Storytelling is becoming prominent in corporate reporting. SAS London and Communicate surveyed FTSE-listed companies' investor relations teams to find out their take on storytelling

Renowned fantasy writer Neil Gaiman says, “We owe it to each other to tell stories.” Stories are the lifeblood of communications. Stories infuse life into any narrative and may have a role to play yet in corporate reporting.

Corporate reporting has long been the purview of number-crunchers. It ticked the compliance box for public companies and offered businesses the opportunity to communicate with stakeholders, analysts and the media. Recently, however, other trends have begun to influence corporate reporters. Storytelling is of the most prevalent.

“The need for organisations to engage audiences in their story has never been more important. Building, managing and defendeing reputation is a key priority for all our clients. And we know that audiences will only pay attention if they are being entertained by engaging content. When they are faced with dull corporate speak, it only reinforces their mistrust of large organisations and makes them turn off,” executive creative director at SAS, David Stocks says.

Corporate storytelling can take on many guises as it addresses a company’s heritage and tradition, customer services, employee engagement and of course, the thoughts and direction of the company’s leadership. SAS and Communicate have polled corporate reporting teams from FTSE-listed companies. Here are the results:

Of the companies polled, 96% feel that storytelling has a role to play in corporate reporting. The near consensus points to a sea change that has already begun: the addition of narrative and storytelling into stakeholder relations.

The majority of those involved in investor relations are pro-storytelling with 77% already including narrative elements in their annual reports. The challenge, often, is getting buy-in from company leaders. Some say their senior managers are enthusiastically supportive of the introduction of storytelling in corporate reporting. Yet many still point to a scepticism on the part of business leaders. “Senior management are somewhat apprehensive of ‘storytelling’ and still unconvinced that it can result in real benefits,” one respondent adds.

Annual reports are often perceived as mere compliance documents, thereby contributing to the lack of support on the part of business leaders. The informal tone that annual reporters favour is often relegated to CSR reports or other communications.

Storytelling is still gaining traction in the investor relations community, but has been prevalent in other areas of corporate communications for some time. Of those polled, 83% cite uses of storytelling in areas of their business outside of corporate reporting.

One respondent says, “All our communications tools start from the premise of what it is that we want to tell. The answer is to explain our strategy, where we come from and where we’re heading to as well as what our Nirvana will be. That is our story.”

Other respondents cite internal communications as a storytelling outlet. Injecting a sense of humour, heritage or personality into employee engagement communications can have a marked impact. A company’s character shines through when a narrative is embraced when pitching for new business, as well. Others use storytelling online or in branded content. A sizable minority also say that storytelling is used in video. Film, as a medium, relies on narrative, thus this proves the slow but apparent increase in the use of video in corporate communications.

While storytelling is permeating all areas of corporate communications, the story itself tends to rely on a few key characteristics. Across the sectors and industries that were polled, three main areas of focus emerged when respondents were asked what comprised their corporate story. Heritage is the most prominent feature of most narratives. Innovation a strong second with ‘people’ filling out the top three. One respondent says storytelling relies on “the heritage of the businesses we acquired, a strategy that meets the competitive drivers for the industry, and strong people to deliver on that strategic vision.”

Customer service and experience is also noted as a feature of the corporate story, but often that stems from an attention to heritage, innovation and people. Many also cite technology or research and development – factors that can also be attributed to a company’s heritage and focus on innovation.

While most agree that storytelling can enliven corporate reporting and other communications, corporate reporters are decidedly split on the impact integrated reporting will have on their own storytelling abilities. About 46.5% percent say integrated reporting will provide greater opportunity to tell their story through the annual report and 53.5% say it will make no difference.

Integrated reporting has been gaining traction within the industry for some time now. Organisations like the International Integrated Reporting Council strive to create a framework for integrated reporting and to encourage companies to infuse narrative, corporate responsibility and a wider view of a company’s position within the economy into annual reporting. Yet this trend has unleashed a sort of Marmite effect on the industry. Some companies are fanatically favourable toward integrated reporting, as it allows annual reports a wider significance and provides investors and stakeholders with more information. Others are stridently opposed and maintain the view that the annual report should exist as a financial and governance document. Auxiliary reports provide outlets for other areas of interest, like sustainability.

This divisive wave of change may relate to another phenomenon: evolution is slow. Darwin knew it, so too do corporate reporters. While more than half of respondents say their annual report has changed over the past decade, a significant 37.5% say that little or no change has occurred during that time.

However, regulatory changes may also change corporate reporting. One respondent says, “Potentially linked to greater deregulation of our sector – we can tell our story rather than be restricted on what we have to report.”

Change may be the only constant, but change is often gradual. Whether integrated reporting becomes the norm, storytelling permeates throughout corporate communications or shifts occur only when a business itself changes, the annual report is a living document that responds and reacts to these shifts.