How to Tell Unique Stories About Your Company Using 6 Steps

Deb Monfette

The Story Path | Deb Monfette | Contenttriggers LLC

Your company has unique stories that only you can tell. The question is how are you telling them? This article will show you a way to create a story that connects with your audience's mind and jogs their imagination to think and believe in your big ideas. There are 6 steps to the Story Path.

In this article, I shared 7 key places you can dig for stories that can connect with and engage your audience. But what happens after that?

How do you pull all of the details together that you dug up and create a memorable story? One that will attract and delight your audience?

Well, I'm going to show and tell how you can take those nuggets and create a captivating presentation. A story that connects with your audience’s mind and jogs their imagination to think and believe in your big ideas and your passions​. A way to show how you #GetCustomerLove.

Show and Tell

Have you read Show and Tell: How Everybody Can Make Extraordinary Presentations? It’s a creation of Dan Roam, the founder, and president of Digital Roam Inc. He's an expert at visual thinking to solve complex problems.
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All Customer Center It Repurposing It Visualize It

"Show and Tell" by Dan Roam | Danroam.com

Roam ​shares three fascinating rules of Show and Tell.

Rule #1: Tell the Truth and the heart will follow.
Rule #2: Tell a Story and understanding will follow.
Rule #3: Tell the Story with Pictures and the mind will follow.

For you as a company, this is where things unfold. Roam explains that by telling the truth and leading with a story we connect with our audience, get them to feel our passion, and make complex ideas easier to understand.

But when we add pictures too, extraordinary things happen. Emotions take over and we connect with our audience’s mind and imagination to think and believe.

Get Your Customers to Love You!

One tool you can use to share your story is SlideShare. It enables you to use all three of Roam’s fascinating rules of Show and Tell, the truth, your story, and pictures. So sit back and relax while I take you on a trip to SlideShare story land.

Imagine this is your first time strolling down Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. You’re shopping for a pair of standout denim jeans, with a style unlike any other for a casual day at the office. At the same time, you’re imagining sipping a fresh apple, cucumber, and mint cold-pressed juice to give you a refreshing zap of energy. 

You spot Barneys New York. What experiences do you expect to find as you open the door to this luxury store​?

Ray Stendall, Publisher of Customer Engagement Magazine (CEMag), interviewed Kevin Thompson, VP of Customer Experience at Barneys New York. Thompson discussed how Barneys is thriving by creating an unforgettable customer experience in the competitive luxury market.

My project was to repurpose this interview into a simple and visual story of their brand and to show and tell how they create experiences that their customers expect to find. In other words, how they get "customer love" in the competitive luxury market. ​

You may be thinking, “But wait, I’m a B2B company”. That’s ok. Any company can benefit from these valuable tips and insights to tell their story and connect with their audience.

Besides, by looking at other industries you can often spark ideas that you would have never thought of before.

So here we go. My first step was research.

The Story of Customer Experience at Barneys New York

Barneys New York is a 94-year-old luxury specialty retailer. They’ve rebounded from the brink of bankruptcy to record sales by recreating themselves into a relevant, modern, luxury specialty store.

Let’s break this down. Barneys is a very visual brand and they have unique products.

They also cater to their customer’s experience. Which, by the way, is why they were the cover story in Customer Engagement Magazine.​

I soon found out that Barneys isn't just selling one-of-a-kind clothes, shoes, and bags. They’re selling an experience. My job was to dig for the details to create their ​story.

To start, I captured the main points from the interview. Then I researched where I could source background information and visual images to show and tell the deeper story of Barneys New York. 

​We Have to Pay Attention to the Details
One resource I found was their microsite,  The Window. I got a close-up view of what happens beyond shopping for luxury clothes, shoes, and bags.

The Window gives you access to the business. You get a glimpse into the minds of some of the world’s top designers, field notes, and other interesting bits, such as food and drink recipes from their own chefs. It was exciting to be able to capture some unique and colorful images I could potentially use for personalizing the story in the deck.

​The Experience 

The customer experience at Barney’s is unlike any other retail store. They even reflect a unique experience in their window displays showcased on their site. It was here that the cover jumped out at me.

The Prada Window Display | Photographed by Tom Sibley.

The cover represented the inspirational Prada window display at Barneys New York. It explores the relationship between two people and their complicated lives. It’s true artistry.

Take a look inside and read the story below for yourself. Scroll down to watch the amazing video of behind the scenes footage on how they made their displays come to life. It’s a brilliant piece of work and worth spending 02:43 watching the video in Beauty in Darkness: The Prada Windows Up Close.

