We have always been accustomed to telling and hearing stories. These have the ability to create bonds and relationships with a strong emotional power(Once upon a time …). All because they use transmedia storytelling.
Stories, for example, connect us to characters in a special way (ET, Wall.E, Alf, Simpsons, Baby Cerelac, Superman or Steve Jobs). With them we were able to store, more easily, the knowledge related to any matter, when presented in the context of a narrative and strategy of transmedia storytelling.
On the limit, stories even help to create myths around brands (Hendricks Gin, Apple, Coca-Cola’s Santa Claus, and more recent Facebook) – In the past, brands sponsored films. Now, they create films about themselves– ““The Social Network””.
O storytelling is an opportunity for brands and institutions to differentiate themselves by getting the attention of individuals.
In the case of brands, like never before, they need to show its personality, most of whom need to look for its own DNA and humanize its stories. It is in this process that storytelling comes in. It helps to create a brand image with greater relevance and depth, giving an argument and a language to it, able to stir people’s emotions.
So any brand has to create its own stories, according to its goals and audiences. This strategy relies heavily on creative and artistic processes, but above all, it depends on the values that the brand incorporates into its DNA.
In order for this process to be effective and for language to be effective between brands and people, it is necessary to leverage storytelling on the basis of a multiplicity of means, which allows any individual to contact with brand in order to get the greatest possible experience: use of the product, recognition of brand awareness, physical or psychological satisfaction.
According to Henry Jenkins, we come to the time of Participatory Culture – consumers are also producers, they are no longer passive in Media consumption; Collective Intelligence – consumers have the same power as traditional media and compete with them; Culture of Convergence – consumers already control the media through technology, deciding with whom they communicate and with whom they create relationships.
All these forces any institution or brand to incorporate, in their language and communication processes, what we call Transmedia Storytelling strategy – a process where the elements of a story must be dispersed through multiple distribution channels, and where the role of each of these channels contributes to the creation of the brand’s global narrative.
This article was originally published on Transmedia Land.