Storyscaping: Stop Creating Ads, Start Creating Worlds

CHAPTER 00

INTRODUCTION

Every great story starts somewhere. This one has been brewing in our hallways for many years and officially grew wings early in 2012.

A client, one of the world’s largest consumer packaged goods brands, hosted an event in London titled “Storytelling in the Digital Age.” The company’s chief marketing officer (CMO), was driving this initiative, supported by his group of lieutenants; all of the heads of the brands and the marketing directors from around the world were present. The CMO, arguably one of the most influential marketers in the world at the time, had recently declared that he would mandate a much larger percentage of the corporation’s sizable global marketing spend to digital. His team put together this symposium as a way to get their heads wrapped around how to take their marketing approach into the digital space. Their request from partners like us was simple: Give them two to three things they could go to work on, starting the following week; give them something they could actually change. They wanted very actionable stuff and not a lot of it. At the event, presenters included their four global digital agencies, SapientNitro being one. Of course, all the usual suspects, such as Twitter, Google, and Facebook, were prominently represented. Additionally, they had their public relations (PR) agencies present, which was brilliant, as the world of PR has probably seen more disruption from the hyper-connected world than any other. PR is also going through ...