The designers at Barney’s used exquisite, custom-made mannequins that reflected the “true character and beauty in a face that comes with age.” It evokes emotion. It’s visual. It’s interesting, and it’s memorable.

The story led me to the big idea for the SlideShare...

The Big Idea


The big idea in this deck gets you to imagine the possibilities.

“How can you give your customers an unparalleled, branded experience they cannot get anywhere else? An experience they want as badly as the product. And keep them shopping for your brand.” 
Kevin Thompson

People use SlideShare to search for interesting ideas, statistics, and easily consumable business content. SlideShare decks should quickly grab attention by sharing BIG ideas. Not the complex details. Keep those for the documents—long-format content such white papers, reports, eBooks, or technical documents (by the way, you can upload them to SlideShare too).

Instead of sharing all the details, choose one process, one idea, or one chapter in a book for each slide deck. 

After I discovered the big idea, it was time for planning the story.

The Story Path 

The story path is the plan of how you organize and tell the story. Each scene in the story has a purpose. From the feeling you want your audience to walk away with, to the action you want them to take.

Here’s a quick overview of the story path for Barneys New York.

After I did my research, I pulled topics from the interview and dug up the big idea. Then I jumped into organizing the plan to create the Story Path. By the way, a Story Path can have different elements depending on the story you want to tell.

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Possibilities -> Differences -> History -> 3 Big Obstacles

​The story begins as it triggers your imagination in a positive way. It inspires you to think about the possibilities of unparalleled customer experiences.

Next, it shares the differences from other industries and leads to a brief history of the luxury market. Then the story introduces tension and uncertainty as it jumps into overcoming 3 big obstacles.

They are:

1. Influence of online shopping
2. Customer behaviors
3. Buyer expectations when spending money

These challenges motivated Barneys New York to change and find a better way.

The Big Idea -> Results

The big idea unfolds...

What do their customers really want? How is Barneys New York overcoming these three big obstacles? How are they giving their customers a branded, unparalleled experience that keeps them shopping at Barneys New York?

Finally, you get a quick look at the results of their efforts to create this unforgettable, branded customer experience. The results also include the action you want your audience to take after they experienced your story.

Developing the Final Story

Once I got the big idea for the message and developed the Story Path, I was able to extract the essential details from the interview, the transcript, and Barneys New York microsite, The Window, to create a storyboard PowerPoint.

I carefully selected and reselected the major text points to share one idea in each slide.

After that, I decided on the feel of the piece. I chose the colors, the fonts, and the layout to create and identify my client, Customer Engagement Magazine, as well as representing Barneys New York.

Then I gathered my pictures. I found personalized images right from Barneys.com and searched for unique, royalty-free stock images to show just the right message.

This SlideShare shows you how... 

“Barneys New York creates an unparalleled, branded experience that their customers cannot get anywhere else. An experience they want as badly as the product. And keep them shopping for your brand.”

Kevin Thompson

The call to action is to inspire people to get access to the full video interview with Kevin Thompson, VP of Customer Experience at Barneys New York, and Ray Stendall, Publisher of Customer Engagement Magazine. It’s also a taste of what they will get if they subscribe to the digital magazine.

Check out the full Slideshare Story.

In Summary

After you dig for unique topics, how are you telling your story?

Dan Roam explains that when we follow the three rules of Show and Tell, great things happen.

When we tell the truth and lead with the story we connect with our audience, get them to feel our passion, and make complex ideas easier to understand. But when we add pictures too, extraordinary things happen. Emotions take over and we connect with our audience’s mind and imagination to think and believe.

One method you can use to combine truth, story, and pictures is by creating a SlideShare. But an effective SlideShare isn’t random slides filled with text or bulleted lists. It tells a simple and visual story, one idea per slide.

Get Your Customers to Love You! is a SlideShare that follows these three rules of Show and Tell. It shares a story of how Barneys New York not only survives but thrives by creating an unparalleled customer experience in the competitive luxury market.

It goes even deeper by creating a Story Path that organizes the major elements of the story to delight, create tension, and surprise their audience.

If you follow these tips and insights, you too can connect with your audience’s mind and jog their imagination to think and believe in your big ideas and in your passions. It's a way to show how you #GetCustomerLove. 

It's a story that only you can tell.

How are you telling unique stories about your company? Do you ever take a peek at other industries to jog your imagination and come up with new ideas? Are you repackaging your interviews, speeches, and conferences in delightful ways to attract and engage your audience?