An organization’s history is always filled with engaging stories. But for whom and why are we sharing them? The future (!) is often the best place to start with setting the strategy for your history marketing. We help you do it, in a historical workshop led by our professional editors and archivists.
A good narrative is filled with engaging stories and telling examples. What makes them telling is that they reflect and support today’s goals. Strategic use of history therefore starts with establishing today’s situation and ambitions. Once an organization’s future goals have been established, it will be much easier to pull forward examples and stories from the past that reflect today’s context.
Starting with future ambitions also help historical storytellers to sharpen their thinking on why their history should be told and to whom. Is the history told primarily to help recruitment? Or to facilitate a product launch or prepare for a reorganization? Is it told to coworkers, future employees, customers, partners or politicians? The audiences and the reasons may be many, but the more clearly they are put, the easier it is to recognize which of the many threads from the past that is worth pulling forward. The history is after all meant to help guide today’s actions.
Setting the strategy for your history use is step one in our three-step-process for effective history marketing. We’d be happy to help you set it, for instance in a historical workshop, led by our professional editors and archivists.
In our historical workshop, we try to summarize the strategy in just one guiding sentence, such as “The history of company X is the history of Y.” We normally also add a limited number of guiding themes, that are meant to permeate the narrative. The stories that later on will be identified (in step three of our history marketing process) should all support one, or several, of these themes. Stories from the past that do not reflect a theme, on the other hand, are put to the side.
After a historical workshop, you will have a synopsis for your organization’s history, with themes that will permeate the narrative. You will also have identified the audiences for your historical storytelling and the reasons why you are sharing it in the first place.
