A great story has power.
The power to intrigue, inspire and most importantly – drive action. Great stories bond people to ideas. They make people feel something. As talent leaders in human forward functions, that makes stories one of our most powerful assets. That’s why we asked Clair Bush to join us to share her tactics using human stories to write an EVP that influences candidates and customers.
Clair builds communications strategies based on key conversations, not research or product notes. That’s how she truly boils down what the EVP story should be and how to convey value to the end-user. These stories have become the centre spoke of all communications. Yet despite the inherent value of having an EVP, many companies don’t start here and that leaves them at a disadvantage when they’re ready to tell their story.
“The value proposition piece is probably the biggest and most important starting point for any marketing working with the business.”
As a marketer of both products and companies, Clair uses these stories as her key communication method with every audience. These stories are the genesis of the value proposition and absolutely critical for brand strategy.
Knowing where to start to collect stories is half the battle.
We asked Clair to recommend a few steps for employer brand and recruiting teams to get started working on their own EVP.
- Reviews. Many companies don’t even look at them, and our panelists had a good laugh about that. But don’t just read the reviews, interact with people. Learn from them. These are stories you won’t get by interviewing star employees.
- Build a platform where stories can be captured.
- “Create the processes internally and externally that you can distribute them back into your marketing, content and hiring teams,” said Clair. Find a way to make sure stories are shared broadly and there’s no silo of information.
- Once you have stories, translate them in a number of different formats to convey that message in the most authentic way. For example, film a 2 minute conversation between colleagues. Get the transcripts and the video then cut the information into blog posts, short video clips and images.
These stories will always be the most fundamental element to creating a strong EVP.
If that wasn’t enough, below you’ll hear Clair share more:
