The Shortlist Episode 13: The Value of Storytelling

Storytelling captures attention and inspires trust. Stories spark conversation at networking events, get firms shortlisted on proposals, and captivate during interviews. Many of these stories are hiding in plain sight, but how to you find them? And once you do, how do you tell them? In this episode, Wendy Simmons and Pursuit Strategist Rachel West talk about the value of storytelling and how to capture the 'Why' behind the work.

CPSM CEU Credits: 0.5 | Domain: 5

Podcast Transcript

Welcome to The Shortlist.

We are exploring all things AEC marketing to help your firm win The Shortlist.

I'm your host, Wendy Simmons, and each episode, I'll be joined by one of my team members from Middle of Six to answer your questions.

Today, we're chatting with Rachel West.

Hey, Rachel.

Hey, Wendy.

Rachel, you are a pursuit strategist at Middle of Six.

So you handle a ton of proposals, and I think that requires a lot of storytelling.

Tell me and our listeners a little bit about your background and what kind of drew you to AEC marketing and that role of storyteller.

So I actually began my experience with the AEC world in an academic setting.

I studied urban planning and architecture, and I just, you know, I fell in love with the discourse.

I think more so than the practice.

Studio was a bit grueling, and I really found that I loved theory, and I loved to tell the stories of the design and the spaces, all of these experiential, incredible spaces that my colleagues and professional architects and designers would construct and would conceive.

I graduated and I did start doing marketing in a variety of different capacities.

I worked in the music industry, and I worked in product marketing as well for a coffee company.

And then I found myself back in the design world, which is where I wanted to land initially, in a small boutique landscape architecture firm doing their marketing.

And I just loved being able to draw out the very special qualities and stories of our leadership and our designers and tell those stories in really compelling ways.

I am now a pursuit strategist at Middle of Six, and I love the variety of clients and the variety of stories that we're able to tell.

It's all just so, so fun.

Yeah, I think our jobs as marketers would feel a little dry if it was just only data driven.

If our co-central or our database, you could type in some keys and then shoot out a resume and call it a qualifications package.

That really doesn't get to the heart of why a team should be selected.

And all of the work and thought and experience that goes into planning a space, the why we do what we do is so important, and that's where storytelling comes into play.

And so, you know, taking it up a level from just simple qualifications, either the projects, these are the people to the real emotional connection and the special components that make a team rise above the competition.

Absolutely.

Yeah, when you delve into that non-pricing competitive advantage, there are just so many wonderful opportunities for us to dive into story and people and really humanize the work.

Yeah, and that was one of the reasons why we were super excited to have you join our team, was your storytelling capabilities.

And it came naturally and showed in your past work.

And it's such a high demand for our clients.

They're always looking to improve their case studies and refresh their project descriptions to not just be a list of the scope of services they provided, but what challenges did they solve?

How did they add value to the project?

How did they save the owner money or time or give them more scope within their budget?

That doesn't come from just a list of, we did XYZ, there's so much more and you're talented at digging into that.

Rachel, what is storytelling and why should marketers incorporate that strategy into their marketing and branding efforts?

Storytelling is a really powerful tool.

It's the most widely adopted and spontaneous form of human communication.

Even predating language, I think I, oh gosh, there are some cave dwelling paintings dating back to like 1000 to 5000 BC.

Not that this is a history podcast, but it's just so fascinating that as humans all across the world, we developed these systems of communication that began as non-verbal.

There was no language, but we found ways to connect and to belong and to really know the world and know each other through story.

It enhances our ability to connect and feel empathy for one another.

And when we feel more of an emotional connection to something and not just the rational one, we're more likely to remember it.

You know, the greatest leaders of our time are great storytellers and have realized that the story sticks so much better than just a fact or a series of facts.

So that's something I find very cool.

And of course, we use storytelling as a great business tool, too.

It's really applicable in our industry.

We use storytelling in proposals.

We use storytelling in photography and website assets, in branding.

There are so many wonderful opportunities for us to employ story in our strategy.

And you're so right about that.

Memorable stories are really powerful elements.

For our listeners, if you haven't read the book Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath or Two Brothers, I'd recommend it.

I read it pretty early in my career, but the subtitle is something to the effect of why some ideas survive and others die.

And it's what Rachel will kind of allude to here too, is making memorable statements and something that people can connect with.

And if there are any story naysayers out there, we do have some data here for you.

I had to come with some data.

Who are story naysayers?

I don't understand this.

What are you talking about?

No, I only want data to give me spreadsheets.

That's all I will look at.

So Instagram stories are one of the most widely used types of social media posts these days.

Every day, there are over 500 million people who utilize Instagram stories.

And if you can believe it, over 86% of Instagram users post stories every single day.

