WHAT’S STORYTELLING
Customers do not buy a product or a service, but the emotions that a brand arouses. Success also depends on how much the consumer identifies with the values transmitted by the brand. For this reason, large companies but also small businesses focus their strategies on a good storytelling, leveraging their values and the emotions of others.
Storytelling is the art of telling a story, involving those who listen or reads and in fact, this technique has very ancient origins: just think of the cave paintings through which we are aware of the stories of the first cavemen.
Legends, myths, traditions, proverbs, and stories, not only through paintings, images and drawings, man narrates and has always handed down verbally.
Collect information, document situations and finally share knowledge. The art of narration from antiquity continues until today, transforming itself, evolving and adapting itself to changes.
With the birth of the Internet, by linking marketing with storytelling, companies have been able to exploit the great power of influencing the consumer’s brain.
There are different types of storytelling and the article focuses mainly on digital storytelling.
FORMS OF STORYTELLING
Digital storytelling allows you to use digital tools to tell a company, its history, its objectives, and its values through social channels, blog articles, and contents on its website that can convey emotions and something in which the user can mirror himself.
Digital Storytelling is a way of combining the classical method of telling a story with different types of media like still images, movies, sound files, drawings, text and many other types.
Digital storytelling is used in various fields such as education, politics, historical and cultural projects, social concern and dissemination of information.
This flexibility and the widespread use of digital storytelling are due to its ability to break down complex topics to a simple and comprehensible level.
Digital marketing allows you to increase the traffic and popularity of your website even on social networks, strengthen the positive perception of your brand and stimulate sales.
A form of digital storytelling is visual storytelling that is telling emotions with imagines. „The articles with images get 94% more visits than the text only, the content with video triples the probability that the user will follow the link”.
This is because the visual elements have the ability to attract and maintain attention decisively.
A fundamental point in a winning visual strategy is to use a recognizable narrative scheme so that the user finds something recognizable that is part of his knowledge.
Equally important is to show the human side of the brand and to do so we need to establish an action plan taking into consideration what we want to communicate, how, by what means, the target and when.
THE COMMERCIAL
Among the various ways of doing visual storytelling including infographics, gifs, memes, presentations and videos, the channel that companies continue to use is definitely the commercial.
The commercial, broadcast through television – which still qualifies as a means of mass communication preferred by users despite the large amount and variety of devices – is transmitted for a limited duration of up to 120 seconds in order not to lose the attention of the consumer.
The number of companies deciding to invest in the advertising spot is ever greater, entrusting the direction to famous directors or using actors known nationally / internationally both in films but also and especially in the TV series.
The company strategy consists in attracting the consumer’s attention through the few seconds of the commercial on television and then postponing the viewer to the other channels used such as websites and social channels where the advertising campaign continues in the long version, offering users a greater visual impact but also complicity and participation in order to create engagement.
Flexibility, originality, and emotions are the keywords for a successful strategy.
CASE HISTORY: DIOR
An excellent example can be the French fashion house Dior, known above all for its luxury perfumes.
In the new Love Chain charity campaign linked to the Miss Dior commercial. The new Eau de parfum, we can see how the company exploits storytelling in all its forms to communicate a product difficult to communicate such as perfume. It is about a joint initiative that involves all the testimonials of the Maison Dior, first of all, Natalie Portman, who tell us what is the madness they have done for love answering the „question – claim” of the spot „and you, what would you do for love?”.
Anyone can participate in this chain of love by publishing on their own channel Instagram a video or a photo in which is told what you are willing to do for love. For each post published on Instagram with the official hashtag #diorlovechain, the Maison donates 1 dollar to the WE organization for the purpose of dealing with education of young women in 45 countries around the world.
Usually, the brands point to the famous character that can arouse in the buyer the buying spirit driven by admiration, esteem, praise, adoration towards the testimonial himself. The focus is also on the message that through the fragrance they want to transmit, positive messages often accompanied by charity campaigns in favor of noble causes as in the case of the spot in question; a spot in which the exaltation of elegance, beauty, and sensuality is entrusted to a mix of emotions and overwhelming music that immediately catches the consumer’s interest.
Being a perfume advertisement, the communication strategy focuses on the overall sensorial experience. We tend to tell through images and emotions that they involve the consumer and activate positive and pleasant feelings in him.
Indeed, it is important for a given type of speech advertising the subjective enhancement of the product, the construction of the passionate consumer subject and presentation to the empirical consumer of a simulacrum of one’s own desire and one’s own passionate dimension.
The TV commercial refers to the landing page of the specially created perfume where it is possible to watch the full version of the advertising spot and his making of, a section dedicated to details, famous participants and the number of adherents to the love chain, information regarding the purchase of perfume, history of birth of the perfume accompanied by images, gif, and colors, obviously the rose.
It is clear that Dior has used all the focal points for a successful visual strategy: emotions, values, colors, a well-targeted target, and a clear goal.
The product is not used or shown but is personified by the actress becoming itself the product and expressing the character of the fragrance: a fragrance that releases femininity, sensuality and that smells of love.
HOW TO MAKE A GOOD DIGITAL STORYTELLING FOR YOUR BRAND.
Thanks to visual storytelling, companies have the opportunity to tell each other, creating curiosity, empathy and sharing with customers through images, colors, videos, gif etc.
The visual narration facilitates the memory because the images are immediate and effective compared to the words as well as being easy to rework and recall.
Building and adopting a storytelling strategy is not limited to telling a story and publishing videos and images, but it is a process that is the result of the analysis of the dynamics between brand and target, analysis of company values, objectives and channels.
Every business has a story worthy of being told. The experience can turn into a valuable resource telling how the idea, the inspiration, the growth process was born but also the reasons for the choice to start the business or because of that particular product.
Overcoming obstacles can prove to be a good way to go for your strategy. Sharing the problems faced and overcoming them can make it possible to become a source of inspiration, also stimulating the user’s identification.
Fairy tales, stories of inspiration or warning are convincing options as the reader is nourished by motivations, inspirations but also advice on how to avoid risks or waste time and money.
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