Speaking on a panel session at the summit last week in London, Salama said that there could be a reluctance to use storytelling within research due to its difficulty, but said it was important to “think about the emotional reaction you want to generate as opposed to just the rational”.

He added: “What is the reason why clients spend all this money on research and insight? Ultimately it is because they want to do something differently. The work is designed to change the behaviour of someone.

“There has to be emotion in changing people’s behaviour. It is a hard thing to change behaviour – you’re only going to do it if there’s some kind of emotional oomph to it.”

Salama said that research budgets had been cut over time compared with other marketing budgets, and said that he felt that there was too little focus on how insight could create impact.

“I think the reason for [budget cuts to research] is that senior management don’t feel that research has a big enough impact on what they are doing and doesn’t drive revenue and growth as much as it ought to,” he explained.

“I think part of that is because of the way we as an industry approach things, that we’re not telling stories, we’re not talking about the opportunities, we’re not coming with ‘this is something you can do’.”

This meant being more subjective about data. “Have a point of view,” Salama added. “I could take any table or deck and tell a different story based on the same data. There is nothing objective about data – you can tell the story you want to tell.

“You’re not a neutral reporter of something as if it’s objective – everything is subjective. You have to have a point of view of what’s the story you want to tell here, and use the data to tell the story.”

This could also include qualitative data, Salama said. “When we talk about data, let’s not just think we’re talking about quantitative data. Qual has got a huge role to play in storytelling, having impact and generating impact.”

Also speaking on the panel, Beth Butterwick, chief executive at Clarendon Fine Art and former chief executive at Jigsaw Fashion, said storytelling was particularly useful in boardrooms.

“We are all grappling with so much data, especially in boardrooms, where you need one version of the truth,” she said.

“If you can illustrate incredible data with examples by storytelling, that is much more powerful than just looking at some spreadsheets and data.”

Butterwick said there needed to be a drive to connect with business leaders on an emotional level instead of purely rational. “We have grown up on data in businesses thinking that data is impressive, data is what wins pitches. But in actual fact we are humans,” she explained.

“If you look at all of the top brands, they are all good at stories. There are loads of evidence and data to measure it, but [brands] stick to their own simple stories. I think people don’t use [storytelling] enough because they’re worried that’s not what boards, businesses or clients want. I think we need to back up storytelling with data.”

Before acting, brands need to consider what they want to get across, Butterwick said. “What do we want the customer to feel? What emotion to we want to evoke? What is the call to action?”

Boards too readily “go straight into data”, she added, and don’t talk about impact and communication, saying that “not enough companies think about the client first – put your customer first and think about how to get that story across powerfully”.