The stories we tell in moments of crisis

A story that’s not relevant to the audience might as well not be told.

Building relevance is finding where a story belongs in the moment it is released, and whether it respects the emotional weather its audience is currently living through. When a major event shifts the collective mindset, we often reshape stories to meet it. Stories do not exist in isolation; they exist inside time, place, and shared experience. When the ground moves, socially, politically, and environmentally, stories that ignore that movement risk feeling hollow, performative, or worse, indifferent.

When Sri Lanka was shaken up by the disaster of Cyclone Ditwah, several stories being produced in our studio for the island's audiences were paused and carefully reconsidered to assess whether they were appropriate, necessary, and true to the moment.

In situations like this, we talk to our clients to understand their genuine responses to the ongoing situation, and refer back to the values of their brand articulation framework before reshaping stories to be relevant, sensitive and respectful to what’s happening in the daily lives of their audience. This process is about maintaining honesty and sensitivity in stories, and the willingness to sit with uncertainty rather than rush to fill silence.

For some businesses, the stories were a direct channel to support relief efforts and offer solidarity. Our role as story makers was to extract their genuine sentiments and efforts and bring them into story formats that matched their most successful communication platforms; seen in this example is one such story made to call for relief support through Instagram. It channelled Black Cat's Caregiver and Lover archetypal persona.

In the aftermath of Cyclone Ditwah in Sri Lanka, we reshaped or completely restructured planned stories to imbue sensitivity, relief efforts and helpful insight into the stories of client businesses; to give shape to their grief, empathy, and solidarity through stories, while staying true to their voice and values. This didn’t mean turning every story into commentary or every business into a spokesperson. Stories can acknowledge loss without exploiting it. They can offer support without centering themselves. They can point toward relief, resources, or collective care without pretending to be heroes. Stories should be genuine acts of participation rather than declarations.

Often, this means slowing down production, stripping stories back to their core intention, and asking what role, if any, they should play right now. Sometimes the answer is to offer support, relief, or insight. Sometimes it is to step aside altogether. And yes, this process costs us extra in production time, but we’d rather do more for better stories than maintain strict build cycles for so-so outcomes.

In some cases, it was about offering insight; in Rithihi's case, being a brand with a dominant Sage archetype, offering insight into the culture of giving was a genuine response that stemmed from the business itself. We only create the longform stories for the Rithihi blog, while their in-house team handles the blog formatting and what's published on social media. But, we always offer capsule versions of the longform stories designed by us, to point their audience to the blog; like this one.

Being able to express, connect, and mobilize is important for entrepreneurs and businesses in moments of collective crisis. Not because businesses must suddenly become moral authorities, but because they are part of the social fabric. They employ people, serve communities, and operate within shared systems that are also affected by disruption. This is because the work they do always starts as a response to the society and the world they inhabit. No business is created in a vacuum. Products, services, and ideas emerge from specific needs, tensions, and cultural conditions. When those conditions change, responding thoughtfully is not a deviation from the work; it’s a continuation of it.

That’s what makes responding to the realities of our world an extension of the work of a business; it’s not CSR, it’s not charity, nor is it being exceptional. It is simply being alive and responsive to the world a business shares with its audience. Responsiveness is not about virtue-signalling; it is about relevance, respect, and responsibility.

Stories that a business tells are a big part of these living, real, and relevant conversations that it has with its audience. Stories are where values become visible, where intent is tested against reality, and where trust is either strengthened or eroded.

Co-publish with us on Instagram

Every few weeks, we release stories designed to get co-published as collaborator posts on Instagram. Each story is thoughtfully created, researched, and produced, giving original content designed specifically for Instagram. When you co-publish these stories as a collaborator with us on Instagram, these original stories appear on your profile while connecting your channel to new circles by pooling audiences. As a collaborator, you can also contribute appropriate images or videos of your business or personal brand to the story. It's a great way to access original stories that contribute lifestyle and wider idea-based narratives to your feed.

FAQs

How does this work?

Collaborator posts on Instagram allow adding up to four people to co-publish a story together. A story published this way appears on the Instagram feed of every collaborator. Browse our story releases on @everythingisastory. If there’s a story you’d like to co-publish with us as a collaborator, message us on Instagram or WhatsApp +94 777 647 096. We’ll get in touch with the details to make it happen.

What is a sole collaborator and a group collaborator?

A group collaborator is when you collaborate with a group of up to four more people who will be added as collaborators to the same story. This is great because the story you purchased to co-publish with everyone else will appear in all their feeds, introducing your account to new circles. A sole collaborator is when you pay extra and become the only collaborator to co-publish the story; this gives you room to supplement the story with more images/videos from your personal brand or business and have a higher degree of customizability.