Wow.

Not me, but I love that.

That's awesome.

Why do you think that's such a popular method for storytelling?

Well, it's such a wonderful way for brands to really get their message across to their audience, and they can do it in these really short, meaningful, but palatable bits.

So you can do video, you can do, you know, a series of photos and integrate words as well.

So you're telling the story through a 30-second clip.

Right.

Yeah.

You get a little taste of real world too, with those stories, because you may be at a job walk or looking at the opening day of a school building, and you just see the humans and you really get to see how the space is actually being used as opposed to only a write-up or case study format, which is great and can be very useful.

But let's not forget these easier, more visual ways to tell stories too.

So Wendy, tell me a story that just sticks with you.

It could be really any topic.

It could be AEC related, whether it's a case study, a success story from a previous proposal, a TV advertisement you've seen, a winning award submittal you engaged in.

What about that story resonated with you?

Ooh, that is a fun question.

One that is a favorite, and I actually reference it, you know, every couple of years, potentially chatting with a client about this, using it as an example, or even with our own team, we've kind of used it as inspiration, when we've kicked off a certain type of project.

If anyone has not seen the Chipotle back to the start commercial, I think it's pretty easy to find on YouTube.

I've grabbed it many times to bring to presentations, or just to use as inspiration.

It is an animated commercial.

It might be 60 seconds or so.

The only sound is Coldplay's song The Scientist, but it's sung beautifully by Willie Nelson.

I think when I turned that video on, I almost get tears in my eyes immediately, because the sound and Willie Nelson's voice and the words that he's saying about going back to the start is Chipotle's way of communicating, in some ways, fast food, and our world has gotten very teched about productivity, and maybe some of the ways they're treating animals or farmers is just not in line with their values as a company.

And so they break down those walls, and they go back to the start, and I'm already getting teary-eyed.

It's so ridiculous.

I'm just thinking about how beautiful that message is.

It is really one of my favorite examples of cause marketing.

It's also beautiful storytelling, and I'm so happy that they made that because it's easily 10 years old or something like that, but it still resonates with me.

It's so memorable, and I just I think it's a great example of storytelling.

That's incredible.

And the fact that you also remember the song and the lyrics, and the way that you felt when you first saw that commercial, you clearly had an emotional reaction to it.

Yeah.

Especially got 10 years on, and you still feel those things.

That is right there, the power of storytelling.

If you just had a rational connection to that commercial, you most likely wouldn't recall it today.

Oh, right.

If Chipotle, I don't know, used a different style of marketing communications to describe what their values were and how they were going to be different than the competition, then it might be kind of like what we see all over the place.

I mean, there's lots of ways to communicate that, but this was almost to the level of a beautiful piece of artwork, like in a way a gift.

And what kind of advertising is a gift?

But I feel like that's what they, what they were striving to do there.

And I would say there's not very many ads that just have that long of a lifespan, but they were able to get that.

No, that's pretty exceptional.

So, Rachel, thank you for asking that question and letting me share my thoughts on that type of story.

How do you think that is applicable in AEC marketing?

Well, storytelling can be such a powerful tool.

In all of the work that we do, we can weave it through proposals and really provide the proof, the differentiators that they offer, the pain points they can alleviate.

And we do that through photography, through narrative, through testimonials.

You know, we do this to build our firm's brands, to grow their businesses.

And storytelling can play a really significant role in this process.

Something that I see a lot when we're writing a proposal is that our clients are very comfortable.

The GCs, architects, your engineers, they're really comfortable talking about their process.

They've worked through those details.

It's part of them having a successful business, and they understand how they're going to lead a certain process.

So, Rachel, we come in, and we are writing a lot about that process.

But what's wonderful about the storytelling is it's that next step.

It's, here's the process, we've got this ready to go, your project's in good hands with us.

And by the way, let us show you one or two examples of how this worked out.

And so there's, like you said, proof that's happening right there.

And it just makes it real instead of like, yeah, okay, that's a great spreadsheet, or these are the steps, there's more.

You know, you mentioned the emotional connection piece of it, and maybe we just touch on that a little bit more before we move on to our next subject.

But why would that be important to make an emotional connection if you're a contractor or anyone else in the built environment?

So one thing that I like to think about when I'm working on any new pursuit, for me, my motivation is people.

I love being able to support teams and ensure that their personalities and their capabilities and the merit of their work is really coming through.

Because ultimately, we want to establish a connection between teams.

So a PM on a project is going to be working with the owner, working with the owner's rep on a day-to-day basis.

And that's the relationship we really want to ensure that we drive home through the process.

And now more than ever, we're doing so many virtual interviews.

You don't have that same interview where you have, you're making that eye contact, personal in present connection with someone.

