Why Agencies and Brands Need
to Embrace True Storytelling
Jon Hamm
To build on the opportunities that today’s hyperconnected
and social consumer as well as new distribution platforms
offer, agencies and brands need to move away from thinking
about branded content and embrace true storytelling.
The difference? Stories rely on the intended audience to
develop their own imagery and detail to complete and, most
importantly, to co-create, whereas content does not. Content
is primarily created in the internal mind of the content
originator, with no heed to the mind or to the
context of the audience.
The truly great storytellers have
long embraced the fact
that the most powerful
stories happen in
the mind of the
audience,
m a k i n g
each and
e v e r y
story
unique
and personal for
the individual.
They
also
understand
that
stories
are important
because
they
are inherent to the human
experience. Stories are how we pass
on our accumulated wisdom, beliefs
and values. They are the process through
which we describe and explain the world around us,
and our role and purpose in it. Audiences have always
known this and asked for stories—they’ve never asked for
content.
As the German literary scholar Wolfgang Iser noted: “No tale
can ever be told in its entirety.” His reader-response theory
“recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts ‘real
existence’ to the work and completes its meaning through
interpretation.”
It is this acceptance of the concept that we cannot—nor should
we try to—tell any story in its entirety, and the subsequent
embrace of the mind of the audience in co-creating our
story that is the vital step we need to make if we are to truly
resonate emotionally with our audience.
But why does it really matter?
There is little hesitation in knowing we operate in a cultural
and technological world where consumers know everything
about a brand, from who owns it to where and how products
are manufactured and sold. As a result of this, companies
are now evaluated by much more than their products. We
are in a world where a brand’s values and the emotions they
evoke are narrative material.
This presents marketers with an amazing opportunity, as the
most powerful way to persuade someone of your idea is by
uniting the idea with an emotion. It’s indisputable that the
best way to do that is by telling a compelling story.
But we need to recognize that it demands insight and skill to
present an idea that packs enough emotional power.
A couple of examples—one old and one new—of great
storytelling. The legendary Steve Frankfurt, who is credited
with creating the tagline “In space no one can hear you
scream” for the 1979 movie Alien, clearly
understood the role of co-creation in
telling stories. This line created
a world for the imagination
to populate. It allowed
the audience to put
themselves in the story
and
co-create
its
own
sense
of
claustrophobia,
fear and isolation.
It was simple and
comprehensible
yet gave clear
direction and
meaning.
It
perfectly
captured the
idea of the
brand (or in
this case, movie),
teasing us as to what
the film would deliver
and at the same time
aligning perfectly with the
experience of it. It was a story in
its own right.
More recently was Intel’s The Beauty
Inside, a “social movie” that centered on a
guy named Alex who wakes up every day with a
new face and body. While there were many reasons
to applaud this work, it was the central notion itself that
drove its success. As director Drake Doremus says, “The
story was exciting to me. The idea of waking up in somebody
else’s skin every day but being the same person on the inside
… was some territory I was interested in exploring.” This is
equally true of the audience.
When we start to program a brand, we need to understand
its full narrative and which parts of the story we need to
create, which to co-create with the audience and which to
leave to allow the audience to impart and complete their
own meaning.
Despite the great work mentioned here, I don’t believe this
subtle yet vital shift is one that the majority of people in our
business clearly understand. How we embrace this difference
between content and stories and then bring true storytellers
into our world will be the key to the future success of our
industry.
Content is dead. Long live storytelling.