Can collaborators add to the story?

Collaborators can submit photos, videos, and hashtags that align with their business or personal brand to supplement the story. Of course, the images or videos you submit must bear relevance to the story. If you submit images or videos to supplement a story this way, appropriate credits will be added to the caption, tagging your handle.

Why collaborate for stories?

We started offering the option to purchase our original stories as collaborator posts so that more people can share great content at an affordable rate. It also allows everyone to pool community resources and engage with wider circles.

What kind of images or videos can collaborators submit?

Relevant, within Instagram guidelines (under 60-second videos in MP4 format), and with clear usage rights for the content. The order and exact cropping of images and videos, and how many out of the images or videos you submit will be chosen for the post. Currently, Instagram only allows adding 4 collaborators per story; we follow a first-come, first-served basis.

Got more questions? Just ask us. Email us at hello@commercialstories.com or WhatsApp +94 777 647 096.

What language means to business

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk

Ever felt like you’re not getting an idea through because it’s beyond the limits of your vocabulary? Or that an idea is not grasped by your audience because it’s not presented with the right words? Clients with internal content teams often approach us with this problem. We create language catalogues that help them stay authentic and efficient in their communications; this is particularly useful for companies that have transient teams. Let’s unpack why language matters so much when sharing ideas.

It’s hard to even imagine interacting and making sense of the world without words. It almost seems that words are the very architecture of ideas. Is it possible to form or communicate ideas without words? You can definitely feel and experience without words. But, experiencing is not the same as deriving an idea. Experiencing music is not the same as processing it and deriving an idea from it.

Oscar Wilde called language “the parent, and not the child, of thought”, suggesting that thinking is shaped by our words.

But, we know artists and musicians who think in image or sound. The mathematical genius Daniel Tammet processes numbers by thinking in landscapes. Other interesting evidence is in how hearing-impaired people, who are cut off from both spoken and signed language, form ideas without the help of words.

Mundurucú, a remote Brazilian tribe, has only words for numbers up to five. When studying their capacity to understand the concept of a number higher than five, it became evident that for many Mundurucú, the idea of greater than five was a difficult one to grasp. Although some showed signs of understanding the idea of ‘something bigger than this’, they were quick to categorize it as ‘a lot’, rather than attempting to define it more specifically.

We can certainly process an idea without words; using comparison, physical memories and associations with shapes, and colors, perhaps even symbols, sound, and movement. However, some ideas can only be conceived in the presence of the word.

Mundurucú’s limitedness in grasping simple numerical concepts shows that although ideas can be actively processed without words, they may not be fully understood in such cases. Certain ideas or concepts— most certainly numerical ones, as the study with Mundurucú suggests— cannot be grasped fully without the clarity and definition that a word would lend. That is to say, there are certain kinds of thinking that are possible only with words.

So, what does this mean for businesses? Words help us quickly define and zoom in and out of ideas. Access to a vocabulary that accurately portrays the origins and cultural associations of the business, and considers relatability with the audience means efficiency in communicating. It also means consistency in vocabulary, creating the ‘brand voice’ or the persona that audiences emotionally connect with.

When we work with businesses that have internal communication teams—often transient as employees move in and out of the company—we create brand language catalogues. A brand language catalogue helps ideas to be communicated without being limited to the individual vocabulary or linguistic expressions of the employee handling the content creation at the time. They’re story-building tools that help businesses stay efficient and consistent.

We also create visual language catalogues to create sharable boards that portray the look and feel of a business using imagery. But, this insight story is only about written and spoken language.

Let’s decode the function of a language catalogue using this example that we created for Podi Scene documentary film promotions. When we create language catalogues we first have a quick conversation with the client and do a little research on their platforms to find out the typical correspondence that they have with the audience. Depending on the research insights and the client's brief on the requirement, we identify what types of language samples would be most useful to their company. In the case of Podi Scene, we prioritized descriptions for aesthetics, moods, qualities and experiences because it is a brand that often expresses appreciation. We also paid close attention to language for handling complaints because it was important for Podi Scene to maintain good relationships with people from diverse viewpoints and backgrounds as they interacted with the film and the ideas it highlighted.

A brand language catalogue is essentially a collection of written and spoken language that allows you quick access to categorized sections like greetings and sample responses to compliments or complaints. It’s like having a toolbox at hand’s reach for building narrated or written content while staying on-brand with language.

If you want to learn more about how we can help your business coin the language that’s right for it, get in touch.