3 ways Digital Storytelling can help marketers

We had the chance to go to the British Library and see the Digital Storytelling Exhibition focussing on the fascinating ways people are telling tales and spinning yarns with modern technology. Here are just three of the ways we found to set yourself apart with a little innovation:

See for yourself

VR isn’t a new concept, but where ideas like the Metaverse swing too far in that direction, a more measured approach could be the way to tell your story. Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman’s Wolves In The Walls retells their children’s story in VR, immersing the audience in the story as another character in the narrative. We might never see entire meetings conducted in VR but what if we tell a story that our audience can be an active part of? If you can already walk around the Louve from home, why not let your audience have more than a front row seat to the story you’re telling?

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Turn the world into an adventure

You know those museum audio tours that are mapped to the exhibits as you walk around? Now imagine the same concept but with a podcast, one that knows where you are and moves forward as you do. ZRX create ‘Fitness Adventures’, stories that cast you as the main character. These audio narratives put you in numerous situations where you have to move, be it run as you’re being chased or sprint to stop the bad guy, the app knows how far and how fast you’re going and works it into the tale. Too slow? Then the story goes down another route, motivating you to keep fit and active so you can get back on track.

Take athletic companies like Under Armour or Nike. Imagine if their campaigns got people moving. Moving out of their chairs, off their sofas, to get active. Pokémon GO made $100 million in the first 20 days of release becoming one of the most downloaded apps of all time. Why? Because it turned the world around us into an adventure.

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Choose the path

We’ve come a long way from choose your own adventure books. Instead of flicking back and forth between page numbers, what if you pick the next step with the click of a button? Dan Hett’s ‘C Ya Laterrrr’ is an interactive short story using Twine. It is named after the last text he received from his brother before he was killed in 2017’s Manchester Arena bombing. Hett writes about his experiences during this harrowing time but with a twist. You, the reader, can pick what Hett does next.

Instead of being a simple observer, you become a participant grappling with the choices he had to face. Do you follow the path where he waits at home with his family or the one when he goes to the hospital? These impossible choices are put in your hands and this traumatic event takes on a powerful layer of engagement as the narrative requires action to continue. Each choice closes off one path in favour of another making each new page seem personal, seem unique, seem like yours.

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Telling your story

If these mediums can contain something as deeply meaningful as the loss of a brother, what else might we use it for? An advertisement for a sustainable product putting you in the shoes of activists protecting an endangered rainforest. Promoting your inclusive brand with an interactive story that forces a reader to make choices, trying to be heard, in an alienating environment to highlight inequality.

Your narrative doesn’t just have to focus on the big issues either. How many of us have learned about an influential person or a cultural event not from reading an article but from a fun and light-hearted Google doodle? Play with form and find new ways to engage people.

Digital Storytelling is on at the British Library until October 15th, pay a visit and be inspired like we were.