Storyscaping: Stop Creating Ads, Start Creating Worlds

by Gaston Legorburu

the stages of creating a Story System. These are: 1. Cast: List all existing and potential touch points or channels. 2. Score: Add prioritization criteria through data sets. 3. Tag: Define the role of channels relative to scores scores, types, and roles. 4. Inspire: Connect your Organizing Idea and inspire stories, tactics, systems, platforms and solutions. 5. Optimize: Connect the points with technology and messaging.

It is important to always look for multiple criteria that match up both your business objectives and the principals of Storyscaping—such as engagement, immersion, and participation. Otherwise, you will end up with a one-dimensional brand first system, or worse, a broadcast only system that has no room for consumer involvement.

At the broadest level, we can define channels by the roles they play relative to each other and by depth and type of engagement.

You will also appreciate that this approach gives you amazing experiences at each touch point. Why? Because you have already defined the Organizing Idea, which relates to your consumers, and because you are not forcing ideas into channels. instead, you are looking at channels as new opportunities. You will end with a different experience that is connected in story, in brand, and in experience. Wow, that’s starting to sound like a Storyscape.

Depending on the size and type of book, a bible might be somewhere between 800 and 1,800 pages long. Very few people pick up the bible and read it in a linear manner from page 1 to page 1,800. The main reason for this is its structure. The bible is both a story and a series of stories—that’s a Story System. For the über story delivered through the bible, its Organizing Idea could be described as something like “your personal relationship with the beginning, middle, and end.

It’s very important to understand the distinction between Storyscaping and 360-degree marketing. In 360-degree marketing you effectively pummel the consumer with the same exact message or “matching luggage” from every angle. In a Story System like the bible, every story is not a different iteration of the same plot, it is its own story and it serves the bigger story.

With ideas and stories in hand and an optimized Story System, we can more effectively consider the connection points between channels and touch points. You can consider this a process of inserting the commas in stories so they never end and inspire and facilitate connection to one another. Remember this important aspect in the definition of Storyscape, “. . . where each connection inspires engagement with another . . . ” Now is the time to help facilitate and inspire that imperative aspect. We recognize that the consumer is in control of how they interact with the story. That’s fundamental and will not change. As marketers, it is our job to inspire the journey and enable it where we can.

Technologists should never be relegated to just building the platforms that measure or enable what creatives conjure up. They must be part of the creative team that is imagining what’s possible. Gathering data is one thing, but using real-time data as actionable insights and triggers for optimizing your return and enhancing the experience often through technology is what Storyscaping is all about.

We’ve come to know that there is more than just brand marketing and direct response; there is some great gooey stuff in the middle. We call this Brand Response.

Through capabilities, such as (m)PHASIZE’s (a SapientNitro company) marketing mix modeling tools, we can bring to bear custom-built, proprietary analytics tools and services that help marketing executives make optimal budget allocation and planning decisions based on they way people move and respond throughout their days and across their ecosystem. Innovative predictive forecasting models enable you to run what-if scenarios that simulate how targeted consumers will respond to different variables.

Advanced media analytics propel us a little further into consumer engagement with media and channels, but still provide no insight into actions within channels or with media. Optimizing a budget around media and channels only to draw people to a place where they will have a mediocre experience is a waste of efforts and a missed opportunity.

Ask yourself this question. In the event you or one of your loved ones became very ill, would you rather have five doctors all from different fields of science and medicine working as a collaborative team to diagnose the problem and find the best cure, or would you prefer to have five similar doctors, each with the same perspective and experience, who all come from the same field of medicine, trying to figure out what could possibly be wrong? Well, we would take option one every time because we believe in the power of “connected thinking.” We don’t believe in the lone genius. The goal of our collaboration is to make connections between ideas and people and people and behaviors and then test the strength of those new connections to make sure they’ll hold. Let us repeat—we believe in the power of “connected thinking.”

We believe that in order to make anything happen, you need these creative-minded people to play three critical roles: the architect, the steward, and the craftsperson. Each playing their part as the need arises but never limiting themselves to one single role as the project needs evolve. We call this “Idea Engineering.”

This does not mean we don’t believe in big ideas. Rather, we firmly believe that ideas of all sizes and shapes have little value unless you bring them to life.

Remember, we know through experience that the functional model required to effectively drive Storyscaping depends heavily on a shared Purpose and embraces diversity of skills and perspectives. Are you ready to shock your culture?

In closing, we reflect on our journey of Storyscaping. We opened with the value of stories and how we use them to create meaning in our lives, highlighting the fact that stories help us understand the workings and threads of the world. Next, we explored the unsung hero known as “experience,” and put a spotlight on the value of bringing stories and experience together. Then, the Storyscaping model was introduced and the many dimensions of brands and consumers were explored at length. We defined and illustrated Organizing Ideas, the Experience Space, Systems Thinking, and Story Systems so they can become a welcomed part of your marketing team, too. Last, we lifted the veil on organizational culture, showcasing collaboration and connected thinking as the showstoppers that fuel Storyscaping.