We used to tell stories.

But nowadays, it’s far more powerful to give stories. 

By that, I mean doing work that puts the audience inside the idea, and gives them an incentive to interact with it, adapt it, and share it.

Here’s a couple of examples of work I’ve been involved in which attempted this.

This started out as a request to do an EDM.

Usually, a tour for emerging architects to travel Europe and see amazing places and practices should sell itself. Problem was, our client was a mainstream paint brand, talking to a niche and particular audience which meant having to figure out a way to get message through in a credible way.

So we found 15 influencers in the Australian architecture community, and we sent them everything they needed to tell a story.

They received at parcel with a scale architects model, a mini billboard advertising the tour, and a note asking a little favour:

Take photos of the model and billboard and share them via Facebook, Twitter and email.

They did, and our ad got put right in front of Australia’s best emerging architects.

And applications jumped up by 149%.

This second idea is one I’m most fond of.

The brief was to launch a printer that you could remotely email.

So we put it in one of Australia’s most prestigious contemporary art galleries, and invited people from all over the world to email in their work, and see it print live inside the gallery.

Suddenly, people who had never been to art school, or had ther creativity recognise could claim that “My work is in a world famous gallery” and share this story with others.

Due to unforseen circumstances, it only lasted three days.

As heartbreaking as that was, we can still say that a thousands people got an experience money can’t buy, a story worth sharing, and our client got a unique product demonstration that publicised itself.

All for putting the audience inside the story.

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A guy in Texas is remaking freakin’ Marty McFly Electric DeLoreans.

They’ll be a hefty $100,000 each. 

I’m going home to pitch this idea to my wife.

And then to my bank manager.

If you stop and think about what the internet is, it makes it a little clearer as to how you should approach a digital advertising brief.

The internet is relevance engine.

To quote the granddaddy of experiential advertising, Howard Luck Gossage:

The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them. Sometimes it’s an ad.” ~ Howard Gossage

Way back when the internet was an academic tool, the remarkable bit was its means to hyperlink words, enabling someone to click a link and dig deeper into the subjects that interested them.

That hasn’t fundamentally changed.

So who you are talking to and how they interact with the web, their phones and their peers is where you need to start your thinking.

To get genuine interest, make your idea relevant to the site they are on, the content they are reading, the location they happen to be in, or a tension that could be going on around them, In short, you need to make your idea about their all time favourite subject, themselves,

If your idea isn’t relevant, theyll ignore it and revert their focus back to what does interest them.

Relevance is a smart bomb that has the power draw attention away from even the funniest picture of a cat in a tuxedo.

There are many ways to wield it, I will get on to that in my next post.

This is part of a talk I did for Award Copyschool. For my next rant follow me on twitter @warmcola  

A few months back, we went on a family holiday to Sri Lanka.

At first glance the streets of Columbo are crazy.

There are no visible road rules, no lanes, and the few traffic lights that exist are almost universally ignored.

Growing up in a nanny state like Australia, this kind of thing makes you naturally a little uptight. More so when travelling around with our two young daughters in tow.

But after a while, you notice that this lack of rules works.

It forces everyone to be aware of each other and what they are doing.

Drivers don’t speed because they need to be able to react to what other traffic is doing at any moment –  and it could do and be anything, ever been cut off by an elephant? We have.

The honking is insane and constant, but it’s not aggressive, it’s drivers informing others that “I am here” rather than “get out of my way”.

There is no road rage, because there isn’t a time when anyone has the right of way, it’s the group working it out together.

Australian society is inundated with rules, where to stand, where not to stand, how to drive, where to park, who should go first… There is a definitive right and wrong way.

Which means the most likely exchange you’ll have with a stranger on the road or on public transport is them boiling over in frustration and abusing you because they think you are “in the wrong” or “in their way”. 

A reckon a little more anarchy would make us all nicer people.

Made this out of an iPhone pic I took of the sun setting over the indian ocean from my hotel room in the Galle Face Hotel in Columbo in Sri Lanka.

Hard to find stark desktop backgrounds, so thought i’d make and share one.
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Made this out of an iPhone pic I took of the sun setting over the indian ocean from my hotel room in the Galle Face Hotel in Columbo in Sri Lanka.

Hard to find stark desktop backgrounds, so thought i’d make and share one.