Storytelling in a virtual world

The digital arena provides a direct route to consumers and, because responses can be easily measured, marketers can report that waste is being cut. However, Julian Saunders argues that this obsession with ‘direct effects’ loses the persuasive and lasting power of storytelling

Krona used an aged, respected and trusted journalist reporting to the nation. The nature of the storyteller implied that this was a phenomenon

Consider the following heretical questions: What if half the point of communication is ‘the waste’? What happens if in the pursuit of ever-more relevance and measurability we miss something that is less measurable but more important?

What happens when everyone gets good at the new techniques? Will people still basically think that marketing is at best something that is done to them and at worst an unwelcome act of surveillance? It looks to me more like dystopia than utopia.

The human animal is uniquely a storytelling animal. Stories are not mere entertainment (although they may entertain) they are useful. They help us make sense of complexity, of the randomness of existence and offer a guide to living a good life.

 Above all, the great stories of a culture are shared. And this is what makes them a more efficient form of marketing than any other. The point about stories is that other people do the work for you. Stories may appear in books, films, on websites and in TV ads, but they are also retold in pubs, schools, offices and around campfires.

Battle of the yellow fats: a classic story

It is long forgotten now but there was a time more than 30 years ago when there was mortal combat in the ‘yellow fats’ market. The first case in the first IPA effectiveness book of 1980 told how a new yellow fat had stirred things up.

Let me remind you of the dramatis personae. There were the butter brands which were tasty and expensive and ever so fattening and indulgent. And there were the margarine brands that aspired to be like butter but in spite of insistent claims to the contrary were a bit yuk – cheap and cheerful nonetheless. Then things changed.

Krona margarine launched with an ad that pretended to be a news story. TV ads were fronted by Rene Cutforth – a respected and experienced TV journalist – who reported an extraordinary rumour that, when the product was introduced in Australia, housewives were buying it by the caseload.

It grew to such proportions that questions were asked of the Minister of Agriculture in parliament. It was more than a bar of marge: it was a story laden with meaning. Krona was flying off the shelves. This was not just another new and untried product buttonholing you to try it.

 The 1980 case history did not mention it but the campaign is a behavioural psychologist’s dream as it uses what we now call the law of ‘social proof ’ – we tend to see the fact that others use a product or service as reassurance and a source of trust. And it also helped us to see yellow fats differently by changing the context of the story.

Instead of having two women chatting about it in a kitchen, Krona used an aged, respected and trusted journalist reporting to the nation. The nature of the storyteller implied that this was no mere product battling for shelf space: it was a phenomenon with followers.

And it was discussed by people other than those who do the weekly shop. Krona launched into a competitive market to consumers who had become immune and cynical to the claim that margarine tastes as good as butter – they saw marge as a cheaper and poorer alternative.

So the story did something else: it circumvented that natural resistance people had to rational claims about taste in the continuing war between marge and butter. ‘Welcome back to butter’ said the butter makers in reply, so tapping into another shared story.

Butter is a pleasure and a treat you can give yourself after you have been on a joyless and self-denying journey into the land of marge. Marge, it suggested, is one of the grim things you force yourself to eat in a desperate attempt to win the ‘inch war’ along with Ryvita, which tasted like cardboard. ‘Welcome back to butter’ suggested this backstory in just a few words and demonstrates another weapon in the storyteller’s armoury: a story does not have to be told in detail and can be conjured up from our shared experience in a few words. We fill in the gaps. This reminder of the wars of the yellow fats shows how powerful a story can be.

 STORYTELLING and BRITSH ADVETISING

British advertising became the most famous in the world in the 1980s and 1990s. A certain amount of this reputation was achieved with storytelling – beautifully crafted little dramas in 30, 40 or 60 seconds featuring characters – human, animal and plasticine.  

Gold Blend took all this to its logical conclusion and wrote a mini soap-opera. It started innocently with a simple request to borrow some coffee from a neighbour, and continued with a series of increasingly arch conversations about coffee. All the time, in our torrid imaginations, we were wondering will they, won’t they? It was a briefly told story in a series of 40-second commercials – not much space compared with an episode of EastEnders – but we filled in the gaps in the story.

Modern neuroscience explains the power of this story and the importance of witnessing characters and interaction. Our animal minds are immediately tuned in to social situations. Within a millisecond we size up the age, sex, state of health and mood of others.

Instinct means that we simply cannot help gazing at and wondering at the meaning of all that smouldering eye contact in the commercials between Anthony Head and Sharon Maugham. Sizing up relationships very quickly can be the difference between success or failure, life and death.

 ORANGE BRINGS US THE CREATION MYTH

In 1994, another important marketing event revealed some of the larger and more ambitious things that the marketing storyteller can achieve. Orange told a story that did not just sell phones (although it did so brilliantly) but it created a brand myth which tapped into one of our most fundamental desires.

Orange launched into a telecoms market almost devoid of brand values and invented a fully rounded brand from a standing start with a visionary story of the wire-free future:

‘In the future you won’t change what you say just how you say it. In the future we’ll think it strange that voices ever travelled down wires. In the future no one will be tied down. In the future the skies will be clearer.’

