The spread of technology, and mobile devices in particular, is creating challenges and opportunities. We pick and choose from a seemingly endless array of media sources, yet, with people checking their mobile phones on average 100 times a day, more brands are appreciating the canvas this affords for creative storytelling.
Marketers need to embrace storytelling on mobile to deliver personalised, powerful brand stories. They can more precisely target an audience and build a connection that captures their imagination or compels them to act, at a time, place and with a message that resonates.
Good storytelling, like any good marketing, starts with an understanding of the people that will engage with your story. Digital platforms provide marketers with the ability to dig into data and get to know the audience well. One in every three people in the UK returns to Facebook every day on mobile. With users checking their newsfeeds 14 times a day, on average, marketers can build deeper, richer, more personal experiences.
The opportunity in crafting compelling creative on social networks is in building contextually relevant, episodic content narratives that are authentic, distinctive to the brand and have a genuine value for people.
Both big, established brands, like Cadbury, Lego and Barbour, and smaller businesses are grasping the positive potential that social networking channels offer for storytelling. Excitingly, many more are waking up to the opportunity of using rich data to build powerful human insights that help focus the craft and art that goes into compelling storytelling. Combined with technology and targeting, this is opening up a new era of storytelling.
Rob Newlan is head of EMEA at Facebook Creative Shop