The Power of Storytelling for Business: Taking a Page From Taylor Swift’s Emotion-Driven Playbook
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Taylor Swift isn’t just a mastermind at songwriting, but also at storytelling. Discover the secrets to telling impactful stories for business.
By: Kristen Lyons, EVP Sales
Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift are easy click-bait these days, so it's regrettable to start a post this way. That said, I am the mother of three girls, and, despite my best musical teachings, my house is filled with their off-key singing and the butchered lyrics of “Welcome to New York”, “Lover”, and “Karma” at any given moment.
The constant reminder of Swift’s popularity always leads me to reflect on how we got here—how someone can permeate all aspects of society, even if her musical stylings are not ubiquitous to all tastes. Every time I stop to dissect it, I land on the same concrete conclusion: while so much of the music industry is over-produced and resounding in sameness, Taylor Swift is an outstanding storyteller, sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly of her life–and we connect with it on every level as an audience.
Today, LinkedIn posts, trade outlets, and social influencers in any given career vertical often create an echo chamber of what we should be doing to be successful—the latest KPI, the must-do tactics, or the next new thing that we need to do to achieve unicorn status. While it is important to keep an open mind to all the newest ways to achieve our goals, it’s not numbers or metrics that always move people.
Swifties are the living embodiment that stories are always at the heart of what drives people. The ability to imagine ourselves in aspirational circumstances and maintain a sense of hope of what we can be, the ability to see our reality reflected in others’ so we don’t feel so alone, the elation of feeling someone else’s success or the heartbreak of feeling their defeat are the things that make us human. As much as we’d love to say we are rational beings, so much of what drives people to action is emotions, which are always best captured via story-telling. This is what I also hear reinforced at a company level from some of the top brands in the world that I have the pleasure of working with. What moves the needle in their organization is not just the data from people, but also how those human stories come to life and help inform decisions.
So how do we become the TSwift of storytelling in our own lives? How do we distill both the real-time onslaught of cultural moments, news events, trends, and consumer sentiments, alongside a mountain of corporate data into something actionable, authentic, and boardroom-certified? Effective and efficient storytelling is critical to anyone hoping to move the needle–so let’s break down the key ingredients in a new recipe for leveling up our storytelling game.
Getting to Succinct, Impactful Narratives
Swift's storytelling success lies not just in the breadth of her narratives but in their delivery–her songs take us on a journey in under three minutes (obviously if you exclude the ten-minute rendition of “All to Well”—that one tests even my 4 year old’s lip-syncing capacity). In an age where attention spans are increasingly fleeting, and the window of relevancy of cultural moments or business opportunities is extremely tight, the ability to convey a compelling story succinctly is invaluable. Marketers, researchers, and businesses must take heed, ensuring their insights and strategies are not buried under an avalanche of data but are instead presented as coherent, engaging stories that drive home the core message with precision and impact.
What applications and tools can then help craft a story without missing the moment or opportunity? Two critical puzzle pieces come to mind: agile research and AI-based tools.
Collecting Data via Agile Tools
Tech-enabled research platforms have taken a significant bite out of traditional market research dollars spent in the last few years—but there is plenty of room for disruption in the name of first-mover advantage and relevancy.
As more brands have started to embrace technology, the ability to get qualitative and quantitative insights more readily has enabled them to move at the speed of culture. While this research technology was originally built on enabling “quick pulses”, more and more rigor has been built into agile tools as well as the service models behind these tools to take on bigger, meatier questions that must be answered.
Brands should be well into the experimentation phase, if not the adoption phase, of leveraging technology to put out more robust studies, especially when the tech and service is well-informed from experts within the industry. Running an Attitudes and Usage study in a handful of days or weeks is not only possible with a quick turn tool—but layering on qualitative insights from the same participants in that study can dramatically reduce the time on data collection and getting to the “why” behind the “what” is a reality. You can do both at Suzy for truly agile insights.
Are You Ready For It? AI
While AI is something that most brands can barely whisper without causing a five-alarm fire, employees should embrace the art of experimentation and problem-solving in using AI whenever possible, even if it's on their own time. It’s important to experiment and learn on your own, even if it's as simple as using GPTs to build a meal plan for the week or refining a personal write-up down to a five-sentence summary. However you decided to experiment, it’s critical to push ourselves to test and learn these new tools.
