On previous occasions, we talked about the importance on storytelling in contemporary advertising (and not only in it but in the messages in general) and why it caught our attention.
Likewise, we made an analysis of the emotional connection that storytelling messages achieve among the target audience, which must be present in every communication campaign (as shown by best practices) to make it effective.
Here we will talk about why you should consider storytelling as a tool to boost your target audience to action. We all know that it is not enough to provoke feelings, but we seek that in the long run, these emotions are concrete and measurable results that indicate the effectiveness of our messages.
Welcome to your new home! The era of fake news and post-truth.
The Oxford Dictionaries say that "post-truth" is:
/ˌpəʊs(t)ˈtruːθ/
Donald Trump became president and with him, the era of post-truth began. It is characterized by diminishing the importance of "true truth" (forgive the repetition) to make prevail one of the many "truths" that exist, even if this is partial, distorted or false, in order to influence a group of people who don't care if this truth is a lie or not, but attend to what they want or need to hear to feel safe, heard and reaffirmed.
Post-truth (word of the year 2016 according to the Oxford Dictionary) has taught us and convinced that 1+1= 3, and for reaching that conclusion the value that we must take advantage of has to be one step ahead of others.
In 2018, the reason tells us that 1+1=2, and it is true! but there are certain subjects that are related to other issues such as religion or feelings that in their total are greater than the things we all know. And that's where that 2 becomes 3, according to the theorist Ken Burns.
For him, every well-structured story leads to an action, whether it's crying, laughing, going to buy something, etc. This action can or can't be deliberately caused by the author because even he can be moved by his story, perhaps since he first heard it, and possibly that is why he decided to share it, either with or without something extra.
The fake news (originated digitally with little seriousness and social media) potentiated by post-truth are a type of stories that, most of the times, have a motivation behind: persuading to evade "the" truth or to get some kind of result or reaction in the target audience.
The perfect example of them is related to the current president of the United States, who supported by Facebook and the Russians, managed to reach power by persuasion and exploitation of "his" truth, which had nothing to do with "the" truth, but many people didn't care about it. Trump uses fake news to diminished veracity from all types of news against him.
Every good story has some kind of stress, but if you add more stress to the natural stress of the moment (elections or change of government), thanks to the fake news, we will have immediate and effective outcomes.
In this era, how many times have you given a like or shared a story without even reading it? How many times have you decided to give your data info to any company just to know what Disney princess you are and share it with your contacts? If you sum these actions that seem simple to thousands or millions, it is likely that this oversight is so massive that can be seen as actions, which is the ultimate goal of persuasion.
And, how are you living the post-truth era? Do you take advantage of it?
The power of a dead squirrel
It is a phrase related to Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, which says:
“A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.”
Through this claim, Zuckerberg sought to justify the changes in his platform algorithm, which has always sought to show only what is "relevant" to us, so quality time is encouraged on the platform.
Now, Facebook's definition of what is "relevant" to us has changed several times: sometimes is the news, local news, our friends or family news, little games, quizzes, fake news... The algorithm is always changing, conditioning what we consume and when.
But Facebook is not the only company that filters its content based on our "interests": Google does it all the time. If you search a term, the results page that will appear to you will be different from mine, since the platform takes into account the "cookies", your browsing history, your open sessions on other platforms, the device from which you connect, the country where you live, etcetera.
In other words, your internet is not the same as mine. We live in a world where, market-wise speaking, the experiences personalization is the achievement goal number one. As Eli Pariser mentioned in his TED appearance, everyone wants to show us what we want to see, but not what we need to see. What happens when we want to get out of this bubble of interests, algorithms, and filters? It will be harder.
As a brand and based on the above, how will you appear where the people you are interested in are?
It is possible to buy advertising, outcomes highlighted in Google, banners or even information, as happened (illegally) with the case of Cambridge Analytics and Facebook, but at this point surely you know that there is another more effective, transparent and cheap method: storytelling, appeal to your audience feelings.