Now the dust has long settled over the big creative outburst in advertising at Christmas and before we start over again, it seems, according to this survey from Google, that the John Lewis ‘Man on the Moon’ offering was most popular.
Though I personally preferred the less sentimental Mog advert from Sainsburys, I was intrigued by the way in which the ‘Man on the Moon’ invited you to literally ‘continue the story’. This little phrase got me thinking….
You hear lots about story telling in the world of brands at the moment. You can sign up for story telling workshops where you learn how to use techniques from the screen writer’s toolkit; there is an agency, Aesop, that claims to focus on taking this approach, and brands have been ranked according to their story telling ability. But where exactly are the stories in marketing and what sort of tales are they? Having done a bit of digging and thinking, it seems that the use of stories operates at different levels but with lots of fuzziness blurring them all up.
- Some adverts, whether TV, cinema or online content, are literally played out as stories – there is a sense of narrative to them. The story provides the creative framework and dynamic. The Sainsburys Mog advert is a good example here.
- Stories can exist at a higher level – in terms of the story the brand or company tells of itself. This can be a story about its heritage and founders, the journey it has been on and the like. It’s a story that can be articulated to both internal and external audiences. Lots of luxury brands do this kind of story telling – consider this statement from Christopher Bailey at Burberry, ‘It’s not just a coat. That coat has a story. People want the soul in things. They want to understand the whys and the whats and the values that surround it.’
- The third level is most indistinct and hardest to clearly define – people use stories as a catch-all term to describe what a brand is about – its values, strategy, positioning and purpose. Some would say that Coke’s story is about happiness.
But stories are not all equal – there are different ways in which a narrative can progress. The mighty tome from Christopher Booker, ‘The seven basic plots’, is useful for giving ideas here. I’ll explore that further in my second blog post on story telling. This gives me license to say ‘to be continued’….!
