Getting the John Lewis Partnership comms team in a story-first mindset
Rob Wallis and Sam Hunt; Alan O’Rourke and Neil Adams; Emma Heathcote-James.
You might not be familiar with these names, but you may well know the brands they have built: MOTH drinks, Ruark Audio and The Little Soap Company.
These are all stocked in either John Lewis or Waitrose. They’re also ones found within the Sanders’ home. And yesterday I shared their origin stories during ‘Story First,’ a presentation I gave to the John Lewis Partnership communications team at their quarterly meeting.
My ‘Story First’ approach is about helping the team think about how they can tell stories in fresh and engaging ways. They already do this well already - the John Lewis Partnership communications team is full of great storytellers, whether comms managers across Waitrose and John Lewis, the public affairs team or journalists who produce the internal magazine The Gazette.
So I gave my presentation on storytelling with a bit of a twist, looking at how human-centred storytelling makes us feel and how we can mine the gold under our noses. We discussed examples from Humans of New York and the Financial Times and I touched on the wonderful power of having a curious mindset which gets us noticing the hidden stories.
And I ended with my five ways to apply a story-first mindset:
Set the scene
Look for the real humans
Lift the lid
Zoom in tight
Be curious
(And here I am outside my local Waitrose with a can of MOTH!)