So we have to do a better job as storytellers, as strategists to ensure that there are connections that are being made through the proposal, through the interview, through the case studies that we're sharing.

Rachel, I'm glad that you brought up that part about relationships because we are thinking about that as part of our overall marketing strategies and something that is going to come up, I think, in almost every podcast is building relationships, I mean, across the board, whether it's part of your business development or even internally in your company.

So what I'm hearing is that if you don't have that really, really strong existing relationship with a client, or maybe you're stretching into another kind of work that maybe they just don't have that real experience with you, the storytelling you do can help build that level of trust.

They see how you've implemented some of those tactics before.

They understand in the real world how your processes helped another client solve that problem, and they can envision themselves in that seat and having the benefit of all that experience.

Exactly.

Storytelling is such a powerful vehicle for connection, and that can be connection in business, which our industry is built on relationships and trust.

And I would say a majority of our clients' work comes from repeat business.

We love to get testimonials to include in our storytelling strategy.

Such a powerful tool for proposals.

Yeah, it makes our job so much easier, right?

Oh, it truly does.

So if someone else is going to speak on behalf of your team and provide kudos, and there's so much authority that comes with that, and I mean, as a marketer, we want to be mining those quotes and including them as part of the case studies as another proof point.

Yeah, and the lovely piece about that too is that not every client or owners rep who's writing us a testimonial is a storyteller.

And as marketers, we have this really wonderful ability to take that asset and really weave it into a story.

We can give it context, we can give it detail, we can give it depth, and then we have the proof.

We sort of were looming heavily on proposals in the proposal world as we started this conversation, but these stories can be leveraged in so many parts of your marketing, right?

I mean, I don't know, do you have examples or anything that we want to kind of share about how this could support recruiting or live presentations, social media?

I mean, let's just get into that.

So storytelling also can be such an invaluable tool when we're talking about recruitment marketing.

An organization can really convey its message, its values, its ethos, its mission, vision, purpose through storytelling.

And it's a wonderful way to attract promising new talent or, you know, in these times, my gosh, where all of us are kind of a lot of us are all over the place and we're not in an office setting, we're able to still feel connected and as if we belong to an organization or a company when, you know, all of us are physically distanced.

What type of stories do you think would resonate best or what's the format for recruiting?

What I'm getting at here is I think there's a trend towards video and, you know, but we are so comfortable on the written form, you know, the written medium.

Right.

But, I mean, that's an area that companies should be putting more energy into their storytelling, right?

Yeah, there's no question.

And a trend that I am seeing a lot too, I think a lot of whether it's more commercial, like product marketing or even in our industry, the About Us landing pages are our video.

Their video, their people, you know, the leadership speaking about why they founded their company, you know, what the core values of their company are.

If it's a coffee company, it's seeing the people who source the coffee going to origin and working directly with these farmers in Colombia, in Africa, and making these personal connections.

And it really humanizes the work.

It humanizes the process of sourcing, of ending up with coffee.

You know, you're ending up with a cup of coffee.

And there are so many hands that touched those beans that you've brewed for your morning cup.

And that's another form of just powerful connection.

Becomes so real when you see the action in a video where it's happening in front of you.

I mean, even just a 15 second clip can give you a glimpse into what a company is all about, depending on how they dress or the spaces that they're in, the trucks that they're driving, this type of job site they're going out to.

All of that is fantastic visual storytelling.

It's so integral.

And I think it is something I know as marketers in the AC industry, we really push for.

When we work with a new firm, we always want those process shots.

It's wonderful to see actual construction going on and be able to include that in a proposal where we're really illustrating graphically what our clients are doing.

Do you have any recommendations on how to leverage if you put energy and effort into one piece of storytelling, how do you get more mileage out of it?

When we think about a firm's brand, we have to think about it holistically.

There are so many different brand touch points, whether you're a small boutique landscape architecture firm or a large corporate integrated design firm, it's so important that your brand is consistent and cohesive.

You have a consistent tone, and with a consistent tone, you want consistent visuals.

And so we can leverage our storytelling across so many different platforms and really start to tell the stories of the values and the work that our clients do.

And it's just a really wonderful way that we can, as marketers, really convey strong messages.

So I want to try to give a little tangible tip here for marketers who want to practice storytelling and leverage one story into multiple different platforms or uses.

What that has looked like for me is that maybe you're a general contractor, and you are going to, well, maybe you want or you're doing pre-construction on a really impressive, interesting project.

Maybe at that scale, you also have other project partners who are just very excited to be part of that storytelling.

I would imagine an architect would love to provide input on that as well.

Maybe your trade partners are going to be co-locating and working early with your team, and so they would like to provide some data on that.

