Great communication is telling a story, and telling it well.
Capturing attention and imagination, entertaining or informing – ideally both – and evoking emotion. There may be a call for action, a desire to influence or persuade. So getting a story right is vital. It should extoll your brand, inform your biography and be true to your beliefs. Genuine, passionate and packed with personality.
In a world of podcasts, videos, TikToks, X and Threads, a story is by no means the preserve of the written word either. Landing it on the right platform is vital. No easy task when confronted with a digital landscape punctuated by analogue anchors.
But a great story is still the key. The rest is just format. It is key content to enrich your brand, increase your visibility, give you a voice and build trust.
Fred was delighted to work with one of the best storytellers at The Business Day earlier this summer, and it was great to recap on a successful event at a sponsors’ celebratory gathering this month.
Gyles Brandreth is an impeccable orator. And his tales are woven like his finest jumpers, featuring characters that are household names, or even names from the Royal Household. And there’s a strong sense of sentiment. Feelings, reactions, emotion. Some blatant, some blindside you.
Always presented with a smile, great gusto and disarming charm, you’re guided through a subject at the pace he sets, as he reads the room and revs up as required.
From highbrow television quiz shows to Celebrity Gogglebox, Westminster to Waterstones, his appeal crosses genres with genteel aplomb. He’s active on social media, in the mainstream media, from poetry to broadsheet prose, you’ll find him wherever words weave. He’s a rare breed who is relatable to many too.
Having hosted the excellent Bridlington Spa event so well for several years, we were keen to extract anecdotes and incidents as he does the headline acts that grace this calendar highlight.
Turning the tables on such a seasoned performer beside the seaside. A high-risk manoeuvre? Maybe. But as he bounded on to that Bridlington stage to welcome business leaders to the big day, the positivity pulsating was all the reassurance required.
And a jolly good session it was.
So what goes into a great story? The key ingredients are the who, the what, the where, the why, the when and the how – the ‘Six Ws’ if you allow a quick spin on the last. Then there’s the vital hook. The nugget to get people interested. It is the new in news, the latest element, twinned with the biggest touchpoint for familiarity.
From there it is assembling in order of priority to answer all the questions the person you’re telling the story to would be likely to ask.
How deep on description and detail you go will depend on the chosen channel, but holding interest needs work. From character counts to page limits, in a world of apparently urgent messages all vying for attention there will be a limit to what can be consumed. A big room can generate a dulling rumble if small talk erupts, pages can be turned, mouses clicked and swipes taken away from your core message.
But a great story will hold the recipient. Just as ‘our’ Gyles did with a frankly marvellous Fred Talk in Brid.
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