The Power of Impact Storytelling for B Corps
Author
Warren Wilansky
Date
March 26, 2026
Over the many years that Plank has been around, we have built hundreds of websites, applications, and digital platforms. We’ve developed websites for major performing arts organizations and museums, as well as one of the highest-grossing documentaries of all time. We’ve been involved in building a fan-focused website to support the final tour of one of Canada’s most important rock bands and even made efforts to bring baseball back to Montreal. We created a 50-year archive for a long-standing literary magazine and enabled a division of a global technology company to manage and maintain its design standards.
In recent years, our team has been applying a new website approach. With an increased focus on content and storytelling, our design team has been building interactive experiences centred on rich narratives.
We’ve built a multitude of storytelling projects, such as:
Claremont Graduate University’s Centennial Minisite
Why Implement Digital Storytelling?
By integrating interactive and animated elements, a storytelling approach transforms your website into an immersive, visually appealing experience that captures your audience’s attention. This method uses curated content and dynamic animations to tell a story that resonates with your users.
When you have important information to share, it’s crucial to present it in a way that’s both impactful and engaging. By incorporating interactivity and animation, you can deliver your message in a way that connects deeply with your audience. In essence, a website should be more than just static text and images—it should tell a story that makes your content memorable and meaningful.
An Enhanced Impact Report
Since becoming a B Corp, we publish a yearly Impact Report to communicate our efforts over the previous year transparently and to meet the standards set out by the B Impact Assessment Guidelines.
Leveraging our storytelling approach, we decided to go beyond delivering our Impact Report as a well-designed PDF. We turned our impact report into an animated, interactive one-page website. The result was a much more engaging experience that told a richer story not just through text, but with imagery, infographics, and a more emotionally resonant narrative.
We had quite a bit of success working on ours through this lens and hope it inspires impact reports across the whole community. By telling a more compelling story, you enhance the emotional impact of your report and ensure that people develop a stronger connection to your organization.
Share Something Unique
Almost everyone understands that a website is a great place to tell a story through text, animation, and visuals. The real question is how to evoke a feeling someone didn’t see coming and how to leave them thinking, “I never expected that.”
It’s easy to forget that what may seem regular to you may be completely new to your audience. So, don’t take for granted the opportunity to offer up a story that only you can tell.
Centaur Theatre
When I first toured Centaur Theatre, I ended up in their props room, and what was just a warehouse to them was a revelation to me. As I walked through one room after another, I said things like “Did I just walk by a jar full of eyeballs? Was that a shrunken head on a voodoo doll? Did that basket have a sign that said ‘babies’?” I’m willing to bet that any of those objects has a unique story about how they were acquired that NO ONE else could tell.
CASE STUDY: Centaur Theatre – Enhanced User Experience for an Evolving Theatre
Claremont Graduate University
A few years after we started working with Claremont Graduate University (CGU), they mentioned in passing that the university’s 100th anniversary was approaching. Given the extensive historical materials that had never been presented as a cohesive story, it was clear that a dedicated site would meet a clear need for a new online storytelling opportunity, offering fresh perspectives and new ways to explore the institution’s development.
CASE STUDY: A Digital Storytelling Website for a Prestigious Academic Institution
Surprise and Delight
When looking to modernize, it’s easy to get caught up in the newest animation technique or design style, but the success of your story-focused project is not going to be based on the number of times an element flies across the screen. The success of your project will depend on the quality of all the elements you have and how well they work together. In many ways, it will be the subtleties, not the grand statements, that capture someone’s attention and make them look a little closer or dig a little deeper.
On an earlier version of our website (okay, a very much earlier one from the late 2000s), we had placed a ladybug at the bottom of our footer in our main design template. While it seemed like a detail, only a few pixels high and a few pixels wide, it always led to some type of commentary or engagement. If it made someone do a double-take since they thought something actually landed on their screen, or it made someone scroll back up because they weren’t sure what it was, it always left an impression of some kind.
Conclusion
Given all the tools we have at our disposal to create text, generate images, and produce videos, it may seem easy to put together a story quickly. While the instinct is to move fast to get things done, the more generic you make it, the less interesting and unique it will be. The goal here is to assemble something new, and newness comes from your unique perspective on the story.
If you want people to connect with you emotionally, be ready to share, give and connect in as many different ways that you can. Some people like to read, others like videos and others like to scroll, scroll and scroll. All are viable approaches, so explore them until the one that makes sense for your audience emerges.
When you have materials or content that, when presented compellingly, is novel and hasn’t been shared before, please go for it and share it widely.