An Introduction to Product Storytelling
And how it can help your startup. Part 1 of 3.
If you’re a human, you’re a storyteller. It’s how we make sense of the world, create memories, and build connection. So how can you bring that gift into climate tech marketing, and how can storytelling in turn help your startup?
This is the first of a three-part series on Product Storytelling for the Climate: a framework for early-stage founders navigating one of the most complex, fast-moving, and high-stakes markets in history.
If product storytelling is Cantadora’s thesis and foundation, then product marketing and content strategy are her scaffolding. Over the years, this framework has developed more and more layers and will hopefully continue to.
So, welcome to the building site!
Today, we’re covering a brief intro to product storytelling and why stories matter now more than ever.
What we’ll explore:
The power of product stories
The lay of the land in climate and commerce
A new manifesto for storytelling climate and nature tech
The power of product stories
Have you heard of a company that spreads finely crushed basalt rock – one of the most abundant rocks on earth, and a byproduct from quarrying and mining – across agricultural land to accelerate the lifecycle of carbon sequestration from millions of years to mere decades?
That would be Edinburgh-based startup UNDO.
Or, have you heard of a company named after the tree nymphs in Greek mythology – modern-day dryads that are wireless sensors trained to detect early signs of wildfire in forests and mitigate the increasing risk of wildfire?
That would be German company, Dryad network.
What about the robotics company sinking invasive seaweed species, such as ‘Sargassum’, into the ocean? It’s a technique that makes seaweed production sustainable and commercially viable, while preventing a potential environmental disaster should the Sargassum wash up on shores.
That would be Seaweed Generation.
All three companies are brilliant nature-based climate solutions, all of whom need stories to bring their message outside of the echo chamber, out of the cave and into the daylight.
That’s where product storytelling comes in.
The lay of the land
I first came into climate in 2021 after spending five years in London working in her sister industries, fintech (financial technology) and insurtech (insurance). I naively assumed that marketing climate tech would be easy – that sustainability would sell itself, and it would be quick to find a product’s natural community.
The reality was far less straightforward.
Over the past four years, I think we’ve seen attention move away from aspirational earth-saving messaging towards a clear business value proposition for customers, typically based on performance or cost-saving. Amidst inflation, rising fascism, global conflict and trade wars, it makes sense that we’d care for our own when things get tough.
Last week, Rob Harrison-Plastow, CEO of Source Nine, wrote a piece on the oat latte paradox.
In his brilliant article, Harrison-Plastow argued that while a section of society are loudly voicing their concerns about an uninhabitable future, others are quietly building climate resilience – buying land, building communities, and prioritising areas that are at less physical climate risk. And this makes sense, given the fragility of our food systems and current political trajectory. Soft denial met with the terror of social and ecological collapse.
This is the reality your product story must speak into.
The quest of product storytelling, then, becomes an effort to anchor your product’s commercial benefits first before laying in the brand’s voice and personality to bring it to life. To make sustainability implicit in the system you’re helping create, without making it the only selling point.
Herein lies the unique crossroads of climate and commerce.
It’s the question of: How do you communicate your value proposition to attract customers outside of your immediate circle?
An intro to product storytelling for the climate
Product storytelling is the bridge between your top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) marketing content – your blogs, newsletters, and social posts – and bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) sales enablement, like your pitch decks, demos, and case studies.
The concept emerged after I saw – as a content writer turned product marketing lead – that the marketing content often didn’t align with the sales enablement. The aim of product storytelling is to connect the two, ensuring consistency right from awareness through to action.
Ideally, you’re aiming to guide your customer from awareness to the point of sale then right down to advocacy, so that they can share their stories of working with you with their network through referrals, event panels, speaking opportunities, and more.
In turn, you can share their product stories internally to bring teams together, provide the ‘why’ to the product roadmap, and break down any sinewy disconnect or silos between sales and science.
Find out more about Cantadora’s product storytelling subscription here.
Be like moss: the understory of Cantadora
You may have heard of the phrase Be Water – the Hong Kong and American-born actor and martial arts expert Bruce Lee’s metaphor for adaptive resistance, later adopted as a protest slogan in Hong Kong.
In a founder session last year with Sarah Bishop, the Product Lead at Treeconomy and founder of Kakuy, Sarah shared a beautiful and compelling approach to changing systems from the inside-out that has stuck with me ever since.
Inspired by Sarah and Be Water, is to Be Moss: a manifesto for storytelling and climate that embeds solutions within a current system.
To be moss is to root within the cracks, growing – unnoticed at first – until it takes hold, gripping stone and softening concrete, and outgrows the structures that hold it. Eventually, the old can fall away to reveal something more sustainable, community-led, and restorative in its place.
Seeing it this way, every startup, solution, and story is a Trojan horse seedling of the future we want to build for future generations – regardless of the imperfect system it might be incubated within.
A call to story
We’ve never stood at a more powerful, potent time for climate tech brands.
Even if nature’s deadlines are tight, even if we’re up against billion-dollar messaging campaigns from the oil and gas giants, the brands that can tell their product stories and lean into the light and the bright will be those that can spark connection and move markets.
I’d really love to hear, what’s the best product story you’ve come across in climate or nature tech?
About me + Cantadora
If you're new here, welcome! I'm Emma – a fractional climate tech marketer and part-time pasta nonna in training. Cantadora gives climate and nature tech startups the product marketing and marketing content foundations they need to clarify their value proposition, build engaged communities, and create an inbound lead engine.
Thank you so much for reading this Third Edition of Field Notes – a guidebook for founders who want to tell better stories. In Part 2, we’ll be exploring the science of storytelling, from narrative arcs to dopamine hits.
Until then, thank you for being here.
– Emma from Cantadora