You probably didn't read it then and probably wont now, which is disappointing, but there's only so much time in the day, right?
It's been fashionable for a while to talk about storytelling, but clearly it's gotten way off track. Like one of those awful subplots that leads you down a garden path to nowhere (final seasons of Dexter, anyone?)
We're not really "storytelling" in the Hans Christian Anderson way, and not every piece of advertising is about this. Sometimes it's just branding, pure and simple.
The thrust of this storytelling bizzo is that we're simply trying to give people a reason to buy. In my earlier piece, I called these 'little stories'.
Example:
Why did I buy a donut with my morning coffee this morning when I am clearly on a diet? Because I was in a hurry and didn't want to be on a sugar low for that important meeting.
How to use that story: Target rushed people with an easy value-add of a donut with their coffee... position it near the transport hub, make it visible.
That's too easy, right? Well, sure, but it is an example of a product and advertising that fits in with a narrative.
At the higher end, Apple creates an entire image and lifestyle for which its products are custom made. If you aspire to that image, then its products become part of your life story.
Mark Wnek wrote a piece on the importance of story tellers, noting that many companies are so data and tech driven these days, you'd swear they were selling to robots.
It's a pretty sad state of affairs, and I tend to agree, this Big Data thing is out of hand - it creates so much information that it is actually beyond the capabilities of marketers and advertisers to use it. Sure, it's nice to be able to discretely target a particular audience, but you still have to know what to do with them...
