FEBRUARY | COVER FEATURE
The festival and event industries
are looking to entice customers
with narrative skills, but how do
you tell a story in 3d?
torytelling is one the oldest and most powerful
forms of communication. Stories passed down
from one generation to the next have formed the
foundations of history and cultural identity.
Being part of an event can involve being part
of a narrative, and this feeling of inclusivity is
increasingly sought after by event organisers.
“We love a great story,” says Experience
Designed’s co-founder Kim Mhyre, who recently
left MCI Experience. “A strong narrative defining
a character that we identify with who faces
and overcomes obstacles to achieve success is
something we can all relate to at a very emotional
and memorable level.
“But just telling a story at your event may
no longer be enough. Today’s event audiences
are digitally enabled, more demanding, more
impatient and have high expectations that
events will be more engaging, personalised and
participatory."
The days of thinking of event goers as a passive
audience to be told stories are, Myhre says, over.
Now audiences want to live the story. "Designing
story based live brand experiences isn’t just a
chance to tell a story — it’s an opportunity for an
audience to live a brand a story in an immersive
and meaningful way," he adds.
Jack Morton’s creative strategy director
Caspar Mason shares Myhre’s apprehension
towards the way a lot of modern agencies
approach storytelling. “I’m a little wary of the
(over)use of ‘storytelling’ in the creative/events
industries – not quite as much as Austrian
designer Stefan Sagmeister [Ed’s note: see
editor's letter], but I think it can point brands
and agencies away from what people want, and
instead bog them down in a futile search for
three act structures, friction points and heroes’
quests. Sometimes the answer is just to do fun
stuff that people want to be part of, and let them
create their own story – but made out of your
brand world, with your messages baked in.
“The big issue is that stories are inherently
linear (‘because of A, B happened and then
C’) whereas people at events (and life, for that
matter) are not. They dip in and out. They circle
back. They skip bits. They make it very difficult,
in other words, to tell your epic brand narrative.
Adland guru Alex Bogusky has a great
analogy: “If advertising is the film, experiential
is the theme park”. "That immediately gives a
sense of how people will act and what they want.
They’ll dip in and out. They might do something
three times because they love it and ignore the
rest. They might just leave half way through.
And that’s fine. The trick is to make sure every
touchpoint gives a sense of what you’re trying to
convey and is enhanced by (but doesn’t rely on)
the thing before or after it. Think of it as a collage,
not a painting."
However, Mason notes that with careful
planning, story structures can be embedded.
“Museum curators, who spend a lot of time
trying to work out how to impart knowledge and
narrative across 3d spaces and experiences, will
often design their experience in layers – a visual,
visceral layer to convey meaning to the people
wandering through, a deeper level (or levels)
for people who want to read and think. And
different ways of interacting – activity sheets,
sketchbooks, tours, talks, audioguides, lates –
give people flexibility to experience things in
their own way, at their own pace.”
Mhyre adds: “Live story experiences where
an audience can be immersed in and even
potentially participate in a meaningful narrative
can create a much more engaged relationship
between the brand and its audience and deliver
that all important emotional and memorable
brand affinity that only stories can achieve.”
For Myhre, traditional planning approaches
are insufficient to deliver the kinds of
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