1. Digital Brand Storytelling

Digital Brand Storytelling is the narration of brand stories using digital technologies while leveraging the exceptional qualities of those technologies. The near future brings increased interest in digital brand storytelling in theory and in practice: the primary reason being the increased importance of digital brand management, that in turn leads to an increased interest in the topic of storytelling as well as the current data on its enormous impact on brand management.

1.1   Storytelling

The ancient art of storytelling has become a force in management circles in recent years. It permeates corporate communication as well as knowledge management. Storytelling means to consciously and masterfully use stories to make valuable content more readily understood; to support lasting learning and comprehension among an audience; to sow ideas; to encourage intellectual participation and thereby to provide communications a new dimension.

1.2   Brand Storytelling

Brand storytelling means to stage the brand in a systematically planned and lasting fashion according to the principles of storytelling. Brand storytelling communicates beyond the facts about what matters to the brand and about the unique, rewarding feelings the brand evokes: does the brand offer consumers safety, does it facilitate discovery or does it increase productivity? What are the brand’s hurdles toward these goals: is it the competition? Is product quality lacking? Is there friction with consumers? Or do investors still need to be convinced? How does the brand nevertheless fulfill its promise? How does it reward consumers? Brand storytelling narrates meaningful stories about the brand in a fashion that effects valuable, targeted groups. The goal is to raise brand awareness and convey a clear image of the brand’s unique reward. Brand Storytelling is a part of corporate brand management – a continuous, consistent experience of the story should be accessible at every contact point for brands’ target groups – and so in digital media.

1.3  Digital Storytelling

The term digital storytelling emerged in the 1990’s. There are two sources: in the first, a team from Berkeley picked up the term as the title for a course about the (digital) video production of short stories; in the second, American Dana Atchley solidified the concept of digital storytelling with his autobiographical theater and video production and subsequent website. Later, Atchley co-founded the Center for Digital Storytelling with Joe Lambert. For most authors, digital storytelling signifies the telling of a story in digital form: “The biggest difference between traditional types of narratives and digital storytelling is that the content of traditional narratives is in an analog form, whereas the content in digital storytelling comes to us in a digitized form.” (Handler Miller 2008, p. 4).  And Alexander writes that digital storytelling is “telling stories with digital technologies.” (Alexander 2011, p. 3).

2 Peculiarities of Digital Brand Storytelling

Marie-Laure Ryan stresses that every medium possesses a unique combination of features (Ryan 2004, p. 19). Digital technologies provide storytelling with a combination of four peculiarities – the Big Four: integration, accessibility, connectivity and interactivity (Herbst 2004).

2.1 Integration

The high-level integration of four building blocks distinguishes digital brand storytelling. The four blocks are:

  • Devices: laptop, mobile, smartphone, tablet all lend themselves to integration in digital brand storytelling. Examples of the special utility of devices are mobisodes and web series. Devices can be networked. Each device is at once a platform as well as a “medium of the first degree,” which can integrate secondary media and manifold utilities, i.e. modes of communication.
  • Utilities and Technologies: at the platform level, mail, telephonics, chat, forums are integrated into digital brand storytelling up and into augmented reality. Thanks to giant strides in computer technology, the gaming industry regularly makes use of technologies such as real time graphics, digital language processing or artificial intelligence.
  • Media Objects like a webpage, a blog entry, a Twitter Tweet or a YouTube video. A picture on Facebook lends itself to brand storytelling with a brief, complementary textual comment.
  • Communication Tools: important from the standpoint of brand management is that traditionally separate disciplines like television ads, a digital public relations press kit and eShop merchandising are connected within digital brand storytelling.
  • Multimedia: texts, photos, graphics, video, animation and sound can all be integrated. The story of the brand’s founder exists as text, which photos, charts and audio files complement. An audio slide show runs as a video in a player. It tells a story in pictures just like in a gallery except that it is supported by protagonist quotes, fitting sound or music. It might also contain video elements, less-often prose or graphics. Podcast offerings or multi media specials may also arise.

