The Need for Storytelling

By Adam Millbank on

Why do we spend so much time on social channels? Well, perhaps it could be feeding our inherent need for storytelling.

Everyone, whether consciously or unconsciously, has recently adapted a tale. The way we tell a story to our Gran is different to how we tell it to our friends in the pub. Without even realising it, we add our own twists and evolutions to make the story more engaging or exciting for different audiences.

The book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari goes further into our storytelling origins. Homo Sapiens came to dominate the world about 70,000 years ago, by being the only animals who could cooperate flexibly – and at the heart of that cooperation lay communication. The linguistic skills that Sapiens acquired allowed them to talk, gossip and share stories about one another. They formed a new level of communication and began to determine who could be trusted. As a result they built larger, more stable social groups. This is something we still do today; we use stories to make sense of all the social noise and to share that understanding with others.

And, there’s an awful lot of noise out there in the advertising word, especially on social platforms. These platforms speak to millions of people, and Harari argues that in order for a group of over 150 individuals to bond they need to be united behind a common fiction or intersubjective myth, for example, believing that a Queen has divine rights. If enough people believe it, it becomes fact. It is by utilising these common fictions that advertisers can become masters of storytelling.

The Queen and Prince Philip celebrated their platinum anniversary in 2017. The Royal Mint released a commemorative coin to make the occasion and JonesMillbank were asked to create the promotional film to launch it. Speaking with her majesty was not an option, but this milestone was also being celebrated by other couples across the UK, so we decided to bring meaning to the Queen’s story by connecting with other couples and relationships closer to home.

As storytellers it’s our job to dig deeper to bring out the wonderful quirks that make a story more engaging and memorable. In terms of marketing and advertising it’s now, more than ever, about meeting people in these personal settings and in order to make them listen it’s imperative to engage with them and their interests in a deeper way.

For brands to really connect with their audience they need to speak to them in a way that understands their aspirations, their passions and their everyday lives.

By doing so, the social media audience will reach out and engage, partly because they like it, but also because they want to be seen to be liking it – it’s part of the digital story they are telling their friends and family about themselves.

You can check our more on Adam and the team at – www.jonesmillbank.com

There are a few simple online storytelling content approaches that you can utilise to connect with your audience on a more emotional level:

1. Personal stories – First hand accounts delivered directly to camera. A good example is Gary V who uses personal story content effectively. This method is very ‘subscribable’, so it can easily create series content.

2. Documentary – This is a film that your audience would want to watch, but isn’t necessarily about your own product or service. Google are amazing at this, their series called ‘Search On’ is a great example. Check out this piece on an agoraphobic photographer.

3. Fictional stories – A series of fun, escapist pieces that can feature products as part of it. The series with Anna Kendrick for Kate Spade called ‘Missadventures’ is very watchable.

4. Customer stories/testimonials – If you can get them right, customer stories captured like this piece by Airbnb, can work brilliantly.

5. Interview – Interviews with experts, those in similar or complementary fields, are an interesting way of adding another voice to your content. This interview is conducted over a hot sauce eating competition for added interest.

6. Behind the scenes – BTS, is an accessible way to tell the story of an event, a project, a relationship – whatever. Here’s a little one from a TV piece we created that we’ve used as promotion ourselves.

7. Animation – Animated stories can communicate loads of information in a short time, they are also great for the less sexy topics like data migration, law or T&Cs. Have a watch of this piece we created for a client.

8. How to – Finally, ‘how to’ videos, which are really useful for your audience. Giving tips and sharing your secrets is a lovely way to engage followers and get your stories shared. Check out this piece on how to film with your phone for example, it’s simple, but it works.

Adam explored this idea on a webinar with CMA Learning. You can watch this webinar back and hear him talk through examples and answer questions about putting storytelling to use in your strategy.

The CMA Learning webinars are free to register, whether CMA member or not. You can check out our upcoming webinars here

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