Storytelling primer
An actionable world-building cheatsheet
The specifics of building a brand’s narrative world are threefold: there is a world-building cheatsheet, which specifies a series of questions to help brands tell their story; there is a story map, which connects the main theme of the brand story with its sub-narratives aimed at different audience segments and cultural audiences into a narrative universe; and the narrative rollout, which specifies the sequence and the connection between the story elements and connects brand story with its financial returns. The story rollout is considered in regards to the financial investment a brand makes into its narrative, and it has defined KPIs to make it financially accountable.
These three narrative pillars are detailed below.
World-building cheatsheet. Every brand has its own creative universe. The way this universe is experienced by a brands different audiences is a matter of storytelling. Most appropriate narrative format for the modern culture is interstitial storytelling, where there are continuous narrative bursts that are connected into a web of a wider story.
Story map. Define how many sub-narratives does your brand narrative have. The role of sub-narratives is to support the main format of the story, which is usually told through campaign imagery and editorial. These sub-narratives use different formats (e.g. an event, social content, a curation) and create mini-worlds that form the narrative galaxy.
Each of the sub-narratives consists of:
Read the rest of this analysis on The Sociology of Business.
