A Roadmap For Collective Storytelling

Storytelling has always been a powerful tool for marketers. We leverage storytelling to create engaging dialogue and fuel tension in an attempt to keep consumers coming back for more. In today’s media environment, storytelling has reached a new level because consumers are now able to engage (two way dialogue) in ways that were never possible only a few years ago. Learn the recipe to collective story telling in today’s media landscape.

The ability to tell stories has always been one of the most powerful ways to connect with other people.

Social media has given us a unique way to to tell stories as a collective. Here's a road map for collective storytelling.

Stop #1 - Define Your Story

The process of discovering what you want to tell a story about is always different, but the most important step in storytelling. You need to be an expert on what your story is about.

Starting a story without knowing what it's about will likely cause confusion. If the collective is confused by a story, it's unlikely that they'll participate in telling it.

The collective will look to that person who started the story for reinforcement and reassurance that the story is still on track. Ensure you monitor your story and continue to participate in telling it, or risk the story ending.

Stop #2 - Spark a Conversation

In collective storytelling, stories are made up of wide-reaching conversations. Those conversations begin with a 'conversation spark'.

A conversation spark shouldn't be the entire story. It should provide enough information to be provocative, but leave the next chapter of the story open to be told by the collective.

Consider the Burger King "Subservient Chicken" campaign. The story begins: A human-sized chicken has decided to set-up a webcam. It's asking that you come to it's website and give it orders.

That's an example of a conversation spark.

Stop #3 - Participate in the Conversation

Conversations spread through social media like ripples across a pond. Consider the conversation spark as the pebble dropping into the water. The ripples dissipate as they move farther away from the center, just as the conversations have less impact the longer they continue without a new conversation spark.

Ok, consider this model:

The conversation spark could be the site created for the Burger King "Subservient Chicken". The longer the campaign runs, the greater the reach will be; however, the longer the campaign runs without a new conversation spark, the less impact the conversation will have. Eventually, the conversation will end.

Note: You can't control when the conversation ends. You can only control when, and how much you participate. Here's a great set of guidelines (PDF download) for responses to changes in your story.

This model shows the first two ripples as a conversation spark begins to propagate through a network:

Notice that each connection doesn't emanate directly from the conversation spark. Ideally, the originator of a conversation will encourage other storytellers to interact with each other. If you look at the "Subservient Chicken" example; Burger King actually provides customers with some tools to continue the conversation: a downloadable chicken mask, and a way to share the site with friends.

Of course they could have provided more tools. They could have allowed users to save a video of the chickens responses to a certain set of orders, and provide a link to send to friends. They could have created a gallery of user-generated video's of people responding to orders while wearing the downloadable chicken mask. These types of tools could help to extend the story.

Stop #4 - Extend the Story

A story could end after one conversation spark; but the best stories continue. As new conversation sparks are created and added to the story; the story grows, and reaches more people.

Innovative and provocative stories are often enough to inspire other storytellers to create their own conversation spark. Take the "Subservient Chicken" example again. It inspired this YouTube video, which reached over 2,000 people and got 7 comments. Not a huge conversation, but extending the story often includes conversations of many sizes.

Collective storytelling isn't necessarily about branding, or making money; it's about spreading a message and allowing that message to be malleable enough to be changed by its audience while maintaining its integrity.

Source - The Jordan Rules