storytelling skills, the training focused on developing messages and impact stories that revealed the challenges and transformations of the target populations. The work culminated with the participants coaching one another on their stories, and revealing those stories on video that was to be used to raise awareness around their various areas of focus.
Results:
Each participant developed several key stories to use for a variety of purposes and a variety of messages.
Videos were created by each team for purposes of outreach, funding and awareness building.
The vast majority of the participants reported an increase in their ability to understand storytelling techniques from “low” or “moderately low” to moderately high/high.
Half of the participants had a “moderate” understanding of the role of storytelling in injury prevention, while all but one rated their ability at moderately high/high after the training.
Only three participants rated themselves as moderately high in their ability to develop an effective story before the training compared to 8 after the training, and 6 others who rated their ability as “high”.
“Our work together helped me organize my insights and stories for speaking and also for launching my new company. In fact, I’ve been using one of the stories that you helped me with in many successful pitches. We got a huge amount of mileage out of that story!”