By Rex Hammock, CEO
For several years, Hammock Inc. had a message on the wall of our office lobby wall that said: “Your Story Starts Here.”
We thought then—and still do—that using stories is the best way for individuals (and corporations and associations and … ) to connect with the marketplaces they serve.
However, I discovered over the weekend that effective communication is not always through stories, but through “explanations” as well. I thought of “your story starts here” when I heard a few minutes of Shankar Vedantam, NPR’s host of Hidden Brain, and Princeton psychologist Tania Lombrozo discussing the difference between a story and an explanation.
There is no right or wrong. Stories and explanations play different roles in enabling us to communicate effectively with one another.
According to Lombrozo, a good story is one that is filled with detail and creates visual images and emotions while a good explanation is concise and can use scientific laws and profession language and laws to get its message across.
Today at Hammock, we still publish and produce plenty of content that fits nicely in the category of story stelling. We still have a portfolio filled with the content we love—and that works for our clients.
However, as I look at the work we’ve done over the past few years, I do see the evolution of content that is more savvy and is “explanation-oriented” when it comes to working with tech, healthcare and business-to-business clients, among others.
More importantly, our story has evolved in our ability to help our clients develop a strategy that incorporates both storytelling and explanation. And more ways, constantly.
We’d love to tell you our stories.
Image: Getty
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