Recognizing the Importance of Story

I’m doing a workshop tonight on ‘Creating Interactive Brand Stories’ with Kontent Creative and hence a bit of research. Came across this Cannes Film Festival Short Story Winner, which really rings true on how important ‘telling story’ can be:

Historia de un letrero

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyGEEamz7ZM]

Brands Can Be Storytellers too!

A common misconception that we encounter with people when we tell them that we are interactive storytellers is that we create dynamic stories for children or that we strictly work with traditional stories in the form of books, movies, television series and films to make their stories more dynamic and interactive.  This is a myth (although we do  indeed work with traditional stories to make them more interactive, but our stories are not limited to traditional stories).

Storytelling is an age old art and tradition that allows us to pass on information in a manner that will be remembered.  The most powerful ad campaigns build a story around their product or company.  Similarly the most powerful political campaigns or actors have been adept at building stories around themselves.  This is what creates brands that people remember.  It doesn’t matter how old we get, everybody loves a good story and if you can create one around your brand, people will remember you.  Dove for example was brilliant in the building of ad campaigns that made them synonymous with embracing the real female body in all of it’s curves.

Photo by Selca Morales

Photo by Selca Morales

Now when we talk interactive storytelling, we are simply referring to making your story more dynamic and allowing your audience or customers to become a part of your story by interacting within it.  Storytellers have done this for ages with dance, sound effects, song and costumes, when they have their audience present.  The beauty of technology and the age of social media is we can now allow our audience to become a part of our story, even if they are not in the same room as us, the same city, the same country, or even the same hemisphere.

Photo by Rusty Stewart

To explore interactive brand storytelling some more, join me (Erica Hargreave) for a Back to School with Kontent workshop tomorrow (Tuesday September 1st) evening on Creating Interactive Brand Stories.

Back to School With Kontent

Summer is winding down, and with it my days of zaniness.  Time to buckle down to more serious matters, like interactive storytelling!

Excited to be a part of Kontent Creative’s Summer School with a workshop on Interactive Brand Storytelling:

Creating Interactive Brand Stories

Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 7pm – 9pm

No matter how many new technologies and forms of media we invent, the most powerful form of communication will always be the most ancient, the art of storytelling.  The beauty of these new technologies and forms of media is that they are vehicles for stories that allow us to tell them in new ways and spread them to new audiences. They also allow our audience to interact within the story itself, allowing them to feel a part of it.

Often we think of stories as medium strictly for entertainment sake.  The reality is that we are all storytellers, telling our own stories, that of a company or a brand, or those of the culture in which we live.  The trick is recognizing what our story is and learning how best to tell it.

In this workshop, we look at examples of brand storytelling, identify what others stories are and how they are using the online space and social media to tell their brand’s story and engage with their audience.  Just like the stories online, this workshop will be interactive and we will be doing some story building of our own.

Click here to register.

So what do you think –  should I go with my summer look:

…or move on to the autumn wardrobe?