It came to my knowledge that one of my favourite designers Stefan Sagmeister recently made an outcry about storytelling and how it has become so misused.
That sounded way to interesting for me not to investigate. Click the image above to view the original video. Movie by FITC Toronto Conference in April of 2014
So did he add something new and fresh insights or ideas to the debat? well not really. He stated that the term storyteller/storytelling now is used to widely and by people that are not storytellers. Neither did he conclude any other solutions to use instead.
Everyone is entitled to ones opinion but I think he makes one fundamental mistake and that by trying to define storytelling as something exclusive. I interpret what he calls the ones doing it right as the only one entitled to express their stories/or expressions. It has never been and will never be exclusive to a specific category of people. It is an artform so old is almost impossible to track. People have told their stories since the beginning of mankind. More or less interesting of course. But still stories and that will never change.
"...no fuckhead you are not a storyteller."
If you put this into a corporate context it is a completely other issue. There is Stefan's standpoint more valid. Many brands tend to claim the storytelling aspect and force that into our normal lives. There we have the actual problem.
Brands are not storytellers by birth but they as well as anyone can achieve, innovate, develop something and align that into their DNA.
Brands that construct something that is not necessarily aligned with either their history, future, products or services or/and then applied with a authentic story will eventually fall and that is what I consider to be a false or non existing storytelling. You as well as me can probably refer to hundreds maybe thousands of ads, tv-commercials that tried to be/tell something that you did not associate with the product or service at all or just made the brand more delusional.
So stay authentic to the core of your business or the truly amazing aspects of your service or product and you can tell almost which story you feel like.
Be authentic: Clear connection with you business ambitions and true to what you are really do. What is the purpose of what you want to express.
Be simple: Do not complicate things to much.
Be passionate: Make something that triggers stakeholders both outside and inside the your business.
Story is not dead, just used in less flattering manners across all fields, but when used correctly is one of the most powerful expressions for your brand out there.
In conclusion, storytelling or story is non claimable, however one could criticise the context and the quality it is used in. And how it is constantly evolving.
Last but not least lets end with a Seth Godin smartness from the past.
Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.