Evolving Experience + Storytelling in Advertising

Dove's "Evolution" and "Nike +" came out as two of the big winners from the Cannes Advertising Festival.  Here's what you need to know.  One of these is a compelling story.  The other is a compelling experience (or brand application).  Both leverage digital technologies to bring the consumer closer to the brand.  But I'm biased.  While I think the Dove video was a wonderful short film—brilliant in fact, I feel that pursuing this model exclusively will hinder the growth of traditional Ad agencies.  Take a look at this comment from Burt Helm of BusinessWeek's brand blog:

"The film prize has, until now, been the domain of 30 and 60-second spots. No more! This will only further spur the flow of hot creative talent to the Interactive department. As one veteran exec recently told me, "we're seeing a race to Berlin online." Creatives from both the digital specialist agencies as well as the traditional side see the web as the prime place to change the ad game. Now they can win just as much prestige online as anywhere else, too."

While the Web turning into prime time may be an accurate prediction—the rush to create a model around viral videos may be short sighted.  You see, video distributed via online media channels aren't interactive.  There's nothing interactive about it with the exception of clicking a virtual button to play it.  In fact, the only re-tooling a traditional Ad agency needs to do to fulfill this model is to tell really good stories which people will distribute.  They'll have to do better than the typical 30 second spot, because videos that tend to go viral are usually emotionally charged in some way.  They aren't watered down.  There's also a danger to seeking "prestige" via video—a video can go viral and do nothing for the brand but everything for the agency who produced it.  Dove does not fit this model—but others may.  Tea Partay was cute, but honestly, I forgot what brand/product it was promoting in the first place.

So agencies who go after the holy grail of viral videos, just need to make sure they staff really good storytellers.  But many traditional Ad agencies already have good storytellers.  They're chock full of graduates from film school who didn't go out to Hollywood for one reason or another.  The "race to Berlin" as described in Helm's post is a race that the Ad agencies know how to run.  They just need to run longer than 30 seconds.

But let's challenge my natural bias toward experiences over video spots.  Digital firms who create user experiences don't always have the best storytellers working for them.  Even if they've figured out how to design useful and usable digital applications which go beyond the Web, they sometimes lack the ability to tell a story that's as powerful as something like Dove's Evolution.

So what's an agency to do?

The reality is that we don't have to do anything.  Firms who know how to tell stories can adapt and tell these stories where the eyeballs are moving (Web, mobile, etc).  Firms who have designed and built good user experiences can continue to do this both on the web and in other places.  But imagine the opportunity for the company, brand, or agency who cracks the experience+storyteller code.  Maybe it's comes from one source—or maybe it's orchestrated through the joint efforts of internal and external resources (including consumers).  Doesn't matter—as long as both storytelling+experience are there.

Or another way to look at this is if Dove had come up with a "brand application" as cool and useful as Nike's—or if Nike had produced a short film as compelling as Dove's.  Wow—that would have shown some real evolution within the industry.

Comments

[Branislav Peric]

Funny to read your story about mixing up talents and "crack the code":
my current agency just hired one very talented story teller from the advertising world, hoping we'll be able to "crack the code" in the near future.

Hehe.

[Valeria Maltoni]

I know this is your sweet pot, David. Storytelling meets experience. It reminds me of a beautiful poem by a 13th century Sufi poet "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."

Experience and story join to create a space of connection.

[Asi]

Few weks after the Dove viral kicked-off, I thought they’ve missed great opportunity to leverage the success of the evolution viral (storytelling) and engage people in a compelling interactive experience that would neatly complement the effect of the film.

Technicall / technological obstacles aside, why Dove didn’t create a microsite, inviting people to play with photoshop-like features and to manipulate their own image like in the film and then share with their friends or upload to their blogs etc?

while they didn't do it, the Dove clip drove many web users, via Flickr, YouTube, and their personal blogs, to try and explore digitally manipulating themselves (in reference to the evolution video), which tells you that people don't need brands or ad agencies to create an experience for them...

[Asi]

just a couple examples to what I just said:

YouTubers respond:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p87ccWV-7U

Flickr example:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/liatbaron/sets/72157594366626283/

Have a great weekend!

A.

[DA]

"people don't need brands or ad agencies to create an experience for them..."

No Asi, they don't, but to your earlier point about a microsite or something more—Dove could have helped facilitate even more interaction and dialogue. They could have featured and highlighted some of the videos that were being produced, maybe some of the discussion happening outside of their firewalls. They also could have come up with tools that calculated how much time we spend on "making ourselves up". Maybe look at it over a year. Could be an interesting social statement.

What I didn't include in my post was that the video was successful in driving lots of traffic to Dove. But the story that started with the video, wasn't as successful when you clicked away from it. And a video of that caliber deserves more than a just a Web-based message board

http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/share.asp?section=share

Have a great weekend too!

[Asi]

"a video of that caliber deserves more than a just a Web-based message board"

absolutely right. What I meant was to emphasise that missed opportunity of Dove, to engage people with far deeper and more involving experience than the film.

the fact that people (consumers) have created the experience for themselves around the film just shows how the marketing people in Dove missed a wonderful opportunity.

[Emmanuel Ande vorgba]

Hello David,
I am very interested in your Logic + Emotion philosophy. I want to learn more about this and consider how this can be applied to my work with students
Thank you so much and best regards

[Alain Thys]

Hi David

When looking at your graph an old one of mine came to mind in which I had a similar triangle, the only difference being that I had the words "Scripting - Designing - Engineering" as the cornerstone's of an experience. The thought I had was that if you really tell a story as a brand, you can script the experience assocaited with it from the customer's perspective. You can then provide the design (not only visual, yet everything) and do the engineering to match.

I'm not as visually gifted as you, yet this way it should be possible to combine the two graphs into one and basically say that the experience and the story are the same thing.

It also might be that the chardonnay I'm drinking as I write this has gone to my head, and I'm not really making much sense with the above ... in which case you may safely ignore this comment ;-) ...

either way, good post

take care

Alain

[Paula Thornton]

I continue to wonder (in a Tina Turner sort of way), "What's brand got to do with it?"

Brand is the recall...not the impetus.

[DA]

Paula, brands are what we associate experiences with no? Disney brings us vacation experiences. Apple brings us lifestyle product experiences. Trader Joe's brings us alternative shopping experiences which liberate us from the crappy grocery store with automate checkouts that don't work. Therefore, brands have something to do with it. At least I think they do...

[Jayme Maultasch]

Just want to thank you for another great post! I bookmarked it when I first read it and just revisited after checking out Dove's evolution video one more time. I think your right that there's power in combining the storytelling with the experience but think you're understating the level of difficulty involved. I'm curious - what would you point to as examples of storytelling+experience in the marketplace now?

[DA]

"you're understating the level of difficulty involved."

Yes, it's difficult. Very difficult and there are few examples that truly stand out in my mind. The old version of Nike Women came close. It combined commerce with high quality Web video. In some cases you could stop the video and click on something someone was wearing and order it. It only worked well in really fast computers and connections and was probably a little ahead of it's time.

Come clean from Method also strikes me as story and experience. In that example, the stories were provided real people. The experience was interactive elegant and easy to use. And a little addictive.

Difficult? Yes—very. If it weren't I'd have a boatload of examples under my belt. (Though I do try hard to combine experience and story on this blog) ;)