What is a Corporate Biography?

What is a Corporate Biography?

A finely crafted corporate history captures the experiences, knowledge, and lessons learned over the life of a company. Without it, all could one day be forgotten.

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A corporate history is a thoroughly researched account of a company’s origins and founders, coupled with stories built on important milestones, leadership transitions, mergers or acquisitions, and other factors as recounted by historic documents and recalled by those who witnessed them.

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The project can proceed as a full-length commemorative book, or take shape as a narrative website, documentary, digital timeline, oral history, a series of recorded interviews, or in another form, according to your wishes, timeframe, and budget.

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Telling the story of your company allows you to celebrate major accomplishments and reflect on its growth while crediting those who contributed to its success. A company, after all, does not thrive on its own, but succeeds and grows due to the efforts of its founders, leaders, employees, customers, community partners, and others.

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And while it’s natural to want to brush over challenges and difficulties, those too should be acknowledged, told, and explained. Failure is merely the flip side of success, with one rarely occurring without the other.

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Recounting difficult transitions, periods of employee discontent, times of upheaval, and other challenges is not a pleasant stroll down memory lane, but doing so establishes your company as an authentic entity that is capable of overcoming problems while keeping its vision firmly set on the future.

The Value of a Corporate History

The benefits of a corporate history are wide-ranging. In addition to creating an enduring record of your company’s challenges and triumphs, a professionally produced corporate history provides what researchers call “corporate heritage equity” – a valuable tool that influences customer loyalty, enhances pricing power, reinforces branding, aids in employee engagement and retention, and serves as a guidebook for future management.

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Every company has a history. Creating a corporate brand heritage, however, preserves those historic milestones while also crafting them into stories that reinforce your current brand identity and set your business apart from those of competitors.

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Researchers cited studies in the Journal of Brand Management indicating that corporate brand heritage positively influences the trust and emotional attachment customers have to a company, leading to increased loyalty.

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Customers who understand a company’s story are more likely to trust the business, and 86% of consumers say they’re more likely to purchase from a company they view as authentic.

A compelling history of your company is not just a historical archive. It serves as a recruiting tool, provides a guidebook for leadership, conveys your core beliefs and values, commemorates founders and other important contributors, and preserves cherished memories. It clearly describes your company’s culture, giving readers an understanding of how it was shaped over the years and serves as a compass to continue moving the business forward.

Whether you’re commemorating an important anniversary, recognizing the retirement of a founder or other key executive, or celebrating a merger or acquisition, a telling of your company’s story can capture corporate memory and preserve it for future generations.

Documents Community Impact

Historically, many businesses have been closely aligned with the communities in which they operated. Communities were sources of employees dedicated to helping a business grow and succeed, while business owners provided wages, benefits, and other types of support. Chronicling those relationships and the impact a company has had on its community celebrates the bond between the business and community members who supported it and contributed to its success. This can create goodwill and establish the company as accessible and authentic.

Provides a Look into the Future

The world is changing fast and most businesses are working hard to plan for their futures. In addition to recounting the past, a corporate history gives you an opportunity to selectively share some goals and visions for your company in 10, 20, 50, or 100 years.

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You might let readers know about your efforts to enhance your social and community impact or how you’re working to make your business more resilient and risk averse. You could foreshadow ideas for new products or services, assess how the business might be affected by rapidly advancing artificial intelligence tools, or share plans for how the business is poised for expansion.

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Giving readers a glimpse into the future of your company can provide vision and reassurance for employees, customers, and the communities you serve, while giving you space to articulate your concerns, hopes, and plans.

OneTrueLine’s Approach—Trust, Collaboration, and Authenticity

OneTrueLine employs the same philosophy in its approach to producing corporate biographies as it does in every other aspect of our business—trust, collaboration, and human authenticity.

Crafting the story of a business and those who built it is a responsibility we do not take lightly.

