The arts for the corporate storytelling: artistic tools to narrate brands

Abstract

In this fast-changing and unstable economy, businesses are facing new challenges and requirements. Under the pressure of a growing competitive environment, companies encounter the need of entailing creativity and innovation in corporate practices in order to prosper and differentiate themselves. This thesis intends to deepen the implementation of storytelling techniques and the incorporation of artistic interventions within the company organization as two efficient solutions for these compelling challenges. Starting from traditional storytelling theories, the work will explore the power that resides in stories which can be identified in three main purposes: sense-making, identity construction and persuasion. The work will present the principal academic studies and the story structures that became the basis for storytelling creation and implementation. The thesis will then deepen the core theme, corporate storytelling, by investigating the main reasons why narrative interest spread beyond linguistics boundaries until it has become a privileged managerial tool for the enhancement of corporate identity and culture. The study on business storytelling will include the actors that composes the storytelling scene and the main areas of application: branding, marketing and advertising and organizational management, with a focus on the opportunities that are raising in the digital field. Moreover, the work will present the interrelation between Arts and business that has received, in the last years, increasing attention in both practice and research thanks to the reciprocal benefits that the contamination between these two worlds may achieve in terms of training, process and products innovation and corporate culture enhancement. The thesis will then merge the two managerial solutions into the creation of a corporate storytelling through the use of artistic tools such as creative writing, corporate theatre and video-making. The idea has been sustained by the recent introduction of the Minor in “Artistic Management” at Ca’ Foscari University that, for the first time in Italian University system, involved thirty undergraduate students from different academic disciplines. The course integrated theory and practice in an experiential learning process aimed at the creation of a storytelling project for the Ceramics District of Nove and Bassano del Grappa. Starting from the presentation of general district dynamics and characteristics, the thesis will then explore the peculiarities of the subject of the case study, highlighting the importance of territory and local culture in the storytelling creation. Finally, the work will describe the technical specificities and teachings of the three artistic tools examined during the course.