But find something that's almost low-hanging fruit.

That's just a great topic in general.

And then collaborate with those partners to start outlining, what are the milestones?

What are the interesting aspects?

Is there anything that we're doing new or different, or that we suggested during the pursuit process, that now we want to actually track the data on?

I mean, that would be a great place to start.

And then when you have a story crafted, let's say you put this together as an award submittal.

Two years has gone by, and you have these great little tidbits of stories, and you move it into a full award submittal.

You have a gold mine of information that could be shared in other ways.

Think of any kind of paragraph break as an opportunity for a graphic or a photo or potentially an infographic in converting everything into a different format to present that.

And I would just look at each of those pieces, the journey along the way, as something that could be shared.

Maybe you shared it early in the process too, but now there's at the end of a project, I mean, people love a great before and after and a success story.

So think about those big wonderful projects as just an opportunity for a multitude of stories that can be reused and repackaged many, many times.

So this is the part of our podcast where we like to answer a listener question.

We actually don't have one today, but I was thinking through this with Rachel and realized that I have a lot of experience going way back in my career.

And there were definitely times when I had extremely limited resources for videography and photography that just felt like beyond what we could do.

So, you know, I'm gonna pretend it's Wendy 15 years ago and ask this question.

I'm a marketer, and my firm has very limited budget.

How do you recommend I maximize those resources?

That's a great question, Wendy.

And I think as marketers at our core, we are nimble and we are resourceful.

And when we can't budget for a professional photographer or videographer, we're gonna go out and take the footage ourselves.

And because no one knows the story better than we do, we're able to really give the creative direction to ourselves.

We can take photos, we can gather videos, and we can use multiple mediums to tell a compelling story.

Right, it's much easier when you're the boss, and you can go out there, or you're the creative director, right?

You can go out there to the project or to your team's charrette meeting.

You can take 300 photos on your iPhone, and I bet you one or two are going to be really good.

So, you know, that's okay.

I can't tell you how many times I've done that in the past.

I've just snuck in to an interview prep, even for a colleague, to just document, document, document, document.

It can seem a little extraneous or unnecessary in the moment, but later on, you will be so thrilled that you have that asset.

And there are some pretty great tools now that are pretty user friendly, a little video editing even on your phone.

You can get some great footage of your team working together or things happening on the job site and edit that down into a snippet that is fantastic for social media or might have a place in a blog or on your website.

That could be done pretty well just on your phone with the technology that you have in your pocket.

Another way to think about how to do the storytelling when you have a really limited resources and time, maybe it's not only just the financial resources to invest in a videographer, but that you have a small team and there's just not a lot of time.

I'd recommend starting with a photo or graphic and a caption.

Take a screenshot of some great clash detection software or people meeting over a conference table and working through an issue and write one or two sentences.

That little snippet of a story will serve you well and it can be added to a library of stories that you can pull into proposals.

You know, it may not make it into a website, but it's something as a starting point, and actually I think adds a lot to your marketing work.

It does.

That can make such a huge impact.

It just helps break it up a little bit too, right?

You can describe something for a whole page, but one photo with a sentence, with a caption, it's like, oh, yep, got it.

Awesome.

We always aim.

We're not talking about proposals, but we just say we try to aim for 30 percent graphics on every page.

So there's one easy way to get some good storytelling content in there.

Yeah.

It can really enhance legibility and readability and prevent readers' fatigue.

So thank you for answering Wendy's question from 2007.

She appreciates it.

I'm glad we could help.

Yes.

It's still good advice.

Even today, go and get photography.

That's really important.

And practice your videography skills too.

That's the way everything is going.

So if you're not already on that train, you better run and catch up.

Jump on.

Rachel, awesome.

Thank you.

We're going to stop there for today and save some more of the tips and tricks and other things that marketers can use for storytelling for other episodes.

But hey, that's it for today.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

The Shortlist is presented by Middle of Six and hosted by me, Wendy Simmons, Principal Marketing Strategist.

Kyle Davis is our producer with Graphic Design and Digital Marketing by Alison Rose.

If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, send an email or voice memo to theshortlistatmiddleofsix.com.

If you missed anything or want more info, check out our podcast page at middleofsix.com/theshortlist.

And follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram at middleofsix.

Thanks so much for listening.

We hope you'll tell your friends and colleagues about the show and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes.

Until next time, keep on hustling.

Bye.

See you next time.

The Shortlist is a podcast that explores all things AEC marketing. Hosted by Middle of Six Principal, Wendy Simmons, each episode features members of the MOS team, where we take a deep dive on a wide range of topics related to AEC marketing including: proposal development, strategy, team building, business development, branding, digital marketing, and more. You can listen to our full archive of episodes here.