“Audiobooks have had a big shift in popularity in 2018 where for the first time, “a full half of all Americans ages 12 and older have listened to an audiobook, up from 44% last year”- Forbes
“Online audio (podcasts, radio shows, music and audiobooks) has become more popular than ever before”- Publishing Research Quarterly
“Storytelling that starts with the persona allows us to tap into these deeper recesses, where the influence of attitudes and emotions is greater… loyalty and trust are found there”- Journal of Business Strategy
“Employees have a deeper affiliation with the message through organizational storytelling due to aligning stories with their own experiences and understanding”- International Journal of Business and Social Science
“Audiobook sales revenue has been on a steep rise since 2018, reaching 1.3 billion USD in 2020”- Statista
“Over 71 thousand audiobook titles (were) published in 2020, a 39% growth between previous years”- Statista
“116% growth in spoken word listeners 13-34 years old in the past even years, with 18% growth in the last year”- National Public Radio Organization
“Three uses for storytelling in organizations: (1) to motivate employees, (2) for education and (3) to consolidate corporate culture”- Journal of Marketing
“Researchers have shown that storytelling strengthens the connections consumers have to brands, so that to a great extent what a brand means to a consumer is based . . . on the narratives he or she has constructed that incorporate the brand.”- Journal of Business Strategy
“19% [of Millennials] say they have paid in the last year for a subscription service for eBooks or audiobooks such as Kindle Unlimited or Audible”- American Press Institute
“There are currently about 1000% more titles published since 2011”- Audio Publishers Association
“Should produce positive effects on key audiences, such as increasingly positive attitudes toward the company and eventually behavioral intentions to support this company”- Public Relations Review
“Employees have a deeper affiliation with the message through organizational storytelling due to aligning stories with their own experiences and understanding”- International Journal of Business and Social Science
“Storytelling that integrates a moral and spiritual component can transform an organizational culture so members of the organization begin to feel connected to a larger community and a higher purpose”- Journal of Business Ethics
“Story-telling is an important element… involving the sharing of experiences and creation of mental-maps of the environment in which people are motivated to perform to their full potential”- Leadership and Organization Development Journal
“Stories are a device… [that] provide managers with a form of social and intersubjective interaction that reflects belief systems, role expectations, interpersonal norms and conditions for work behavior”- International Journal of Management
“The most recent era in audio entertainment… users are asserting power over the medium to select particular content at particular times”- Mass Communication and Society Journal
“There is value in a story that is, designed to drive the simulation and to elicit the [employee’s] best performance”- Society for Human Resource Management
“[onboarding] can also aid employees in identifying values congruence which is critical to career contentment and commitment which can significantly impact retention to both the field and the institution long-term” - Journal of Research, Assessment, and Practice in Higher Education
“Audio narrative has recently benefited from profound cultural shifts in media consumption associated with on-demand television’s binge watching revolution and the advent of digital longform storytelling”- Journal of Radio & Audio Media
“Brands can bring their CSR (corporate social responsibility) efforts to life through authentic storytelling [and] Millennials want to know what companies are doing to make the world a better place”- Center for Social Impact Communication at Georgetown University
“Corporate storytelling is suggested to help demonstrate the importance of the corporate brand to internal and external stakeholders… as well as help a firm to bond with its employees”- Product & Brand Management
“The audiobook market share shifted from 42% digital copy sales in 2009 to 87% digital copy sales in 2017”- Audio Publishers Association
“Storytelling is essential to successful branding, since your brand is the sum of all your corporate behaviors and communications that inform your customers’ experiences with your product or company”- The Journal of Business Strategy
“83% of Millennials would be more loyal to a company that allows them to contribute to social and environmental issues”- Cone Communications
“Maximizing success through onboarding by storytelling during orientations, [helps employees understand] the company's culture and values [and] its goals and history”- Society for Human Resource Management
“Narrative presentation of corporate strategy, comparative advantage, is more effective at producing a consistent and confident choice of competitive advantage among an audience than a presentation of corporate strategy using a PowerPoint style, bulleted list approach”- Journal of Strategy and Management
“The majority (79%) of Millennials want to work for a company that cares about how it contributes to society and 69% would refuse to work for a company that is not socially responsible”- Journal of Education For Business
“A poor cultural fit is frequently cited as one of the main reasons [an employee] decides to leave an organization… defining the organization's culture through storytelling should start with branding of the organization and continue through the interview and onboarding process”- Physician Executive Communication Journal
