Christmas time has always been the time of story-telling. Therefore it seems obvious to brood over advertising, slogans, stories, and their relations to marketing and the ultimate intention to communicate content around this time of the year.
Since several decades advertising is the domain of slogans*, the slogan as the condensed essence of complexity and diversity, be it commodities or knowledge, know-how that is brewed into the mystery of a slogan…. neglecting the particular in favor of the general, mystery instead of transparency.
Have a nice weekend
In the 50ies – from my viewpoint the dawn of advertising – stories have been simple, the world of commodities has been sparse and far less complex, slogans could easily emerge without raising the costumer’s suspicion of concealing depth underneath the surface.
Today the picture changed, slogans simplify complexity in a way that make customers suspicious. People today are longing for in depth information, they are in need of trust.
To cut a long story short, this one reason why story-telling develops more and more into a marketing tool again. Since I decided to change Biestmilch’s marketing and use the advantages of web 0.2, I became more and more aware of the fact what it means to tell stories instead of using exchangeable phrases. Stories have the at least the potential to convey authenticity and build relations with people, they can but they don’t do so necessarily. It is tightropewalk not to tip into superfluous gossiping, remaining precise and honest..
It happened that since several months I passed by the brains on fire blog. They gave me the inspiration to raise this issue today which I consider a very crucial one for marketing people. I have to admit that it is very difficult to make a so-called marketing experts understand what it means to shift from slogan creation to story-telling. This year I made many efforts to explain my approach of story-telling in advertising. I have to admit, I only rarely succeeded to do so.