Once upon a time, man hunted. Eventually, he turned to farming and, some millennia later, to manufacturing. Progress marched ever more swiftly and within a few centuries technology ushered in the Age of Information. Now, after mere decades of devouring data, we enter the Age of Imagination, where “businesses need to imagine their futures the way good novelists imagine their stories”*, where people’s hearts as well as minds need to be won.

Yet not all those who direct organisations can imagine quite as well as they determine strategy. Equally, their marketing agencies are often more comfortable with image than meaning. Can style and substance come together?

According to the founders of brandstory, successful brands provide positive clues. Such brands appeal to hearts as well as minds, often through stories which combine narrative logic with emotional truth. This has been their experience on global and niche brands alike, whatever the marketplace.

There is increasing recognition of the brand story and its burgeoning role. One day the worldwide strategy director of a behemoth advertising agency joined in a brandstory futures workshop and soon the agency’s briefs and strategies became “story briefs”, across its network. At brandstory itself, an Italian office has had to open as its storytelling approach works so well for clients across Europe: a good story well told works for clients across Europe and America: in retail and railways, finance and public service, food and homemaking.

More and more, business demands stories to fire the imagination, whatever the field. Business is discovering that "people prefer brands … with a story”.

*Dr. Rolf Jensen: “The Dream Society”. To read an introduction to Dr Jensen’s latest book, press Published .