If you are scaling a technology business in Europe, chances are you already have plenty of substance to work with. Customer wins, product breakthroughs, platform data, research programmes, executive viewpoints, partner news, and more.
The challenge is turning all of that into stories people will actually remember, repeat, and act on. In Europe, that is rarely straightforward. It may be tempting to replicate what has worked in the US or in one key market, but what resonates in one country or one side of the Atlantic can easily fall flat somewhere else.
In the first part of this series, I spoke with Ken Deeks MBE and Paul Smith, two of the UK’s top communications trainers, about what it takes to build a consistent story across Europe, and why global narratives only land when they are locally relevant.
In this second part, we get more practical. We explore how technology companies can bring customer proof points and data insight to life through smart storytelling.
How should leaders adapt stories for different settings?
Business leaders and company spokespeople often need to tell the same story in very different contexts, whether that is an analyst briefing, a local media interview, a LinkedIn post, a policy conversation, or an internal update. But consistency does not mean saying the same thing, in the same way everywhere.
Ken’s advice is straightforward: always start with the audience. If it’s for a business audience, what’s the business angle? If it’s a technology publication, what’s the technology angle? If it’s an end user angle, what’s the consumer angle?
A common misstep is not spending enough time on localisation and adaption. Paul says it’s absolutely critical to invest the time here, and I couldn’t agree more.
Without thinking about the audience, the sector, or the geography, communications feel generic and storytelling falls flat. It gets ignored and fails to deliver the message.
What makes a customer story connect?
Customer stories are some of the strongest proof points for B2B tech companies – they are gold dust for PR teams. But often they aren’t told as vividly as they deserve, so the potential impact is lost.
Ken argues that the difference is the opening. Start by telling people what the point of the story is and expand from there. That’s how people tell stories in real life.
He also suggests using “verbal underlining” to signal the key takeaways in the story. A phrase like importantly, crucially or critically gets the audience’s attention, but they must be used sparingly, because if you say everything is important, nothing is.
Paul strongly recommends moving beyond rigid, challenge and solution type case study templates and borrowing from classic storytelling structures.
He says most business stories are about overcoming the monster: presenting a challenge the customer faced and how they overcame it. But they aren’t told in that way, and that’s partly why storytelling is becoming such an in-demand skill today.
How do you turn data into stories people engage with?
We also talked about data storytelling. Many organisations invest in research and first-party insight, from global surveys of CEOs or IT leaders to data flowing through their platforms and networks. But data on its own rarely moves people. Storytelling is what turns this information into something meaningful and memorable.
Ken summed it up neatly: facts tell, stories sell. Data provides evidence, but stories are what gives it meaning, and that is what we as communicators must lean into.
Research is most powerful when it brings people into the equation. Surveying business leaders or end users is not just about producing statistics, it is about capturing human priorities, pressures and decisions. That is where the story lives.
Ken shared a simple reminder about why relevance matters. In a workshop, he asked a room of people to pick out the most compelling data point from a wall of facts and figures. Most chose the obvious ones. But one lady homed in on a fairly unremarkable statistic about Norway. The reason why: she was from Norway.
Keep storytelling simple: don’t stuff stories with stats
One of the most common mistakes with data stories is trying to do too much.
If you have invested considerable resource and budget into a research project, it’s tempting to squeeze every stat into your narrative. But journalists and audiences get overwhelmed and the story simply doesn’t land. Paul says it’s best to keep it simple.
In other words, it’s often better to tell a few clear stories from one strong dataset than to try and tell everything at once. The reader can always dig into the exec summary or the full report later, but the story is what draws them in.
How can comms teams start a new chapter in 2026?
At the end of our interview, I asked what practical change PR and comms teams can make this year to tell stronger, more impactful stories. Ken and Paul’s advice boiled down to three things.
- Content: what you are actually saying, and whether you are bringing it to life through people and real outcomes
- Structure: starting with a clear headline, landing the point early, and finishing on the takeaway you want people to remember
- Delivery: how you signal what matters most, using emphasis, pauses and clarity rather than slipping into corporate monotone
It is a useful framework because it is so grounded. You can apply it to a media interview, a customer story, a LinkedIn post, or a pan-European narrative.
Tell stories with impact: takeaways for PR teams
Stepping back from the conversation, a few themes stayed with me.
Consistency across Europe is not about repetition. It is about clarity. The organisations that hold onto a clear narrative thread, while making it locally meaningful, are the ones that cut through.
Stories only resonate when they are simple enough to retell. Ken’s example of cutting a thousand words down to two hundred is a reminder that editing is not something to rush at the end or forgo. It is the work.
People remain the most powerful storytelling device. Platforms and features rarely stick in the memory. Human outcomes do.
And finally, storytelling is not a buzzword. It is a discipline. The organisations that get it right will be the ones whose stories stay coherent across markets, channels and audiences, each time they are told.
If you’d like to see how some of the world’s leading tech companies are applying these principles in practice, you can explore a few of Tyto’s case studies here.
About the author
Nick Taylor is the Chief Executive Officer at Tyto, the only PR agency built to scale high-growth tech companies faster across Europe.