Everyone is talking about storytelling, about how to form an emotional connection with your audience, how to draw them in to elicit compassion and, for the marker, hopefully desire. But, this is not a new idea. The instinct to tell stories is as primal as survival. It is through tales told across campfires, whispered at bedtime, and drawn on cave walls, that we have been able to preserve our own histories, cultures, and traditions.
For marketers and non-marketers alike, the process of telling a story will always be an art form. However, technology has begun to shift the format from linear to multi-dimensional, from storytelling to storycaping. In an article (http://www.digitalmarket.asia/the-buzz-around-storytelling/) written for Digital Market Asia, marketing strategist, Melanie Cook (@constant_garden) writes, “Technology has given brands limitless opportunity to envelop people in the stories we tell, so they hear, understand and remember them, but also and very importantly experience and become part of them. Let’s not waste that opportunity.”
Storyscaping moves beyond storytelling to story-doing, or story-making. A company that storyscapes creates a landscape of technology-enabled experiential connections that lets consumers interact and engage with the brand story. Darren McColl, SapientNitro’s chief brand strategy officer and co-author of Storyscaping: Stop Creating Ads, Start Creating Worlds , defines the process as “a practice that enables brands to create worlds—not just individual elements, like ads or apps—that encourage, inspire, and foster interactions both from an emotional and an experiential level.”
Storyscaping takes the individual consumer from the outside looking in, to the centre of a brand’s story. Suddenly the story becomes personal, and the most important element becomes that person’s experience. These are the story’s that resonate. John Steinbeck said it best, “If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And here I make a rule–a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.”
Join the SapientNitro team at mesh 2014 as we use emerging technologies to participate in a Storyscape of our collective conference experience. We can’t wait to build it with you.
