About Corporate Storytelling

My name is Sean Bobby Kerr and I founded Corporate Storytelling based on one belief: that there are some stories that need to be told. And I was lucky enough to tell a few of those stories in the courtroom.

Let me briefly explain how important storytelling is for a defence lawyer. A trial is not won on facts alone; it’s won on narrative. The defence and the prosecution are, in effect, two competing storytellers, each trying to convince the judge or jury that their version of events is the truth. Whoever tells the more compelling story usually wins. And it is an incredible feeling when your story wins.

But just the same, there are stories that shouldn’t be told. Imagine if I forced you to relive those stories I told inside the courtroom. Imagine if I told you about the time outside a courtroom when a news network confused me (the lawyer) with the accused murderer standing beside me. Imagine if I tried to tell you what I learnt from that experience. That would be a complete waste of your time. The only thing I learnt from that last experience is that when a photo of you is splashed across national television alongside the caption “charged with murder”, your mother will not find it as funny as your friends.

So when should a business’s story be told? That’s the question that pulled me out of law and into corporate storytelling. Because the answer is not always yes. A story is not automatically useful because it happened. Instead, a story is useful when a business has the right facts which haven’t been turned into the right feeling.

A business can have all the right “About Us” facts: who they are, what they do, who they help, how long they have been doing it, and why they care. But if those facts do not make customers feel anything, they’ll read them, think “great”, and still choose someone else when it is time to buy.

This is where my own story does become relevant. From crafting stories in courtrooms to writing them as the author of two published novels, I have spent tens of thousands of hours learning how to turn a company’s “About Us” facts into a human story customers see, feel and remember.