Bite Size Comms

We often pride ourselves on good storytelling skills. Years ago, it was often former journalists who moved into PR. A profession that is taught to write articles about people. With the growth of digital communications requiring snappy statements (yes, I’m talking about X/Twitter and short video platforms), storytelling skills have been relegated. The story of a human being is less important than an object. The anthill rather than the ants.

But it is human interest stories that engage people. An example. Most people have heard of the Glastonbury music festival. Many will know that it was started by the farmer Mr Eavis at his Worthy Farm. But how many know that Mr Eavis has been using the profits from the festival to build social housing on his land for the last 30 years? Housing that is only available to people who can prove a connection to the Glastonbury area because house prices are astonishingly high there. I teach my PR apprentices the theories of storytelling from novels and films. They love a writing model devised by a friend, Caroline Black, called TRUTH (timely or topical, relevant to the ultimate audience, unique or unusual, tragedy tension or triumph, and human interest). This model not only works well in writing newsworthy press releases but also in crafting internal communications or website articles.

You may have wondered why journalists, when writing an article, not only state the name of the person but their age, where they live, and maybe their job. It gives greater context to the reader who wouldn’t have heard of the person. But age, etc, helps the reader picture the person mentioned in the article. In PR, we can add more human interest to a press release or article than a one-sentence quote. Tell the story from a human perspective. Put humans first in priority. Where they work is secondary. The ants, not the anthill.

[Image: Unsplash]