Narrative Strategy: Beyond Awareness

Photo by Marcel Strauß on Unsplash

We are drowning in “awareness”. The good, the bad, the ugly. Our screens are polluted with all the things we must be aware of. All the time. Non stop.
And awareness is…important. But it’s not potent. Not anymore. It doesn’t give us the results we want. The outcomes we seek. The changes we need.

Instead, it just becomes a cacophony of overwhelm and distraction. The constant parade of awareness holds us tight in its grip, robbing us of our ability to do what needs to be done.

So when people share stories with intention of increasing awareness, I have to stop and wonder — what comes after the awareness? Now that we “know”, are aware of so-and -so thing/situation/problem….what do we do next?

Perhaps I’m just an impatient individual. Maybe that’s why I sought to use storytelling for something that did more than just increase awareness. I have plenty of information buzzing inside my brain. We all do. And it’s not enough to just be aware. Not anymore.

We need stories that go beyond awareness.

We need stories that change our behaviors.

And that’s what I seek within my work as a narrative strategist.

And to be fair, awareness is still necessary. We need to know what’s happening, but we can’t be left empty handed, stranded in a vortex of information with no idea what to do next.

The call to actions we see in marketing have their place. But we can’t cut and paste marketing tactics into storytelling and hope for the best. It’s too transactional, and we’ve become numb its intent.

We need better. We need to use story as a strategy for behavior change. We need to swim the deep, murky waters of our psyches, environments and all the minutia of being a human being and see what we can come up with that actually turns our intents into actions. What does it really take to go beyond awareness and information shared to become new actions and new ways of being?

For me, narrative strategy exists to craft the world we want. It’s the convergence of collective motivation, belief and behavior change. It’s the use of storytelling to achieve new aims. It requires critical thinking about the messages we share and how they are received. It requires an investigation into how stories are experienced and embodied-a deep commitment to explore how we make meaning and decide what matters.

We must go beyond raising awareness. We are aware. We are aware of the problems, challenges, dread, despair... What we do now, with that awareness, is where the real potential lies. It’s where we create our futures.

What are you doing to move beyond raising awareness in your storytelling? What’s working for you? What’s not?