AI will eventually be approved and trickle into many facets of our lives and the skillset to command it effectively, to be a mastermind of prompting and getting exactly what you need is essential. The skillsets of researchers, insights professionals, marketers, innovators, and more will not fall by the wayside with large language models but rather be enhanced. Only those with the background and skill to arrive at trusted insights can build trust in utilizing AI in their organization. Still, we have to practice delegating the grunt work to the tech and using our people skills to produce content that people want to consume.
As AI is approved in corporate settings, brands should be finding and sourcing partners who have been tailoring their offerings with the proper guidelines, best practices, and prompts to produce trusted outputs. Basically, finding responsibly built AI is critical for the enterprise. See how we’re doing it at Suzy — and how we’ve built tools informed by research experts.
Mixed Media, Maximum Impact
Once you have the narrative, how can you deliver it to capture your audience? Taylor herself not only feeds her audience with moving lyrics but delivers her content in multiple ways. From repurposing her global Eras Tour into a movie to creating lyrical videos to accompany her music, she proves just how important it is to integrate visuals and live delivery of her message. While you might be tempted to get a custom Versace sequin outfit made for your next presentation, the value of mixed media and inputs is enough to enhance your storytelling to any audience.
The Power of Video and a Live Consumer
While in the past it has been difficult to scale, qualitative responses from consumers or customers, it is wildly impactful on the emotional connection of our stories. Thanks to products like Video Open Ends, this media type is making its way into board rooms. Collecting dozens of stories that highlight new opportunities and contextualize our understanding of those we serve is easily achievable from the aforementioned agile platforms, so consider weaving them in with your quantitative results and using those personas to be the embodiment of new opportunities.
Let the Numbers Validate the Emotions
True, the voice of the customer helps capture the emotional thread of a story. But as we all know, most companies require the larger validation of stat-tested and trusted results that prove an idea has commercial appeal. Leverage analytic tools in the same place your data is collected to remove the manual work of data stitching and trying to normalize across multiple data sets. These tools can also ensure flexibility in all data cuts so that no stone is left unturned in exploring what the numbers tell us. From there, be sure to mix those findings with the customer's voice to appeal to your audience’s head and heart in moving the needle on big decisions.
Include Relatable Examples
Just as Swift draws from personal experiences, incorporating real-world examples into your narrative can enhance relatability and impact. Customer testimonials, product reviews, and anecdotal evidence bring abstract data to life, making your message more tangible and compelling.
Keep It Simple and Authentic
Finally, Swift is the master of easter eggs (the number 13, powder blue, snakes —IYKYK) and repeating key themes throughout her body of work. These authentic pieces of her that she sprinkles through her music and media are part of why people keep coming back for more. Take note and make sure to identify simple throughlines that heighten and validate the emotion of your story. Ensure that the data does not drown out the opportunity you are highlighting and that your story supports your conviction of what to do next.
Look What You Made Me Do
I may have officially lost it, but I just wrote an entire blog post on Taylor Swift. While the idea at face value is never something I thought I would do, I stand behind the power of her popularity which lies firmly in the prowess of her storytelling. Even if we are bordering on massive over-exposure, the next time Taylor’s words or images take over your senses, step back to consider how her storytelling has captured and moved millions.
The confines of data collection and data processing to arrive at impactful stories are slowly beginning to dissolve. As an individual who wishes to move the needle in your career, or story, take the initiative to be AI-ready and agile-enabled. These tools will help capture fleeting opportunities for brands and people who know how to utilize them and turn them into action. Keeping stories concise and engaging will help to keep even the most fleeting of attention-spans eager for more, and leading with authenticity and simplicity can inspire action. The future of data and decisions is here—and it’s all about storytelling.
Storytelling With Suzy
At Suzy, we believe that people come first—and so do their stories. That's why we've integrated tools to help you tell compelling stories. From unmoderated Video Open Ends that help you discover both the face and voice of the consumer at scale to boardroom-ready PowerPoint downloads, we help you go from data to insight fast. Learn more about our platform, and how you can discover authentically human insights that will move the needle for your brand.
