This document discusses how narrative and storytelling are increasingly important for engaging audiences in digital and branded content. It argues that audiences are used to consuming fragmented information from entertainment industries. Successful movies, TV shows, and other cultural products all follow Aristotle's principles of drama. The document suggests brands can better communicate by creating branded content that follows these principles of having characters, goals, dramatic arcs and conflict. It presents the narrative storytelling platform NARR8 as a way for brands to integrate branded communications into established content through product placements or custom branded series.

1. Digital Aristotle
How narrative is ruling branded social and mobile interactions
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2. The State of Digital
• “Old Media” are struggling with the New World Digital Order
• Web 2.0 is dead and gone: it’s either amateurish or unsellable (or both)
• Personal recommendations are highjacked by brands and/or agencies
• “Banner blindness” is a genuine sociological term
• Each and every branded page looks and sounds the same
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3. Case in Point
• Can you tell which one of those belong to: a) official branded page
of Pepsi Russia, b) official branded page of Mazda Russia, c) official
branded page of Bud Russia?
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4. Do you feel what i’m saying?
Well, bad news: our clients are feeling it too. And they are becoming angry.
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5. What we have here is a failure to (meaningfully)
communicate with the audiences. Now hold that thought...
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6. Meanwhile in Real World
• The amount of information we consuming daily is increasing -
constantly and dramatically
• Our collective minds are getting used to consuming fragmented
information
• Meanwhile, entertainment industries are adapting to those new
paradigms (with various degrees of success): retail-based models might
be dead, but streaming/free-to-play is flourishing etc.
• Episodic TV content is on the rise - TV series are the new novels.
• Now, bear with me for a moment.
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7. Spot the Similarities
• Each of these products grossed >$1bn globally (not counting auxillary deals)
• Each of these products was universally loved (or universally hated, but that’s pretty much the same thing)
• Each of these products was created by full-time paid professionals, not some Shmoe from Internet
• These products are fundamentally based on the very same (and very ancient) principles...
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8. CONTENT IS THE KING!*
*Always been, will always be.
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9. David Droga (official digital ad poster-boy of 2012) and his wisdom
“95% percent of advertising is pollution. It’s seen as an interruption”
“[we are doing work] that people actually choose to engage with”
“We are treating advertising as a content”
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10. Which Brings Us To...
• To quote Notorious B.I.G., “there’s rules to this shit”: all modern culture
still operates (and generates billions) fuelled by the “Poetics” by
Aristotle, which is around from year 335 BC.
• To successfully engage audience in meaningful communication, you can
do a lot worse then to follow some of Aristotle’s commandments.
• That’s pretty simple to understand, but hard to successfully execute: a)
your audience must identify with the character on some level; b) there’s
supposed to be a dramatic arc for the story/interaction; c) conflict fuels
everything. (Then there’s catharsis, but we gonna skip it for today).
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11. What’s that all to do with digital/mobile advertising, our
KPIs and quarterly bonuses?.. Let me explain.
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12. Creating Branded Content
• We can either create branded content for advertisers or bring them to
where the content is. There’s also a third oprtion, but we’ll discuss it
later.
• You can not create FAST, QUALITY and NON-EXPENSIVE content,
that’s an axiom. But two out of three prerequisites are entirely possible.
• Created branded content must be (expensively) promoted and can still
be hit or miss - honestly, no one can can predict anything.
• Aristotle can be of much help here. Observe:
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13. Our “interactive presentation” for Sberbank/McCann Russia/MRM has a
hero, an active goal, a dramatic arc and even a rudimentary conflict.
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14. Bringing Brands to Where the Content Is
• We are now talking about branded integrations into social and/or
mobile games.
• Branded experience is being shoehorned into proven and tested
narrative confines.
• Every successful game has a narrative (although it is sometimes pretty
well hidden). Unsuccessful games do not have branded integrations. See
the pattern here?
• The point of successful integration is to expose brand to the audience
(and vice versa) in a controlled environment - that’s why you MUST love
games and know what/who user associates himself with to produce and
sell successful intergations.
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15. But there is another option!
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16. To Highjack Content-Based Ecosystems
• Brands have a lot of stories to tell, but they cannot fully express
themselves in today’s social and mobile environment.
• However, there’s a lot of possibilities to integrate branded
communications into established content-based ecosystems.
• Example from an “Old Media”: advertorial “promo” sections in glossy
mags.
• Example from New Digital Order: so-called “viral” videos; “Forward
into Dawn” web series (which is essentially an episodic commercial for
Halo 4 by Microsoft).
• Example from Mobile Age: a lot of branded applications in AppStore/
Google Play, the best of which are using proven storitelling techniques to
compliment brand’s core experience.
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17. MAY I ALSO SUGGEST...
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18. NARR8 at a Glance
• This is digital storytelling platform - completely free, totally mobile,
created by professional storytellers.
• The self-publishing options will be available very soon (refrence: “the
Kindle model”).
• We do honestly think that this is the future of storytelling: episodic
content, natively mobile (AppStore, Google Play), healthily viral (pun
intended).
• Available content allows for seamless integrations of branded
communications: from simple product placement to tailor-made series
with the same production values as non-branded content.
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19. Just a tiny example (do not sue me, it’s just a
mockup), and we are off to...
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20. Q&A
(and an excuse to show you Tony Stark here)
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21. P.S. Social Insight is a techological company that focused on an
innovative ways of branded content delivery.
We are also an exclusive seller for branded integrations for Game
Insight (www.game-insight.com) and NARR8 (www.narr8.me).
And we are measuring all this with our in-house smart data
system Mastermind (www.m2-analytics.com).
Presented by Andrey Podshibyakin (founding CEO),
ap@social-insight.ru
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