• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, November 7, 2011

That’s how opening keynoter Stephen J. Kim, General Manager, Global Creative Solutions, Microsoft, kicked things off this morning, quite literally showing a picture of a “big monster chasing a little monster.” Well, that’s one interpretation of the image Kim put on the screen. The truth, said Kim, is that the two “monsters” in the image were exactly the same size – dimensionally speaking – but that the “perspective,” shading, and other details in the illustration they were depicted in, made one look bigger than the others.

The important part of the illustration, aside from getting the attention to the early morning New York OMMA Display crowd, was to make a point about “storytelling,” and the emotional and cognitive things human beings ascribe to stories.

And that’s how Microsoft Advertising begins the process of helping advertisers and agencies, well, think different, about online display advertising.

When we think about doing research around the world, around advertising we typically don’t start by showing actual advertising. We typically begin with how we can tap into human emotions. We go out and show images like this,” Kim said flashing he monsters on the screen. “People have a very easy time coming up with a story behind this image. People can easily tell you this is a summation of the big monster chasing the little monster.”