The Words (with a capital W) were spoken by a child and accompanied by images of an unborn child floating in amniotic fluid. The deeper meaning was clear – this was a creation myth about the endless cycle of rebirth and renewal. It was as if the creators of the Orange brand had been bathing in a pool of pure Jungian archetypes in the search for inspiration and had found it.

 HIGHER PURPOSE BRANDING

After Orange, many brands did not just sell products and services, they aspired to a higher purpose in life. Brands expressed a point of view on what matters in life – not merely the adoption of a competitive positioning in a given category.

 A backstory is implied and even demanded to explain such a change. By expressing a point of view on life the question is raised: how did you come to this point of view? It suggests careful consideration and a definite decision to break with the way things have been. It is not just consumers who are interested but the media too.

 At this point it pays not to be publicity shy because telling the backstory provides the kind of memorable copy that can sink into the wider culture.

 CHALLENGER BRANDS INVOKE THE DAVID AND GOLIATH MYTH

This myth is laden with useful meaning for the start-up looking to take a market by storm. David is young and attractive (which is rarely bad) and is taking on the aggressive, overbearing and lumbering figure of Goliath. Painting the competition as Goliath is useful. David wins by being smarter than Goliath who has to rely on brawn.

You can’t really help being on the side of David. No wonder so many challenger brands consciously or unconsciously invoke his story. Challengers, such as Virgin and BA and then, ironically, EasyJet and Virgin, have been brazen at playing the David and Goliath myth. But instead of a slingshot they used smart lawyers teamed up with PR people.

 So, storytelling helps you to do something else of huge value: you can not only position your own brand but also reposition and box-in the competition. Conflict and turmoil are at the heart of many stories about successful challengers.

You can tell this from reading the headings in Adam Morgan’s seminal book Eating the Big Fish. It is a brilliant analysis of challenger brands. We learn how challengers ‘break with their immediate past’, ‘build a lighthouse identity’, ‘assume thought leadership of the category’, ‘create symbols of re-evaluation’, ‘sacrifice’ and/or ‘overcommit’. His book’s headings read like the chapter in an unfolding story, which in many cases they are.

The individual stories are of original inspiration and early opposition overcome. The triumphant breakthrough, setbacks and reinvention have become a part of our shared culture because many of Morgan’s heroes are natural storytellers, happy to share with us their highs and lows.

Stories are best when vivid, and involve conflict and opposition. Big corporates tend to remove these things from marketing communications because they feel more comfortable with the vague, bland and non-specific. But it does make them vulnerable to an underdog with a talent for narrative.

 STORYTELLING ENCAPSULATES VALUES

What is the point of this storytelling, beyond just a natural talent for publicity common to many successful challengers? They are all morality tales that speak of important values – such as commitment, hard work, the desire to do good, to make things better for people, to give people better value. In this respect these stories have some similarity with the Bible, which is of course made up of stories with morals.

Jesus threw out the moneylenders and Orange junked a wire-cluttered past and offered us a wire-free promised land. Orange was a revolutionary brand because it wore its values on its sleeve. It told us the story about how it wanted to sweep away the past and offer us a brighter more optimistic future.

 The coalition government needs something like this – The Big Society will remain vague until it is told in a myriad of stories. Furthermore, well-told stories endure.

They go into the collective memory of the culture to be readily evoked and revived. This is a great boon for all those committed to marketing efficiency. For example, Nestlé goes back and drinks at ‘the well of the Gold Blend couple’ every few years.

 TECHNOLOGY IS THE INSPIRATION FOR A NEW AGE OF STORYTELLING

The new IPA president Nicola Mendelson is right to point to the transforming power of technology – it has already revolutionised targeting, response and selling.

Yet the great opportunity is surely to harness this to the constant reinvention of the IPA’s great tradition of brand building and brand storytelling. It is our big contribution to business and profitability and much envied when viewed from the East, China in particular.

To achieve this we need a marriage between the geeks and the romantics. And here, we can look backwards and forwards for inspiration. The historian Richard Holmes described the period from about 1780 to 1850 as The Age of Wonder. The great scientists of the time, such as Humphry Davy, were also poets and the great storytellers drew their inspiration from science, like Mary Shelley with the story of Frankenstein’s monster.

Scientists and writers knew each other well and mixed on a daily basis in clubs and learned societies. We can also look forward and think of what online gaming is becoming. Gaming has boomed by throwing off its past as an activity carried out by teenagers alone in bedrooms.

Now gaming is social. We unfold complex stories with others. Shortly, games will break the shackles of place and start romping around in the real world. The GPS facilities on our mobiles open a new door to fantasy and experiences.

Tim O’Reilly, computer-book publisher and legendary geek, calls this ‘sensor-driven collective intelligence’. Will this mean yet more direct and measurable marketing and a realisation of the dystopian fantasy in the film Minority Report? Yes probably.

But bigger more memorable experiences are possible, ie stories and games played in real time across the landscape. It is a future that will be created by the geeks who love stories and the storytellers who are fascinated by technology.

Julian Saunders is a partner of The Joined Up Company [email protected]

 Many brands did not just sell products and services, they aspired to a higher purpose in life. Brands expressed a point of view on what matters in life – not merely the adoption of a competitive positioning in a given category