The famous Coca-Cola campaigns are a testimony to how storytelling impacts different consumers in different ways depending on what narrative they hear (or experience). For example, you may start seeing a new campaign on YouTube as a video. Next, you might see TV commercials or outdoor ads for the same. When you visit a store, you may see the product placed well into prominence in the overall assortment. Once you have experienced the product, you may visit social media pages to see the various comments coming in from other users. It is interesting to note that the storytellers for different campaigns work towards one particular larger narrative that fits well into all types of ads served or experiences had by the customer.
Four principles of story worlds that work right for your brand
Story worlds are nothing but the different pieces of stories created by various experts like advertising agencies, TV commercial production houses, bloggers, video creators, and social media management experts. It is difficult to help them stay aligned to a singular narrative, but these principles should definitely help:
1 – What is the brand purpose?
Your first step would be to have a clear brand purpose that informs the users about the values of the brand. This will ensure that the different branches or ad serving mediums will have consistency in how they connect with the customers.
2 – Is the brand purpose correctly applied to consumer psychology?
The company’s larger picture purpose has to resonate with the different offerings. For instance, MasterCard allows its customers to gain credit via cards to meet their needs. This works on customer psychology when they view a MasterCard ad and are prompted to go for a card as they can create a unique experience of their own.
3 – Is the customer involved enough?
Take the case of Doritos. It sought users’ participation in the form of the Doritos Super Bowl ad contest. Here the users were tasked with filming creative ads and sending it to Doritos. The best ads were then rewarded with a whopping $1 million and obtain a 30-second spot aired at the time of the Super Bowl tournament.
4 – Listen to what they say
Being responsive to the users’ opinions and views goes a long way in enhancing your brand visibility. For instance, MasterCard dropped its ‘Goal for meals’ campaign after a public outcry. Dubbed as the ‘Hunger Games’, the ploy was to donate meals based on the number of goals scored in a football match. MasterCard listened to the public sentiment and donated a million meals without tying it up to any marketing campaign. This allowed the card processing giant to depict that they listen to their customers and thus gain their trust.
These pointers will help you get the collective storytelling prowess of co-creators of different stories within the overall brand narrative. What other examples have you seen of various lines of storytelling in place? Do write to us and let us know.
