The Problem With Data Storytelling - And How To Solve It

There’s nothing like being in the right place at the right time. This latest report from GreenBook makes clear that storytelling is the single-most important issue in the research industry.

We’re awash with data and storytelling makes sense of those insights, so that better and faster decisions can be made.

But, even though that puts a company like StoryMakers at the heart of what clients and agencies are looking for, I’m still unconvinced by the question itself: ‘Is storytelling important to you?’

In our experience, that’s only part of the quest, whether that’s in the market research industry or elsewhere. Storyfinding and Storymaking are just as important as Storytelling. Perhaps even more so.

What’s the point in spending time telling a story if you haven’t also invested in figuring out what the actual story is and then putting the pieces in place to make cohesive, convincing and meaningful?

That’s the journalistic edge that we try and bring. You can’t tell a good story until you’ve found it and constructed it. Asked yourself why it matters, who the audience is and how you want them to feel about it.

Storytelling has become such a buzzword that the worry is people are just using it without much thought, nodding their heads in approval. If businesses are to make the most of their data, telling the story of that data is only one element.

Maybe a better question would have been to ask: ‘What does storytelling mean to you?’ That way we’d have got a better picture of just how effectively businesses are adapting to a new, story-led way of working.