Narrative And Commitment

I've said before that the smarter agencies will see the myriad possibilities afforded by fragmented media not as a threat, but rather as a huge opportunity. The interesting thing about the new and emerging forms of communication are the new and emerging ways they allow stories to be told, conversations to happen, narrative to form.

Think about the narrative strand formed by following a twitter stream:

Image courtesy, via

...or a status update:

Image courtesy

Think about how people use Blip to converse with each other via tracks and song titles. Think about how technology is now enabling people to construct their own narratives in video using annotations:

Think about how last year, 5 out of the top 10 novels in Japan were written on mobile phones:

Ford are doing something interesting right now for their Fiesta 'thisisnow' campaign. A collaborative art project that has seen the TV ad director (Noah Harris, stop motion animation artist) commissioning a series of pieces from some of Europe's most promising young artists which have then featured in the ad. And Art students across Europe were asked to submit works that depicted their own interpretation of 'now'. And of-course there's the public Flickr group, blog, twitter stream, and Facebook page. There's more and more of this sort of stuff, but this time the agency got in touch to tell me more about the campaign after I started following the stream on twitter. Smart.

But of-course the really interesting challenge is not about ad campaigns at all. It's about how multiple,  concurrent, linked (or maybe not linked, or at least not necessarily complimentary) narrative strands can paint pictures over time, create lasting dialogue, evolve - how brands can commit rather than campaign . Maybe this is where the future of your agency lies.

Comments

[Dino]

great post neil.
one thing that i've been thinking about relating to this is the role that our pattern building mind plays in the whole thing. often, the sum of the parts are synthesized by us in ways that are quite unique, as we all fill in the gaps in different ways.
in other words, there is an element of ambiguity and arbitrariness to the little pieces building over time (they might not be explicitly connected), and then our mind goes to work to fill in the gaps.
twitter is a great example of how that picture takes shape. for an example closer to my heart, i always think about dj'ing and the stream of music that a dj plays and the connections and meaning that the listener builds. think of the intimate connection listeners felt in the golden age of radio, listening to a dj selection of music that told a story, and spoke to the listener in a deeper way than the individual songs ever could on their own.

[Asi]

fantastic post as usual mate

re the This is Now campaign. I want it to work. I want it to be extremely successful. If it will succeed, it will prove our point. But I doubt it. Because they are campaigning, not committing.

True, they are using all the right platforms, their model is presumably spot on BUT it still feels a campaign to me.

A participative campaign, yes, but still a campaign. It will take time and effort for them to convince me that they truly commit - until then, it's a campaign in 2.0 disguise

[sandrine]

Hi Neil/Asi

Thanks for noticing, and for paying our work the highest compliment of all – being interesting.

Regarding the commitment issue – let’s give Ford a chance on this one – they’ve taken the first step, which I’m sure will be a learning curve for them (and us), as it will be for most brands, but they’re keen to get it right and they’re keen to engage in real conversations with real people and that’s what’s really interesting (and it’s not just our work on This is Now that proves that – their hiring of Scott Monty also points to this). Rome wasn’t built in a day etc...

Asi – our office is less than 100 metres from yours, so feel free to pop over for a coffee to discuss further if you want to!

Cheers

Sandrine
Account Director
We Are Social

[neilperkin]

Hi Sandrine. Thanks for stopping by. Yes, credit to Ford for attempting to engage in this way and I hope they stick with it. The really interesting challenge of-course will come from building that long-term dialogue - I hope they see this as just the start.