Rebooting storytelling principles – Think with Google

That last one particular leaves some marketers stumped. What’s the suitable way to join these times in any case? Provided the heaviness of this year, should we be expecting a new formula for productive storytelling? Will there be a sustained change in the tone of marketing and advertising communications and resourceful?

But let’s not neglect: The main storytelling rules just never change – no make a difference how upside down almost everything else would seem to be. The finest, most resonant stories are normally rooted in main human truths and productively join those to what the manufacturer uniquely can produce — in a culturally attuned way. But in the deal with of significant contextual shifts — these as those pushed by the COVID-19 pandemic or the resurgence of the ongoing Black Life Make a difference movement — manufacturers require to reevaluate how they put those pieces jointly to finest join with people today at the sweet place of empathy, ownability, and timeliness. Putting out a new 30-second place with a “we’re in this together” concept is not likely sufficient. (Cue flat storytelling and sea of sameness we noticed early in the pandemic.)

Tap into how people today are sensation — and what is uniquely ownable

Get Nike’s By no means As well Considerably Down resourceful. This married the essential things so nicely. With a worsening global pandemic producing us experience discouraged and defeated, Nike aptly made use of the instance of sport comebacks to encourage us to faucet into our collective hopefulness and solve. As a pure extension of the brand’s main positioning, this resourceful resonates since it displays what people today were sensation (and what a lot of aspired to deep down), it feels ownably joined to Nike, and it was a powerful commentary on the times.

Productive software of storytelling rules never keep us to movies on your own. At Google, even though we’re normally striving to innovate with storytelling and adapt how we join with people, this year’s occasions actually accelerated some of those initiatives. All through the onset of the pandemic, for instance, we delivered on our main manufacturer positioning of being valuable in new methods with our social followers. With our Weekly Tendencies Collection, we not only shared well timed insights about how the world was navigating the pandemic by queries, but we also connected those tendencies to advice on functional jobs like “how to make a mask” or “how to make bread” by YouTube tutorials.