Stories are power, even in a data-driven world
We live in a data-driven, quantitative world, like it or not. But the qualitative side of life, sometimes dismissed as “squishy” or “soft,” still has a powerful role in business and public policy.
And for a simple reason: We are humans, not computers. Which means we rely on more than pure facts and data to decide how we are going to respond to the world around us. It’s not either or. It’s both.
Two cases in point from my experiences:
Defeating an effort to legislate an industry out of business, and
Pressuring the president of the United States to recognize a group of heroes
The first case persuasively blended hard numbers with impactful stories of real people. These were everyday people in Texas who were facing steep, delinquent property taxes. Some fell behind due to major health problems, some simply inherited property that was already delinquent, and others were behind for a wide range of other reasons.
One important data point showed that overdue property tax bills could quickly balloon almost 50 percent if left unpaid as local tax authorities added on interest and penalties.
An Industry Arises
A small group of companies had emerged to provide loans to this niche market to help them resolve overdue tax bills. And thousands of Texans were turning to this nascent industry for property tax loans. The interest rates were typically higher than a personal loan but far less than the predatory rates payday lenders charge. It was a better option for many than losing their home.
The banking industry was not pleased. They took their case to the Texas Legislature, found some sympathetic officials and prepared legislation that would change the rules so much that the property tax lenders would essentially be legislated out of business.
While an excellent lobbying team went to work in the hallways of the legislature, my team went into storytelling mode. Our strategy was to find the stories of real people who had benefitted by securing property tax loans and to take those stories to the major news media outlets in Texas.
Balancing the Scales
All we wanted was balanced coverage — articles or TV stories that would how there was another way to see the situation than the completely one-sided portrayal the bankers were presenting to key members of the Texas Legislature.
That strategy produced solid coverage of the issue across the state’s major metro areas, and we made sure that state reps and senators received those stories. After months of hearing only the other side, now they were seeing credible evidence that the property tax lending industry was actually helping some people.
We hoped this might be enough to prevent the banking industry from celebrating a legislative victory that had appeared all but inevitable only months before. Stories have power, and we tapped into this power with everything we had
An Enduring Lesson
The plan worked. The legislation that would have killed the industry never made it beyond the committee level. Too many legislators didn’t want to be seen as preventing their own constituents from getting help to pay their property taxes, especially if it became known that the banking industry was behind it. That would have been a very bad look.
The reality is that I’ve worked for a number of banks over the years on a variety of issues. I’m not the least bit anti-bank. This is simply a case study in the enduring power of storytelling in today’s data-driven world. A lesson that leaders would be wise to think about as they face their own strategic challenges.
A Long-Overdue Award
Case Study No. 2 saw the power of stories elevated to a bigger arena. The client, John Poindexter, a successful entrepreneur and Army veteran, laid it out simply: He wanted the president of the United States, Barack Obama at the time, to award a group of aging Vietnam War veterans a highly prestigious award, the Presidential Unit Citation.
Oh, and Poindexter wanted the president to present the award himself.
I was with Pierpont Communications at the time, an excellent Texas-based firm with a reputation for taking on big, audacious challenges and succeeding. As I sat with a small group of my colleagues discussing this truly BIG challenge, we settled on a strategy that sounded simple but had many, many moving parts.
Poindexter had been the commander of a U.S. Army troop in Vietnam some 40 years earlier. The story deserves a more complete retelling, but suffice to say the troop had endured a hellish battle in order to save some of their comrades from a vicious attack. They had never been recognized for their heroism, however, and Poindexter sought to change that.
Rising to the top
The team of communications and strategy pros that I was part of at the time knew that persuading the president — any president — to carve out time and energy to present an award was a daunting task simply because the president is deluged with worthwhile requests for various honors every day. We needed to make the troop’s story some compelling that President Obama would have no choice.
And that’s what we did. Each man in Poindexter’s troop had a story — their own personal recollections, the life they had lived in the ensuing decades, the losses they had suffered and more. Their stories were heart-wrenching and as real as real can get. Few stories one will ever hear rival those told by true heroes of battle. I had to wipe away my own tears as I listened to some of the first-hand recountings.
We told those stories through the national and local media across the U.S., from Jackson, Mississippi to New York and all points in between. The story — and the individual stories — were so intense that the national press could not ignore them. And neither could President Obama.
A President is Moved
The pressure campaign worked. The president’s senior staff were well aware that the story had become a media tsunami. The president ultimately agreed the men deserved the Unit Citation and that he should personally award it to them. In the Rose Garden. On live network television.
Stories — and storytelling — are power. In business, in public discourse, in everyday life. They touch the human heart in a way that data cannot. They can move mountains and, yes, even presidents. Leaders know this.