“Millennials are more technologically advanced than any previous generation [and] survey data has shown a correlation between age and reading preferences [where] younger people listen to more audiobooks than older Americans”- State University of New York
“The storytelling process yields positive impacts on internal and external stakeholder outcomes including increasing employees’ thriving and meaningful work, as well as the attitudes and trust of multiple external stakeholders”- Journal of Strategic Marketing
“[the way employees are on-boarded] sets the tone for the culture of a place, the people, and the values of a new institution and can have a significant impact on employees’ sense of belonging”- Journal of Research, Assessment, and Practice in Higher Education
“A focus on social responsibility is particularly important to attract, retain, and increase the commitment and engagement of Millennial employees and talented women”- Center for Creative Leadership
“Spoken word audio listening is up 40% in the past seven years, and up 8% year over year”- National Public Radio Organization and Edison Research
“As technology evolves, people have more options available to them, which may explain why [reports] found younger adults to be more likely to opt for audiobooks and the multi-tasking they enable”- Forbes
“The corporate world cannot ignore the demands and expectations of Millennials, who are devout in their desire to associate with companies aligned with their values”- Center for Social Impact Communication at Georgetown University
“Audio platform superiority was about the desire to use an audio platform that is perceived to be superior to other audio alternatives, including on-demand convenience (time and place) and content (vari- ety and uniqueness)”- New Media and Society Journal
“When it comes to digital storytelling for branding, there is, a more positive attitude towards the company when the employer branding message is using digital storytelling”- Management Dynamic in the Knowledge Economy Journal
“64% of Millennials consider a company’s social commitments when taking jobs and will not work for a company if they do not have strong corporate social responsibility (CSR) values”- Cone Communications
“73% of the U.S. 12+ population (an estimated 209 million people) have listened to online audio in the last month, up from 68% in 2021”- Edison Research
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play_arrow“Don’t They Know How Hard It Was In The Beginning?” – Frustrated Founder…NO, THEY DON’T!
It was bad enough before work-from-home became the norm. Employees know little about the history of the company they work for. Sure, they got a written timeline or a video from the CEO as part of the onboarding procedure. And later, they got the constant presence of the Founder in the workplace. But now, with work-from-home, “take-it-for- granted” is becoming the dominant culture.
When founder’s see this happening in their own company that took years of blood, sweat, and tears to establish, years of sacrifice and uncertainty to finally stabilize, and years of anxiety and sleepless nights to succeed, no wonder they ask, “Don’t they know how hard it was in the beginning?” But the fact is, no, they don’t!
The Problem with 1st Person
You can sit them down and tell them your story, but that would be in the first person, risking a self-serving, almost patronizing posture. You can record a video in which you describe your humble beginnings, but again that’s you telling them. You can write a book and hope they read and remember it, but that’s unlikely due to the time and immobility required.
The 3rd Person Advantage
Or you can do something much more effective, compelling, and memorable. You can use the popular audio format which they favor. They can hear your story in the third person with actors playing the parts in seminal scenes from your journey, complete with outcomes, music, and sound effects.
Efficient and Popular
You can use Business Audio Theatre to perform your story for a fraction of the investment of a movie, but with all the cinematic impact. You can deliver your story in an audio format, so they can hear it when they want and where they want. It’s screen-free and page-free, truly mobile, and it’s entertaining!
Buy-In
Imagine, you are not telling them about your history, they are experiencing your story through actors. They become emersed in your challenges and breakthroughs. They identify with your values and principles. They identify with what your goals are. As your story unfolds they can’t help but be pulling for you to succeed in the face of adversity. The result? Buy-in can only happen when, even as observers, they experience what you went through to create the business and the job that supports them.
It’s hard for employees to take the history of your company for granted when they know the story. It’s hard to take it for granted once they identify with the founder and the mission. Now your employees know they are not just making a living, they are making a difference.
Value Alignment
And isn’t that what the new generation wants today? They are starting new families and are naturally concerned with the implications of where they work on their family’s welfare. They are looking for jobs where they can identify with the founders. Any job they hold without “buy-in” is just a temporary job until they find the right one.
Why not show them that they have the right job, with the right company that aligns with their values? Why not take them along on the journey from inception to monetization through a third-person audio play that entertains, inspires, and welcomes them to write the next chapter?
Find out more at www.businessaudiotheatre.com
