Grant Flannery, The White Agency: ‘Content’ was never king – ‘Story’ has and forever will be king
By Grant Flannery, senior lead strategist, The White Agency
I have often read, as many of you probably have, that “Content is King”. Well to be honest, it’s about time to call bullshit on this statement. If content is king then anything that happens in everyday life is king – just look down at your smartphone and open your gallery, it all ends up being content in one form or another.
I have recently been reading Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull, president and founder of Pixar Studios, in which nothing is said with more truth and conviction than the claim that “Story is King”. I have read so many agency visions talking about “story telling”, and whilst I agree this is key, I think we need to tell a story that trials a different viewpoint which is what we try to do here at White – that of “story building”.
This approach allows the consumer to be part of building the story rather than just telling them a story and hoping they listen. We should be looking at how we can involve the consumer and allow them to start, mold, change, or finish the story for us. It’s a different way to look at things but one that plays back into the theory that story is king.
By allowing consumers to build a story through multiple platforms, multiple devices and multiple channels we engage with them on a deeper level and allow them to be the storyteller and content creator. For this reason I refute that content is king, because content has always been on websites. And yes, better content gets better engagement but I would like to test the theory that a better story gets better engagement, because a bunch of award winning images and videos on a website is still just a bunch of award winning images and videos on a website. If the consumer can’t build the story for themselves and be involved in deciding which story is their own, then you may as well not bother having any content on your site.
By allowing the story to be king we are allowing creativity to thrive and not be as a great man once said, “put in the corner”. If we focus purely on content then creativity can be lost, if we focus on building a story then creativity and story become king and assume their rightful place.
My other concern with content being king is the amount of trust that brands put in UGC (user generated content). Whilst I see there is great benefit in UGC, such as cost, involvement of consumers telling their story and above all filling up a social media calendar, I feel that if we really wanted to build stories we need to develop the content ourselves and then allow the consumers to choose how they want to build their story into it. If UGC is appropriate for the consumer to finish or change their story with the brand, then I am all for it but I wouldn’t go recommending UGC as part of an overall social media strategy, rather it can be a simple part of the story.
I am pretty much at the end of Creativity Inc. and have learnt many lessons but the one that is definitely staying with me is that “story is king” – whether it be a feature film, a great book, an article or an ad campaign, it has and should forever be king.
By having the story as King we will allow the creative revolution to once again ring true, just like it did with Bernbach, Ogilvy, Gossage, Lois and Leo Burnett in the late 50s and early 60s. If you don’t know these guys beyond the fact they have massive ad agencies then you should read up on them and you will understand how they were all amazing story builders.
So start thinking about how you can build stories not just tell them… and if you need a little help then the door at White is always open.
Grant Flannery is senior lead digital strategist at The White Agency. An award-winning strategist, he helps clients realise what it takes to create a world-class interactive experience that influences online and offline behaviour to drive business revenue and innovation. For more frequent updates follow him on Twitter @grantpat.
20 Comments
Nice article and good point of view Grant!
Although just want to add another layer to this by saying that both story and content are means to an end and that end is building a rich engaged connected ‘community’. All the new brands that have focused’ community first’ are the real disrupters in this world (Airbnb / Uber / Spotify / The Guardian)
Thanks Grant. I agree.
Disruptive, engaging content platforms are the future to a community based brand experience via story telling.
Also Millennials, Cloud, Boobs.
You’re the King Flannery.
Thanks Derek and Dazza for the positive comments.
Definitely agree that story building will contribute positively to building more engaged communities and brand advocates. The stories we build should have the community first approach and allow consumers to build, change, continue or finish the story.
Also agree millennials, cloud, boobs, cats.
I have always believed in the power of a good story and the engagement it leads too. Here’s to content you can read and see that tells a story!
There is literally mountains of evidence supporting this need for rich engaged connected ‘communies’ consuming branded content and huge demand from passionate ‘moldy’ super-consumers desperate to build, change, continue or finish the story.
Particularly in the soap powder and toothpaste categories.
Not so much in canned soup but you can’t have everything.
I hear what you’re saying, but I think using Pixar (a brand in the business of telling stories) and crudely drawing parallels with ‘brands’ is so theoretical, it borders on the delusional. I’m personally with this guy: http://vimeo.com/m/98368484
You seem to be confused by that quote. “Content is king” was used in the context of UX / product design, and it was created before ‘brand storytelling’ (whatever that is) was even made up.
