Quite simply, big brands use stories to sell stuff because old-school marketing strategies don't work anymore.

As a tactic, this is known as corporate storytelling.

In years gone by, a business could rely on shouting about a list of features and use blunt force to generate revenue.

They could call upon a TV commercial, a radio ad, a pull-out in a magazine, a flyer or a billboard, but the approach would generally be the same.

However, as time has gone on, more media channels have been created and made consumers more accessible than ever before. But that accessibility has come at a cost.

We're now inundated with various forms of communication as a result.

Basically, we can be reached whether we're at work, at home, in the car, in the gym and even when we're on the toilet, so it's harder for all these different brands to be noticed and heard.

Sharp businesses spotted the issue and adapted. They realised that they needed more creativity if they were to cut through the clutter and reach their target audience.

Stories gave them this power. They enabled companies to sell more things and to build a popular, long-lasting brand.

But why?

Well, as humans, we're hard-wired to love stories.

We’re exposed to them from an early age and our love affair with a good yarn continues throughout our lives in a variety of forms.

We start off with fairy tales, Mr Men books and The Gruffalo. We move on to Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton and JK Rowling. Then it’s time for Dan Brown, Stephen King and the like.

And it's not all about books, either. Let’s not forget about comics, soap operas, newspapers, magazines and movies. Even most sports have a narrative of some sort, as battles are continually won or lost on pitches and in stadiums all over the world.

Stories are everywhere.

Whether we realise what's happening or not, we love stories because they engage our brains, evoke our emotions and make us feel things. They shape us, motivate us and influence us.

Stories can resonate for generations, cut across cultures and sweep us into imaginary worlds.

It’s pure neuroscience in action.

When done right, corporate storytelling is an awesome weapon.

Logic tells us that a story can engage, entertain, inspire and influence us more than any bland advertisement could.

[Oh and by the way, remember that a company narrative also serves an internal purpose too. It brings staff together, fosters team spirit, gets people working towards the same goal, develops a cult-like spirit and encourages goal-setting behaviour.]

Here's a great example of corporate storytelling in a TV commercial:

For those who don't know, Robinson's is a UK company that has been making soft drinks since 1823.

Now, as good as Robinson's products are and as well established as the company is, we're not talking about a particularly memorable brand here. Nevertheless, this was certainly a really popular campaign that really helped cultivate their image.

Imagine if they'd just used a boring poster with a picture of a drink.

That would have been the easy option, but the two approaches would have been like night and day.

We think this example really brings home the real long-term value of storytelling.

If we look past the potential for a sexy spike in product sales, we see that stories can transform the perception of a brand, increase trust and encourage customer loyalty by conveying a powerful vision, ethos, mission or set of values.

Airbnb is another business that uses storytelling well.

This is a brand that focuses 100% on the customer [whether that's guests or homeowners] and uses stories to promote this fact.

Because they publish a variety of stories [most of which are organically generated by the Airbnb community], the idea of letting a stranger stay in your home or you staying in someone else's place suddenly doesn't seem like such a big deal.

For Airbnb, you could argue that stories underpin their entire business. They're used to transform a potential obstacle into something desirable.

Elsewhere, brands like Apple, Nike, Google and Coca-Cola have enjoyed incredible success with storytelling. They've inspired many other companies to try their luck as well, changing the way businesses communicate forever.

But hold on. Before you grab a pen to start crafting your own tale, there are a number of potential pitfalls with corporate storytelling that you should be aware of.

For starters, the story has to be honest and authentic.

Many companies have jumped onto the storytelling bandwagon and been busted with metaphorical fingers in the till.

Volkswagon cheated diesel emission tests in the US for 7 years despite advocating clean fuel.

Huawei and Samsung were caught pretending that pictures were captured with their smartphones when they were actually taken by a professional DSLR camera.

Meanwhile, Lush uses environmental causes in their marketing, but many of their products are still packed with harmful preservatives.

Just as a good story can transform a business for the better, it can also destroy a reputation in seconds.

We live in a time of unprecedented transparency. This is about brand perception and being able to withstand close scrutiny. The key lesson is, as your parents probably told you, if you've not got anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

The next thing about corporate storytelling is that people have to genuinely care about your story or there's no point telling it.

I'm sure we've all seen enough trashy sales pages and shouty emails to last a lifetime, right? Thing is, the deluge of drivel has made everyone more sceptical and everything a notch harder.

And that’s a huge problem.

Unfortunately, most corporate content looks like corporate content. It's created by people who don't fully understand the art of storytelling and when that happens, the content is no longer content... it's an advert.

And that's exactly what we're trying to avoid.

You might see what you've developed as a story. You might even call it a story. But everyone else doesn't. They see it as a pitch. And a boring one at that. 

The goal with storytelling is to create a narrative that gives people some sort of experience.

One that either doesn't resemble an ad, or one that's so enthralling that folks don't care even if they know full well that they're being sold something [like the Robinson's example].

Good stories always have a few things in common.

They must:

• Be unique and authentic to generate trust
• Be based on reality to trigger engagement
• Create empathy with the audience 
• Be simple enough for anyone to understand 
• Be immediately relevant to your target audience
  
  

And the last important point about corporate storytelling worth highlighting is the structure of the narrative.

Stories have to flow and make sense, so I'm going to give you an easy-to-follow template.

We'd advise using what’s technically known as the monomyth story structure, something that's more commonly referred to as the hero's journey. 

This is the most-used story format.

Pretty much every popular story you’ve ever come across uses the monomyth structure. It contains 12 steps and all of them are covered below, but remember that your story doesn’t have to include every single element.

It’s fine to be flexible and only use a couple at any one time.

To make the concepts easy to understand, we've used the original Star Wars trilogy to illustrate each step [because we think most people have seen the movies].

Then, after going through the 12 steps, we've looked at Apple's storytelling through the eyes of the monomyth structure to add a business context to all this.