Purchasing behavior is different now than it was in the past. While simply selling a product or service used to be enough, today consumers value establishing a direct connection with the person selling the product.

Some coffee vendors are trying to position their spaces as a third place between home and work, technology providers are talking about how their products make life easier, and a company offering SaaS services is highlighting how its software can handle the brain-intensive task of payroll in just a few clicks.

The days when what you sell was all that mattered are over. The main reason for this is that consumers want to connect more with sellers now.

Go to your childhood and remember the stories that one of the parents told you before you go to sleep.

Storytelling has been a great tool to connect between people throughout history, and the corporate story has become a strong way to develop the desired connection between the target audience and the seller.

Significant differences between history and corporate stories

The concept of corporate stories is just one of the new types of marketing communication methods we’re beginning to discuss.

While it’s not entirely accurate to compare corporate stories to company histories, we can consider the corporate story as an expanded and enriched version of the company’s history in different ways.

While corporate stories encompass history, history does not encompass the corporate story.

Unlike a company’s history, corporate stories:

  • It depicts the company’s corporate personality from multiple perspectives.
  • It presents the company’s values ​​more comprehensively and within a cause-and-effect relationship.
  • It includes more comprehensive biographies of key figures in the company’s history.
  • It explains how the company conducts business, its purpose of existence, and its goals in a more detailed and clear manner than texts simplified under the guise of mission and vision.

Corporate stories soften the harsh, vague, and lacking language of historical texts, approaching history more intimately and warmly, and closing the distance that the history creates between the reader and the reader by attempting to anticipate its objectives.

Where does the corporate story fit into the corporate identity?

The primary purpose of creating a corporate story is to gain greater visibility and avoid being lost in the digital noise.

As purchasing habits shift from brand awareness to other focuses, simply leveraging brand power is no longer enough. Storytelling has become one of the most important arguments that marketing professionals have rediscovered. We believed in stories as children, and we do as we grow up.

A basic white T-shirt, a pair of cotton black suit socks, or a pair of blue boxers… These products aren’t just made by one manufacturer. Marketing similar products through storytelling is a powerful sales strategy. Products may be similar, but what’s truly different is the product’s story from the moment it reaches the store.

A strong corporate story, a strong workforce.

Having a strong corporate story is a key reason why talented employees choose to work for a company.

Where social benefits are as important as earning money, effectively communicating a strong history helps you stand out from your competitors while also taking on the role of employer in today’s business world.

A corporate story is a great and strong tool for attracting new employees, while also answering the question Why am I here? for existing employees. Employees who understand why they work for a company and the goals they pursue are more motivated.

When developed with a comprehensive history, corporate stories serve as a compass for a company’s future.

Every company has faced challenges in its past and corporate stories are a great tool for explaining how they overcame them. Honestly incorporating these challenges into the corporate story will inspire both a new generation of managers within the company and somebody reading the story from the outside of the company.

Corporate identity can be defined as all the cohesive components that come together to determine how a corporate structure appears and sounds from the outside. Often missing thing in this package is the identity’s soul. The corporate story represents the missing soul within the corporate identity; it’s the meaning behind the entire corporate identity.

If you don’t explain what corporate identity means, someone else will do it for you.

How to write a corporate story?

Corporate stories are neither heavy psychological novels nor simple romances written with the help of artificial intelligence.

A good corporate story is honest, and every event within it is accurately written.

It’s written in simple, engaging language, structured like a well-written novel. Its language is fluid, its narratives clear, and it moves seamlessly along a single line, taking the story from a point in the past to the current era without creating confusion.

Writing a corporate story for a company isn’t much different from writing stories of any other genre. The result is a sincere narrative.

It’s important to remember that a corporate story has a purpose greater than simply selling products. A corporate story reveals a vision and makes the reader feel like they’re part of a valued entity.

Therefore, before starting to write a corporate story, the first questions you need to answer are Why was this company founded? and Why do we exist?

You can start by finding a genuine answer to these questions and expressing it sincerely.

Try to answer these questions:

  • Why was this company founded?
  • Why do we exist?
  • How did we start? (The physical starting point of the story)
  • What do we believe in? (The value that makes the story important)
  • What do we do?
  • What is our goal?

Before you begin writing your corporate story, find answers to these questions:

  • Who will read the story?
  • What anecdotes will be included?
  • What values ​​are prominent in the company culture?
  • What story template will be used?

Following the introduction, at its heart lie the real anecdotes.

Small but profoundly meaningful struggles—the first office/facility, the first order, the first export, the first customer review—form the significant benchmarks that will fuel the narrative. These are the safe points that keep the story alive and provide the narrator with ease as they build.

Placing the story within a specific framework will make the storyteller’s job easier.

Among the most commonly used corporate story templates are themes such as “the rollercoaster journey of a hero rising from 0 to 100,” “the evolution of a mission striving to make the world a better place,” and “the impressive achievements of a company constantly pursuing innovation.” There are many other similar story plot patterns.

Constructing corporate stories in a compelling way, rather than writing them flatly and emotionlessly as in historical writing, is an important and genuine way to build connection.

Whichever template you choose when writing a story, the key to finding meaning in the story is its inclusion of a sense of reality. This is the most important characteristic that distinguishes corporate stories from other story genres.

Simple suggestions for those writing corporate stories

  • Avoid complicating the story, avoiding exaggeration, and keeping the jargon and narrative simple, but infuse it with emotion.
  • Adopt an indirect, data-backed narrative instead of a direct one.
  • The corporate story should be present not only on the website but also on social media, at investor meetings, in orientations for new team members, at events attended, and also in online presentations.
  • Test the text you write. Take the necessary actions to encourage people to read it and provide feedback.
  • Review the story at the beginning of each year and regularly incorporate new developments from the previous year.

How can AI support corporate storytelling?

One of the biggest challenges a writer faces when writing a story is organizing the thoughts flowing through their minds, organizing them in an orderly and fluid sequence, and organizing the story into a meaningful structure.

AI tools can provide storytellers with some convenience at this stage. Some of the advantages offered by AI include organizing complex notes, establishing hierarchy, creating the main framework of the story’s plot, summarizing documents, and tailoring the story’s language to the desired tone. This way, tasks that could take hours of work can be completed in a short time.

Another important and exciting advantage of AI is that it makes it easier to optimize content written in different tones for different target audiences.

For example, it’s easier and faster to produce a version of a corporate story that includes more financial, analytical, and management details for investors, a more motivating and positive version for employees, or a more emotional version for customers, all without skimping on the details.

When used correctly, AI can be used not only to revise the corporate story, but also to edit it when necessary, adjusting its rhythm, strengthening its pacing, and increasing its persuasive power.

It currently seems impossible to completely ignore AI tools and entrust the corporate story entirely to AI, but it is possible to strengthen and streamline the story by leveraging AI’s support.

Some examples of good corporate stories

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A corporate story isn’t a cute little element that finds its place within a corporate identity and telling stories about itself isn’t an option for companies these days; it’s a necessity.

Whether you’re a fledgling startup or a well-established company, this type of content is a powerful tool for building consumer trust in your brand, reinforcing that trust and customer loyalty, differentiating yourself, and even strengthening employee engagement.

The world is turning; it won’t be your products alone that make you unforgettable; it’s your story that will live on in people’s minds.

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