• by Anthony Wolch , January 5, 2011

Brands have been telling stories for as long as advertising has existed. Without a good story, a brand is digging its proverbial grave. Why?

Stories are the first interactive experiences we encounter in our lives: A symbiotic human interaction on the deepest level of engagement. It is the opening of hearts and minds, the explosion of imagination and our favorite act of escape.

Great stories transport us from the mundane and the everyday to places filled with laughter, tears, celebration and beauty. The best-told tales never leave our minds.

Storytelling has been used throughout cultures globally from time immemorial to entertain, explain, swindle the gullible, scare children, mask the pain of loss, justify amoral behavior, manufacture alibis and supply fantasy to the masses. This leads us to the three components all good stories have: A beginning, middle and end.

All stories begin with a simple perceived human truth: walk us through the middle with a confident, authoritative voice and end up selling us something we cannot do without. Biblically speaking, Jesus did a pretty job of spreading the gospel, developing his brand and gaining a faithful audience who were all willing to try his product. His consumer base grew rapidly, and to this day JC has one of the greatest levels of brand loyalty advertising has even seen. All because of some well-told stories (of course, the promise of life after death might have something to do with this).

For marketers, storytelling has always been a magical way to create connections between brands and audiences. But storytelling fell into crisis when it began to lack authenticity. Consumers slowly began seeing through the veil of Hollywood testimonials and started thinking for themselves. They began rejecting the notion that an actor in a commercial might realistically be able to diagnose a rare heart condition. How about that?

Brand storytelling needed a revolution. It had to shift from brand monologue to brand dialogue. It only took a few hundred years for brands to realize that audiences didn't really like being screamed at and told what to do. Housewives started questioning the toxicity of floor polish and teenagers doubted that this was really "The best a man can get."

Audiences lashed out at brands and began their own dialogue. Brands began to worry. They wondered why people stopped believing in the half-truths and put their trust in the recommendations of their peers.

It looked like the beginning of the end for brand storytelling. A quick ending filled with pain and suffering, boils and pestilence, swarmed by locusts wiling to publish the human voices consuming the very brands that were meant to warm hearts.

The middle looked a bit foggy at best. But as they say, out of the most ferocious of storms come only the brightest strikes of lightning.

Suddenly a new horizon emerged, and the end created a new beginning. A time for people in Morden and Manitoba to have their voices heard all the way in Papua New Guinea. For young women in the deepest recesses of the African desert to connect with other young women their age across the farthest reaches of our planet, and storytelling created a new vibrant currency all over again. No longer devalued by voices with little, if any, connection to the ears they speak to, storytellers rose from their cubicles and took up the titanium megaphone.

Contagious conversation became the new black. The creation of stories so impactful, so wonderfully silly and incredibly random filled with infants laughing, cats playing piano and brands taking responsibility for the products they sell. Advertising took notice quickly, and as creative folks are apt to do, decided that this new form of dialogue was worthy of further exploration. Stories told in sound bites, even 30-second explosions of emotional resonance, in pixels and vibrant colors, chances for global participation and the proliferation of an archeological dig into the very thing that makes us crazy humans tick.

This is where storytelling doubles back to whence it came from. From a place where naïve melodies ruled the day, words crafted into sweet melodic harmony that you just couldn't stop humming.

Men do not need to be factually told that erections lasting more than four hours need medical attention. They need to be told a good old-fashioned story that connects to their hearts and minds. Young women need to know that a brand understands the depths of what it means to need someone to talk to about feminine care. They do not need to witness countless pathetic attempts at creating metaphors that simply serve to embarrass both the brands that create the pointless drivel and the entire category in turn. In general, everyone just wants to feel that people and brands understand them, and that stories created for the masses actually seem to speak directly to each individual listening to the words. Most importantly, people need to be entertained and stories told by brands need to be delivered as gifts.

There has never been a more exciting time to tell stories, which reminds me of the time that I...