How can we design content to keep people reading or watching to the end of a message where there is a call to action? One way to keep people engaged is to tell a story. Think about the advertisement that you just watched. The goal of advertisement is to create an emotional connection with a viewer which might inspire action. Let's watch a video "Can't protect them from oil spill" (1) by Dawn Dishwashing Liquid. This advertisement is effective because it tells a story. What's a story? First, a story starts by describing the background situation and introducing a protagonist or main character. In this video, the protagonist is the duck. The protagonist faces an obstacle that creates conflict or challenge. That is, the duck faces possible death after walking into an oil slick. The action build as the protagonist works to overcome obstacles, building towards a climax, the point of ultimate tension where the conflict comes to a head. The duck is rescued by washing it in a solution that includes Dawn dishwashing liquid. As conflict is resolved, action falls or happens. Of course, the story may be more complicated but it follows this basic structure.
Finally, an effective story provides an insight or take-away. This is a main message you want your audience to understand. In this video, Dawn is used to save animals' lives which is enabled by a product features - the ability to cut through or deal quickly with grease. A primary objective of storytelling and marketing is to influence consumer beliefs and behaviours such as building positive attitude towards a brand or persuading a customer to buy a product. Therefore, it is tempting make the product or brand the focus of the story. This approach, however, often backfires or has opposite effect. Consumers are not interested in talking about a brand when they are socializing. Therefore, in stories told via social media platforms, a brand should be incidental or unimportant to the story. We can retain the audience's attention to social media content by incorporating elements of storytelling. Stories have plots, which involve in protagonists overcoming obstacles. And a story provides a key insight or take-away in social media marketing, stories work best if the brand is incidental to the story. Comments are closed.
|
AuthorRebellious head, crazy about challenges, changes, passionate about writing. That's all about the author. Archives
July 2018
Categories |