Corporate Storytelling for Manipulation

In an interesting blog post with a "digital storytelling" video from way across the pond, storytelling coach Raf Stevens asks the question:

Is storytelling in a business context today not mostly used as a manipulative corporate communication tool?

I answered:

I must have missed the storytelling in the video. I see electronics, I see pictures, I see a giant toy, I see distraction. No storytelling. Frankly, not even digital storytelling.

I am with you that storytelling needs to be reclaimed. And...I have been banging that drum for a long time. Storytelling requires me and you. Not "me away from you" via digital anything.

Face-to-face is an essential component of storytelling. If I can't see you, one-to-one or even one-to-an-audience, I am not storytelling. I may be acting. I may be selling. I may be performing. But I am not storytelling until I can hear my audience breathe and take in their energy and contributions. That is storytelling.

When we forget that the audience breathes with us and co-creates the story, then our branding is sales or at worst, manipulation.





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The official blog for K. Sean Buvala, storyteller and storytelling coach.

Digital Storytelling vs the Oralists?

Interesting blog read.

Just adding to this: However, in my opinion, digital storytelling in the classroom is an easy sell. Speaking in broad generalities: Traditional, spoken-style storytelling is a much harder sell. Read books to kids? Teachers do that. Use PowerPoint and Video in their classrooms? Teachers do that. Use storytelling which are person to person narrative processes between students and the rest of the world? Not yet and there is very little understanding of why we "oralists" would want to be or even have a place in the classroom.

Digital storytelling is an easy sell. We've been doing it since filmstrips and slide projectors. I took classes on it back in the 80's. Two of our schools in our school district just got new "smart" classroom buildings. By reading the news, you would think that communication has just now been invented since kids can "participate" in their classes.

Yep, give me an artist-in-residence week with your kids, allowing me to teach and coach storytelling. Your writing scores will go up, your reading levels will go up and your kids will participate in ways you never thought possible. And you won't once have to plug anything in. And, what I teach them will be used across the curriculum. It's completely portable and can be duplicated by all students regardless of a student's economic situation.

Try that with digital storytelling. You can't.