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Why Social Impact Storytelling Will Be
2021's Hottest Content Trend—and
Could Even Help Save the Planet
Published on December 21, 2020
Joe Lazauskas
Head of Marketing at Contently
79 articles
After the sadistic uncertainty of 2020, it feels a bit ridiculous to try to predict what 2021 will
bring. But one thing is clear: Gen Z and millennials are changing the way that brands position
themselves in the market, and tell their brand story.
That's right. After a decade killing chain restaurants, marriage, and the
McDonalds McWrap, millennials have grown strong and are entering their peak earning
years. Simultaneously, Gen Z—which you may know from the popular mobile application,
TikTok—is graduating college and taking over the coveted 18-25 consumer segment.
I'm a card-carrying millennial. I've survived graduating into a recession and strangled an
Applebees with my own two hands. And you know what my generation wants? To buy stuff
from companies that reflect our values, so we can feel good about ourselves when we pop a CBD
gummy and start clicking on Instagram ads.
The age of conscious consumerism is here, driven by the under 40-set. According to 5Ws 2020
Consumer Culture Report, 83% of millennials say that it's important for the companies they buy
from to align with their beliefs and values, and 76 percent of 18-34 year-olds like when the
CEOs of companies they buy from speak out on issues they care for.
Edelman's 2020 Trust Barometer also found that values are driving purchase decisions. The most
important attributes to consumers today being able to trust that what the brand does is right,
reputation, values, and environmental impact. As climate change worsens, sustainability is only
going to become more important; turns out, we really want a planet to live on.
Companies today not only need to do good; they also need to tell stories about the good that
they're doing, so that consumers know about it. It's not a nice-to-have anymore; it's a necessity.
That's why social impact storytelling was one of the top content trends I presented in our State of
Content Marketing 2021 trends webinar last week (which you can get on-demand here.)
One of the coolest things is that telling these stories will not only help your company's bottom
line—it'll help the world, too.
That's because when you tell great stories about the good your company is doing, it creates a
positive feedback loop that encourages your company to invest more in CSR and social impact
efforts.
Skeptical? Then say it to the face of this awesome diagram.
Social impact storytelling needs to be a part of your content strategy in 2021. And in the
webinar, I suggested taking three steps:
1. Put on your reporter's hat to find compelling social
impact stories
Companies don't often do a great job of talking about the good that they're doing—even to their
own employees. That means that you need do the dirty work to find them.
Companies today not only need to do good; they also need to tell stories about the
good that they're doing.
This is something that GE Reports does extremely well. Led by Chief Storyteller Tomas Kellner
—a former editor at Forbes—GE Reports has amassed a loyal audience of over 100,000
subscribers through what Kellner calls "shoe leather reporting"—developing sources
inside the company to break stories of the amazing innovations happening inside the company.
While its sustainability storytelling has often gone viral on Reddit, GE Reports shifted focus
in the spring to cover how GE Healthcare—and the rest of the world-was fighting back against
COVID-19.
GE Reports did a remarkable job telling the stories of employees who were going above-and-
beyond in the fight against COVID, and the role GE Healthcare was playing in combatting the
pandemic. Just check out this story about GE Healthcare employee who traveled 1,400
miles through an earthquake and blizzard to help step up the production of
ventilators at a key plant, or this story about a breakthrough in AI-enhanced ultrasound that
was saving lives during the darkest days of the outbreak in Italy.
They also published a weekly roundup of five ways the world fought back, which
included non-GE stories, and was my daily dose of optimism as I hunkered down in downtown
Manhattan, clutching a bottle of hand sanitizer like it was the last Infinity Stone.
GE Reports' coverage not only made me feel better—it helped me see GE Healthcare in a new,
extremely positive light. If I was in the market for an MRI machine, I would definitely buy it
from them!
You can follow Kellner's lead, especially if you work inside a large corporation. Find out who's
in charge of your social impact and CSR initiatives, and who else is working on them. Bond with
them. Interview them. Do the same thing with your product and engineering teams—your
company's product might be doing good and serving people in ways you don't even know about.
Put on your reporter hat, and get to work.
2. Tell strong, narrative stories that communicate your
company's values, and how they set you apart from
the competition
The morning after the 2016 election, Rose Marcario, the CEO of Patagonia, woke up at 4 AM
and decided that it was time to double down on the company's activism.
As Fast Company reported, by 9:30 AM, she had penned a company-wide call-to-action
to "defend wilderness, to defend air, soil, and water." Facing widespread rollback of
environmental regulations, she galvanized the company around its mission to protect the planet
—a mission dear to not only employees at the company, but Patagonia's customers, too.
Ever since Marcario took over as Patagonia's CEO in 2008 and made a huge bet on sustainable
manufacturing and design, the company's revenue has grown more than 500 percent.
Much of that is its mission-led marketing; the outdoor apparel brand donates 1 percent of all
profits to environmental causes, turns its stores into a repair shop for used gear on Black Friday,
and tells stories about sustainability in Hollywood-quality films and four-word
rallying cries on its clothing. Patagonia's ethics and values are the competitive differentiator
that shines through in every story they tell, and their customers are fiercely loyal to the brand as
a result.
A big reason that Patagonia's approach works so well is the ridiculous quality of their
storytelling.
Patagonia's ethics and values are the competitive differentiator that shines through in
every story they tell, and their customers are fiercely loyal to the brand as a result.
One of their latest documentaries, Public Trust, about the battle to save public land from
development, won awards at the Big Sky Documentary Festival and Mountainview.
They tailor their content to the channels where their audience spends their time—short films on
YouTube, compelling 30-second sizzle trailers on Instagram, climate news and calls-to-action on
Twitter—and truly stand apart, growing their business at an exponential rate.
3. When possible, align your social impact storytelling
with a product
In recent years, Bank of the West has been doubling down on ethical and sustainable investing
through its Impact Solutions investment arm. In 2019, it became the first bank to empower
customers to track the CO2 impact of their purchases, and this year, launched its 1%
for the Planet account to donate 1 percent of revenues to environmental non-profits.
They tell the story of their sustainability initiatives through Means and Matters, its
sustainability-focused content hub. The site covers everything from how the private
sector can step in where the public sector has failed to how to work in
sustainability. It even puts other banks that invest in arctic drilling on blast.
(Disclosure: Bank of the West is Contently client, and partnered with Contently on
Means and Matters.)
This content communicates a clear reason why people like me who care about the planet should
invest with Bank of the West over competitors. There's also an added bonus, as all of this
sustainable investing content is an SEO goldmine, helping attract potential buyers who would be
extremely interested in investing with Bank of the West—making it much easier to tie the
content to business results.
This all, of course, leaves one very important question: What if your
company isn't investing in any social impact or CSR initiatives?
Well, then hit your leadership team with the stats and examples in this post, and make the case
why it's just good business to stand for something and do good in the world. And once they do,
tell the story of how you made it happen. I can't wait to see it.
