Steve Jobs said, “simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.”

He was right. It’s harder to write a brand story with a few, carefully-chosen words than it is to tell us everything there is to know about your business. Good corporate storytelling is about choosing what to leave out just as much as what to say. And that means ditching the clichés, removing jargon that alienates and confuses, and leaving behind the MD’s pet phrases.

Telling a compelling tale also requires you to spell out the evidence that supports your story – your reasons to believe. The explosion in social and digital media means that there’s never been so much written and recorded about companies, competitors and categories. For Insight Agents, smart analysis of social and digital media provides both the content and the context to create brilliant brand narrative.

Identifying the relevant conversation and category language in the smog of Big Data is an essential starting point for finding your true voice. As is understanding what those who matter inside and outside your company – from the boardroom to the shop floor – think and say about you.

Insight Agents are a new breed of corporate storytellers – data-driven, evidence-based storytellers. Our clients prize our ability to generate meaningful insights which enable us to craft stories with more impact, narrative that actually works. For recent examples of this approach in action, see our work.