Creative first, tech second; Choice-driven narratives are the future

In brand marketing, the buzz for new technologies and mediums sends curiosity and excitement up from the R&D department to the CEO, causing a rush to be among the first to shine with the latest and best tech applications. 

For the first time ever we don’t have to explain why a product is effective, we can let people use it inside the fictional world of a story.

While it is absolutely essential to add these emerging storytelling technologies to your toolbox as early as possible, creating brand experiences tailored to fit within the specific parameters of a new application can stifle the narrative, and ultimately dampen participant involvement. Just because the algorithm tells you the first four seconds need to be the best part of the story, that’s not really how stories work.

A creative-first approach to new technologies is particularly important when it comes to interactive stories in any medium. Interactive entertainment stands to be one of the most transformative technological applications for brands today. Not only does it engage participants in a way that is increasingly difficult in our multi-device society, but it is driven by the power of choice, which simply doesn’t exist in linear entertainment.

We can ask [consumers] to throw their phone in a locked bag when we want their attention, or we can give them a job to do and accept their participation as an additive experience, rather than a distraction.

That means it’s much closer to real life, where you guide each step of your journey by choosing what happens next, versus linear entertainment where you sit back and passively listen. Brands that leverage choice-driven experiences - whether it’s in a hands-on IRL activation, or digitally in an interactive film - let consumers directly engage with their products and services. For the first time ever we don’t have to explain why a product is effective, we can let people use it inside the fictional world of a story.

Building a world for people to explore isn’t a new art form. While the technology is new, the craft required to design non-linear frameworks for stories is ancient (ever been to a church for Midnight Mass or to a good Passover?). Effective interactive experiences blur the line between a real experience and a fictional world by simply letting you participate. 

Great stories are about getting over challenges, not avoiding them.

By making your choices matter, brands can craft blended experiences that weave physical and digital worlds. And most importantly, it’s a sure-fire formula to leverage cutting edge technologies that give participants a choice in what happens. As storytellers, it’s important for us to accept that people are engaging with technology in their daily lives. We can ask them to throw their phone in a locked bag when we want their attention, or we can give them a job to do and accept their participation as an additive experience, rather than a distraction.

The creative development process for both an experience and an interactive film is essentially identical. While their technical application is drastically different, the creative vocabulary used to design the experiences are very similar. They each require mapping out various different tracks for the participant to choose, developing a matrix of possibilities based on the cumulative decisions made by the participant. 

Find someone who knows how the tech works to answer your brief, which should sound a little magical and impossible.

Likewise, the ideation process for a brand experience is still aligned with the creative process of traditional advertising. First, it’s key to identify a need state in the life of your target audience. From there, rather than come up with a concept of what to show them, it is more important to determine where they could fulfil that need. This is the world of your story. 

By granting participants the ability to drive their own experience, they are less likely to regard it as advertising.

Once the world of the story is established, you can determine which technological application best serves the participant journey, and lets them make the choice they need to make. Then, find someone who knows how the tech works to answer your brief, which should sound a little magical and impossible, something like “I want kids to be able to play with every toy in the toy store.” or “I want the birds on that wallpaper to fly out and flock around me while I look at art.”