The Exceptional: users determine which building blocks they select and in what order. Would users prefer to read text? Or view a short video? The user decides. And as current user numbers on the topic “Second Screen” show, users occasionally access multiple modes concurrently.

2.2 Accessibility

Digital brand stories are accessible constantly, globally and in unlimited quantity:

  • Time: brand stories exist independent of time and are accessible around the clock (24/7).
  • Space: in principle, every brand story is accessible everywhere in the world as long as the required technology is available. This makes location-based storytelling available to digital brand storytelling: consumers arrive at a space where they participate in a story because something happens or they must do something. Users can develop stories anywhere – at the doctor’s, in the subway, waiting for an airplane. Microtelling are short shorts often no longer than 2-3 sentences or 140 characters long.
  • Storage: unlimited storage allows digital brand storytelling in as much breadth and depth as desired. As much material as desired may be provided to the user for download (ringtones, video, etc.)

2.3 Connectivity

Connectivity promotes integration. Connectivity means that the building blocks of devices, technologies, applications, media assets, etc. are connected with one another and communicate (key word: supersystem of systems). Connectivity with and within the digital realm has increased dramatically in recent years. Three examples:

  • Media Convergence is the consolidation of traditionally distinct disciplines like print, tv, radio, digital (cp. Jenkins 2006).
  • Devices and Technologies: people mail with their phones, go online with their televisions and listen to radio online. Mobile end devices like smartphones and tablets open up new user scenarios and multi-screen experiences via apps and digital utilities like Location Based Services.
  • Social Networks and Sharing Platforms enable new forms of communication where every individual can access, forward, rate, comment and themselves create content. Marie-Laure Ryan talks about networking computers in physical space in order to bring users together in virtual environments.
  • Connecting with the Space outside the Digital Media: the digital realm is increasingly connected with the spaces outside of digital media.

Users have three possible modes of navigation: first, the haphazard pursuit of links through which the user drifts; secondly, goal-oriented travel along a certain path and thirdly, a concrete search for a particular piece of content undetermined by a particular path. A challenge for digital brand storytelling posed by connectivity is that visitors lose their orientation without linear structure: the reader of a book knows where it begins, that one chapter follows another and when the book ends. Not so the case on the internet. Therefore an understanding and internalization of non-linear information systems is essential (Haisch 2011, p.90).

2.4 Interactivity

Interactivity is closely tied to integration and connectivity. Many authors see interactivity as the essential difference to traditional storytelling: “interactivity is repeatedly cited as the feature of digital media that most clearly distinguishes it from older, non digital genres.” (Ryan 2004, 2006: Aarseth 1997; Walker 2003, Alexander 2012). Interactivity can either be described as selective, from clicking on a link, or productive, from participation in a story plot with dialogue or gesture (Ryan 2004, p. 339). Accordingly, digital brand storytelling entails a very active user in contrast to classical storytelling, which consists of an active narrator and a passive audience. Users in digital brand storytelling aren’t required to wait until something happens, rather they can make something happen. The digital brand storytelling user can influence the brand story: users can reach into a story and help shape it – no different from video games. The question is as follows: does the user select a story (human interacts with machine) or tell a story as user-generated content? (human interacts with content) Crawford (2002) and Ryan (2006) distinguish between two forms of contextual interactivity: “exploratory versus ontological interactivity“ and “internal versus external interactivity.” The four respective forms may be combined.

  • Ontological Interactivity: user affects the brand story.
  • Exploratory Interactivity: user does not affect the brand story.
  • Internal Interactivity: user plays a role in the brand story, for example as an avatar.
  • External Interactivity: user acts in the non virtual world, navigating a databank, for example, or as a god, who steers the fate of the story.