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Trust is a Requirement, Not an Option

It requires courage, foresight, and fortitude to start and build a business, qualities that must be accurately portrayed and reflected in our writing. We cannot effectively communicate the story of your business without first earning your trust and confidence in our ability to do so.

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Mutual trust is of utmost importance to our team, and we work hard to build relationships based on confidentiality, value alignment, and understanding. You must trust us so you feel comfortable sharing your stories, personal memories, successes and failures, and memorable experiences, while we must trust you to relate those stories clearly and accurately.

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We must trust each other throughout the process of shaping ideas into a permanent record of your company’s history.

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Collaboration Counts

A great book is never the work of just one person. It requires the collaboration of a team that fuels creativity, brainstorms ideas, checks each other’s work, and has each other’s backs throughout the process.

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The team at OneTrueLine doesn’t want to simply write the story of your company. We want to be your creative partner in producing a work that creates lasting value and returns more to you than what you put in.

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We’ll work together on every aspect of the project including its scope, historical accuracy, timelines, schedules, our process, ownership and usage rights, and payment terms. With collaboration, we’ll achieve a product worthy of authority and praise.

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Authenticity in Storytelling and Relationships

A well-written corporate history is not just a record of happenings over time, but a lively, authentic accounting of the people, events, and circumstances that contributed to and shaped that history.

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Authenticity, which Merriam-Webster defines as “the quality of being true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character,” pertains to the work we do at OneTrueLine as well as the relationships we build with our clients.

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While authentic storytelling is our goal, authentic interaction with our clients is necessary to achieve it. Authenticity is a foundation of strong relationships built on trust, mutual respect, and collaboration.

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We’ll work with your company’s founders and executives to capture their voices, understand how outside factors have influenced their decisions, communicate their roles within the company, establish authority on their terms, and tell their stories.

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Together, we can build a corporate history that authentically represents your business and presents a true picture of those who built it. Readers will be able to understand the challenges you’ve faced and celebrate your accomplishments.

Our Process

OneTrueLine employs a proven, five-step process when producing a corporate history. Because every client is different, the time needed to achieve each step can vary, but we are committed to staying true to your approved timeline and finishing the job on time.

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We’ve employed this process time and time again and are confident in its effectiveness and value.

Step One: Building Client-Writer Rapport

Establishing a good rapport with our clients is essential, and we work hard to accomplish that early in the process of producing your corporate history. We’ll meet with you according to your preferences—in person, over the phone, or through video chat sessions.

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These meetings enable us to get to know one another and discover our most important values. And, as you share your thoughts and ideas about what you’re looking to create, we’ll get to know your speaking style, diction, dialect, and other elements that enable us to “find your voice.” This is critical to producing an authentic, personal telling of your company’s history.

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We’ll provide recordings, video playbacks, and transcriptions of all meetings, ensuring accuracy and enabling you to review all information.

Step Two: Building an Outline

A good outline is the foundation of a book and necessary for building a logically organized accounting of your company’s history. It is not, however, set in stone.

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As we get to know you better and discover more about your company through our research efforts, the outline is likely to change to accommodate new ideas, discoveries, and revelations.

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After approving an initial outline, we’ll keep you informed of any changes that are made, assuring constant collaboration and teamwork.

Step Three: Open-Access Drafting

Open-access manuscript drafting has proven extremely successful for OneTrueLine, and our clients love it. All our draft work is done in the cloud in a shared document, meaning that at any time you can see where we are in the process of producing your corporate history.

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Open-access drafting keeps you informed, us accountable, and everyone happy.

Step Four: Manuscript Revision

A good story may write itself, as the saying goes, but a crafted work showcasing your business and creating corporate heritage equity for your company is likely to call for some revisions.

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The very act of getting a company’s history on paper—or a computer screen—often reveals overlooked or forgotten events, ideas, aspirations, and people. Essential themes of your story emerge and become clear, often for the very first time.

