You need a story, but how do you tell it?
The marketing buzz word for 2019 is “story." Talk to any agency or production company and more than likely you’ll be asked: What’s your story? What story do you want to tell? Companies are being urged to, and want to communicate, their values and beliefs through storytelling-and there’s a reason.
The advertising/marketing world is filled with content. Until recently, the barrier to create ads that reached millions of people were only reserved for the large corporations that had millions to invest.The barrier to create content has been lifted; and now anyone with a phone and a Facebook account can reach the world. Because the world is filled with content, and we’ll say it, sometimes clutter, customers are growing immune to traditional advertising techniques. How many ads do you skip over while you scroll through your social media feed?
Marketers are having to change their tactics in advertising to catch the consumers eye; and they’re relying on human emotions to do so. This is where the concept of telling a brands’ story comes into play. But everyone knows this, so without belaboring anything that most people understand, we’re going to jump to the next question that is equally important: “How do you tell the story?”
The short answer is that there are a lot of different ways. Talking head, photo montage, animated, whiteboard, and narrative are all routes that can be taken to accomplish the same goal. One of these options might stand out as the best fit for your needs; and while designing how you’re going to tell your story, it’s important to consider what your audience will respond well to. What will catch the eye of the consumer scrolling through social media?
We recently had the opportunity to create a film with the Men’s Rowing Team at Western Washington University. The goal was to “motivate someone to pick up an oar.” With that type of goal from the organization, the rest was up to us. What we created was a film that was meant to inspire those who could be inspired. While we could have done an interview with members of the team, or dove into the schools rowing history through a slideshow, all of which would have communicated their story, we asked ourselves: what is going to create an emotional response from this story?
We asked, “how can we tell their story?”