There are also reasons, however, that set limits to interactivity in digital brand storytelling:

  • Interactivity can hinder losing one’s self in a story. Referred to as immersion, it is the experience of the story as a flow. Key to flow is the story’s challenge: if the challenge is too great, the user is overwhelmed; too low the challenge, and the user is bored. If the challenge is missing, the user is sidelined. Regular successes and thereby positively-generated emotions, on the other hand, nurture the experience of a flow.
  • Flow is also impeded when users must continually make decisions about places, people and actions within the brand story. Users are constantly reminded that they are following a brand story in the digital world. Hypertext can just as easily interrupt a story’s flow as enhance it.
  • Current research on decision making provides further references to the limits of interactivity: According to Gigerenzer, contentment and quality about decisions do not necessarily rise with the number of decisions (2008). Too many decisions can overwhelm (Kast 2013).
  • Stories have authors who understand what makes a good story, how to tell it and what elicits tension. Do users know all of this? How is a user to help tell a story about the Activia brand without some guidance? Should the outcome even be a story or more of an experience? And how are users to decide between or among multiple options in the course of a story, when they are unaware of the consequences? And: what happens when the user wishes to select an option other that those prescribed by the author?
  • A further caution bears mentioning. In instances where the user is granted too much control by the author, the user may experience motivational reactance and become disoriented for lack of direction (key word: user sovereignty). A narrative method is needed that offers the user a certain degree of freedom of choice. A corollary is to direct the user without revealing the presence of external influences. „… the art of interactive entertainment is the art of indirect control.“ (Schell, 2003, 841)

The application of interactivity should be carefully examined.

 3. Digital Stages

Digital brand storytelling possesses three stages: stories which unfold in a media asset, in more than one media asset and ones which develop outside of digital platforms.

3.1 Stories in Digital Media Assets

The Krones company (www.krones.de) offers videos about its employees on YouTube under the title “People at Krones.” In a blog on the Siemens website, Hüseyin Tabak tells his stories that occur Between Two Worlds: “Istanbul exists on two continents just like Fatih Uma. As a merchant he commutes between the two worlds. He finds moments of peace on a Bosporus ferry.” Digital brand stories in media assets are appearances in YouTube videos, on Facebook pages, in Tweets and Instagram photos.

3.2 Stories beyond Digital Assets

Stories can be orchestrated across media assets , for example in campaigns: stories begin on a Facebook page, enfold on Twitter and Foursquare and end in a video on YouTube. Case and point, Ken and Barbie: seven years after their break up, toymaker Mattel developed a marketing campaign about Ken’s New Year’s resolution to win back Barbie. The campaign was delivered via the barbieandken.com website. Users voted on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and YouTube whether Barbie should take Ken back or not. The Love-o-Meter indicated collective user sentiment on the matter.

3.3 Stories On- and Offline

Digital brand stories can be connected to stories outside digital media. This is the most advanced form of digital storytelling – its higher order. An example would be a brand story told across various digital media which continued outside digital media at the company itself or at a location commensurate with the brand’s story. Transmedia storytelling characterizes a process whereby integral elements of the story are systematically conveyed across many communication channels: “Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.” (Jenkins 2013 ). The goal: achieve unified and coordinated engagement value (Jenkins/Ford/Green 2013).

4 Conclusion and Prospects

Digital brand storytelling can be a substantial component of brand storytelling. Four peculiarities of digital media uniquely influence brand management: integration, accessibility, connectivity and interactivity. The challenge in the coming years lies in applying these four peculiarities effectively to digital brand management. There is little along the way in specific results of the effects of the three forms of interactivity on brand storytelling. The extreme connectedness of content makes moot the term digital bonfire: users don’t meet at a given place, but are rather actively jumping from platform to platform. Nor does the image of theater hit the mark since users are actively sharing, telling and developing stories with one another. Focusing too much on terms such as digital media and digital technologies in connection with digital brand storytelling runs the risk of placing these technical aspects in the forefront. Moreover, digital brand storytelling also calls not only for substantive changes in roles, culture and communication but also for a new understanding of users and their roles.