Storytelling principles in a highly connected world: Facebook

Please see all of our Spikes Asia 2014 coverage here

We are inundated with an infinite supply of messages in a finite amount of time, which makes it very difficult to decide what is deserving of our time and attention, said Bennison. So this is leading to shifts to how we communicate, and marketers need to reinvent their approach from complex, multimedia-rich messages to of-the-essence, lightweight ones.

How little can we ask someone to do to interact with your brand for maximum impact?

Here are some key pointers from Bennison's talk:

• We need to stop marketing at people and start marketing for people.
• Mobile is not a thing of afterthought. It's the thing. This type of change in media consumption hasn't happened since the 1950s, when TV overtook radio.
• Whatever you're saying on Facebook should be what someone at a dinner party wants to hear, in order to maximise your advertising creative for business results.
• A lot of time and energy and analytics are placed on the media, but with less consideration given to the creative. If I'm trying to sell toothpaste and put out an ad with cute puppies, I will get a lot of clicks, but that will not translate to great business results.
• Storytelling principles: Be authentic, be useful, be relevant, be entertaining. Bennison cited the examples below:

Wendy’s 'Pretzel Love Song' campaign

 

Scoot's 'What The Fog' campaign

 

Newcastle Brown Ale's 'If We Made It' campaign

 

Campaign's observation: Nothing we haven't heard, and wouldn't it be better to place such a 101-level presentation at the beginning instead of at the end of the festival? Also, we must say there were few Asia-applicable insights despite the speaker's job title. The case studies from the West amounted to an entertaining showcase, but we need to do a little more than to entertain.