Content has always just been a vehicle for delivering stories, information and ideas. I’m not sure this was ever even an issue – but clearly it is for some people.
@reluctant planner – that clip is amazing.
A previous commenter referred to “…Airbnb / Uber / Spotify / The Guardian…” But to, what I think @WOOO’s point was, what about Baked Beans, Toothpaste and Floor Cleaner? I think we desperately over estimate how much consumers give a toss about our brands, and our content, particularly when there is an inconceivable about of free, non brand content to be consumed on the http://WWW...
Use Airbnb / Uber / Spotify / The Guardian as examples again…you want to know what’s king? And what is consistent across all of these brands and what is true of Apple and Pixar and The Harry Potter franchise…it’s not the “BRANDS” it’s the bloody product. The PRODUCT is KING. They all have amazing, compelling, useful, well designed, great products that people need and want in their lives.
The only reason any of these brands succeed is because they Keep making great stuff. I mean, we all loved Kodak, right? They had an amazing story, right?
‘Storytelling’ is so last year. I thought we moved on from this buzzword? Next.
Yeah? nails it. Many brands and marketing managers are deluded in their view that people want to have a 2 way conversation with them. It’s complete bollocks as has been shown by Facebook likes failing to shift the dial in sales at all. Even the brands that do social well realise that it is just a platform to push out their message, which is generally in the form or moving pictures or TV as we used to call it. There is a lot of talk about brands having conversations with consumers. The inherent problem with this is that consumers/ people are lazy and busy, they want to be entertained, and now they can be entertained anywhere thanks to their phone. They don’t want to ‘share their story’ about their journey to finding the perfect can of baked beans. Most people don’t give a flying fuck. Sure there are exceptions, but if you look at 99% of engagement based ideas the engagement or UGR is unusable, mundane or a complaint about the brand. Brands with a great story or product or who give people content that makes them feel something have got the new environment down, but they still have to spend significant amounts of money to do it.
spot on @ Pah-leese, yep, ‘storytelling’ is very 2009.
You know what matters? The work.
Great article.
Humans have always told stories.
The Hero’s Journey may be of interest to you!
http://www.thewritersjourney.com/hero's_journey.htm
I think it will support your argument and debate.
cheers, Clinton.
This thread is great.
And yet no one has been able to define WTF “brand storytelling” even is.
@Pah-leese: The buzzword for 2014 is “brand journalism” – a horrific concept if ever there was one.
My head hurts after reading this.
As a greater man (Albert Einstein) once said “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself”.
Why must we continue to debate the semantics of these ridiculous buzzwords?
An ad is a just story no-one cares about.
Oh dear, another planner falling into this trap… if I had a dollar for every fresh-faced young strategist who thinks they’re the first to discover and chunter on about story-telling, I’d be a rich man.
Let’s all remember what we do: advertising. For products and services.
Rarely do we have the luxury of time to build a three-act heroes journey.
Tangentially, I’ll direct the interested reader to this piece in The Guardian, which does a pretty good job of destroying Grant’s beliefs: http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2014/sep/04/advertising-agencies-dying-marketers-challenges
“We’ve created the long tail of marketing, where each campaign has ever smaller budgets, ever shorter lifespans, diminishing aims, all so wonderfully cheap in execution, so wonderfully proficient in terms of outputs, but so entirely pointless. It’s this maintaining excitement for a Twitter feed of 4,000 people, or keeping the 500 subscribers on YouTube happy that is the marketing of our time. It may be cheap, but it’s a pointless distraction and it’s not solving any of the problems that are keeping our clients up at night.”
To put it another way, publishing soft-strategy treatises on intellectually interesting but practically useless shit like story-telling will ensure that agencies will continue to be kept away from the big-boy table. For our industry to survive, strategists need to get their heads out of theoretical cloud-cuckoo-land and start focussing on solving our client’s very real, very hard business problems.
And if you can’t manage this, I guess the door is always open for you at the White agency.
Someone was drinking the Kool-aid over at Sapient
OK – What’s more important: the chassis or the engine? Neither. They are both critical. Same goes for content and whatever idea, information or story it’s being used to convey.
This is a confused, buzzword-riddled article that seemingly makes no point beyond “call me at the White Agency!” I have a feeling that the author came up with the title first and thought “hey, that’ll get some clicks.”