What is the most appropriate application of the StoryTellings™ methodology?
When a company or a brand is trying to identify and understand the deep—and often difficult to articulate—emotions that motivate consumer or employee behaviors, StoryTellings™ reveals insights that more traditional qualitative research is unable to provide. StoryTellings™ is extremely effective when a brand or company needs to create an emotionally compelling and actionable story to tell to employees, consumers, or the general public.

How many StoryTellings™ group sessions are there in a typical study? Six to nine sessions.

What is the length of each session?
Two and a half to three hours.

How many consumers or employees typically participate in a session? Fifteen to 20. However, we have conducted very successful sessions with as many as 35 participants.

How many clients are typically present at a StoryTellings™ group session?
Four to six clients typically make up the Field Team. The Field Team attends all of the StoryTellings™ sessions. Members of the Field Team do not sit passively behind a two-way mirror, but assist the facilitator with the sessions, allowing them to be in the room with participants and experience the energy and emotion first hand.

Who from StoryTellings™ attends each session?
Usually two people; the facilitator and a typist/project coordinator.

Can someone from the client organization be trained to do the StoryTellings™ research?
Clients as members of the Field Team can actively participate—even co-facilitate—sessions. However, interpreting and analyzing the stories especially at the levels of Meaning and Myth—the levels of the deepest and most powerful emotions—requires extensive experience and years of study.

When alternative story collection methods (i.e., telephone, intranet or e-mail based, etc.) are used, how many stories need to be collected to ensure that we have enough information to fully understand the levels of Message, Meaning, and Myth?
Fifty to 65 fully developed stories. To ensure this base, we try to collect 70 to 80 stories.

What is the average timeline of a study from completing the last StoryTellings™ session, or collecting the last story using telephone, intranet or e-mail to preliminary report out?
Two weeks.

What are the StoryTellings™ deliverables?
A two to three hour preliminary presentation to the Field Team, a two to three hour interactive presentation to key executives in the client organization, a written summary document The Essence of the Story. The client organization can usually begin initial implementation of the StoryTellings™ findings at the conclusion of the preliminary presentation.

What if we want to continue to engage StoryTellings™ personnel after the delivery of the summary document?
We recommend that StoryTellings™ remain engaged as the story is developed and communicated. Some of the activities associated with this StoryStewardship process are:

• Alignment meetings: ensuring that all key account, brand, and operational personnel, etc. understand the story and how it impacts their roles and responsibilities.
• Formal reviews to ensure all communications (internal and external), customer and employee experiences, etc. are consistent with and support the story
• Training selected personnel how to be a StorySteward train others to "tell" the story.

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