We make a difference with our stories
Storytelling is a topic that has been on the agenda especially in recent years. Stories, which have an extremely important function in giving effective messages to brands, companies and NGOs, are actually one of the most important instruments that communicators will use in their work. Whether it is to communicate or to explain the organization and brand you represent, you need to tell an impressive story to mobilize people. It is also extremely important to explain the organization you represent to the audience you address with stories, to give effective messages and to make a difference; because if you don't have a story, no one will listen to you. If they do not listen, they will not understand the message you want to give. And if they don't understand, it will be impossible to reach your communication objectives.
Organizations that gather people around certain values, that have a story that is transmitted from mouth to mouth and from ear to ear, continue to exist for many years and maintain their position in people's hearts. Every brand, company or even NGO makes a promise to people. With this promise, they make the other person imagine a dream. This dream is actually that company's own story created with its own internal dynamics and values. When people take this story and personalize it, associate it with the big picture and make sense of it, they can now get to know that institution more closely. Based on this strength, organizations can shape their existence in a more permanent and effective way.
We understand the world we live in through our senses and make sense of it within ourselves. The senses are the means of understanding the world. For this reason, we can deliver our messages more clearly and permanently if we can put people at the center for everything we want to tell, and if we can narrate the subject we want to tell. When a subject is expressed through stories, sights, sounds, smells and tastes are felt more clearly and all senses are symbolized in our inner world. When we convey the message we want to give with a hero and the events around him/her, we place it in a social framework. This accelerates learning and perception and makes it permanent.
For this reason, many institutions are now organizing events to draw attention to this issue. In this context, the SUR 2017 Conference, organized in cooperation with TÜSİAD, Global Compact Türkiye and Özyeğin University, was one of the most important organizations where inspiring business, sports and art world representatives in the field of sustainability brought their stories together with the participants. Yeşim Group, where I have been conducting communication activities for many years, was one of the five companies selected to tell its sustainability story at this conference. We took part in the organization in the category of gender equality with the "The World of Butterfly" project, which we have been carrying out in cooperation with Uludağ Soroptimist Club since 2013 with the slogan “If a woman changes, society changes”. Yeşim Group Cutting Operator Emine Yazbahar, one of the women who participated in the project, and Meral Aydın Yıldırım, one of the executives of the project, made a speech on behalf of Yeşim with the title "1+1 is bigger than 2".
At the end of the speeches of these two friends, who described their experiences and feelings during the project process by combining them with examples from their own lives, a large part of the audience in the hall applauded our friends with tears in their eyes due to the intensity of their emotions. If your story has internalized the culture you are in, if it is organized according to the cultural codes of that culture, if it has symbolic elements that the target audience will make sense of, it touches the people in front of it and creates a more lasting effect.
In a nutshell, stories gather people around certain values and bind them together. Therefore, we communicators need to both uncover stories and ensure that they are told by the right people in order to achieve our communication goals.
Dilek CESUR
Yeşim Group Corporate Communications Director