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This may cause you to want to shift some focus points or showcase information you hadn’t previously considered. We’ll work with you to do that, along with making sure we’ve fulfilled any promises we’ve made to readers and satisfied all other key objectives for your work.

Step Five: Finalization and Next Steps

At OneTrueLine, we are meticulous with our writing; editing; and finalizing copy, graphics, and additional elements for our clients’ books. Your corporate history will undergo line-by-line editing and thorough scrutiny of every detail.

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Once the manuscript is finalized to everyone’s satisfaction, we can, at your direction, oversee any necessary post-production tasks, including ebook design, querying, or marketing for your book.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why should my company invest in a corporate history?

A corporate history can be an important part of your company’s branding and marketing efforts.

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We know that storytelling creates emotional connection, and research reveals that customers respond favorably to authentic information regarding companies and brands. And making your interesting history known differentiates you from competitors and calls attention to your products and services. In addition, information gathered and used in your corporate history can provide meaningful content for future marketing campaigns, events, and recruiting efforts.

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Beyond marketing and branding benefits, a copy of your corporate history can be used to express appreciation to special customers, suppliers, or other partners, or to boost employee morale and retention. It’s a great way to commemorate an important anniversary, celebrate the career of a founder or retiring executive, or simply create a lasting historical record of your company.

What types of companies commission a corporate history?

Companies of all sizes and net worths have commissioned corporate histories and established a lasting historic record along with corporate heritage equity. Many major companies have documented their histories, but small family businesses and regional companies also recognize the value of a finely crafted work.

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Names you’re likely to recognize include The Hershey Company, L.L. Bean, Harley-Davidson, IBM, Burt’s Bees, Apple Inc., Walt Disney Company, Crayola, Martin Guitar, and King Arthur Baking Company.

Where does the historical information for the manuscript come from?

OneTrueLine’s innovative researchers often interview founders and other key people. They examine company archives, search newspapers, consult annual reports, look at marketing materials, and review any personal recollections of founders or employees to gather information and gain a thorough understanding of the company and its people.

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We generally can piece together incomplete company records using public records, archived media, interviews, and other historical sources. Our researchers work under confidentiality agreements and cooperate with clients to make sure any confidential or sensitive information is properly handled.

How involved with the project must our company be?

Your degree of involvement depends on how much time you have available, your personal interest in the project, and other factors. Some of our clients are hands-on in everything from sharing their stories to reviewing the manuscript, while others prefer to assign ownership of the project to a chosen employee or leave it largely to the discretion of OneTrueLine.

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We respect your level of interest and availability when scheduling interviews, accessing company records, locating archival media, and completing other tasks.

How long is the process of producing a corporate history?

Every project is different, but it normally takes between three and 12 months to research, write, design, and produce a corporate history.

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Time required depends on how long the company has been in business; availability and condition of historical records; number of interviews required; task completion times; book design and printing requirements; need to acquire photos, video, or digital assets; and other factors.

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OneTrueLine will work with you to determine a timeline based on those factors and any special needs of your company.

How much does a corporate history cost?

The price for a corporate history can vary tremendously, based on the size of the manuscript, depth of research, the number and location of interviews, how the book is edited, use of graphic materials, photography needs, design and printing costs, how the book is distributed, and other factors.

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Industry research indicates a price range of between $2,500 and $10,000 for a basic history with a shorter narrative and minimal research and interviews, to $300,000 for a very high-end commemorative or institutional history. A mid-range project typically ranges from between $10,000 and $50,000, while a large, full-scale project carries a range of between $50,000 and $150,000.

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OneTrueLine works with every client to determine a price point with which they’re comfortable and is transparent regarding what our costs entail and our fees include.

How do I get started?

All you have to do is contact OneTrueLine by calling us at (805)901-4566 or clicking here to schedule a complimentary, 30-minute discovery call with Bryan Basamanowicz, founder of OneTrueLine. We’re looking forward to meeting you!

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