Digital storytelling in the age of AI: how to do it right
Every business has a story. Digital storytelling helps brands share it with the entire world - and it is more relevant than ever in the age of AI.
In the 1990s, Patek Philippe was struggling to differentiate itself in the competitive luxury watch market. By then, most brands focused on the technical prowess and intricate craftsmanship of their timepieces and relied on star power to get the message across.
The "Generations" campaign was born out of the vision to change this - to emphasize the idea that owning a Patek Philippe is more than just a purchase. The "You Never Actually Own a Patek Philippe. You Merely Look After It for the Next Generation" slogan was born and has become so well-known now that it’s almost a cliché - it is hard to imagine the brand without it.
The campaign has been running for decades, a testament to its effectiveness and resonance. It has helped the brand maintain its prestige and attract new generations of customers who appreciate the blend of tradition and luxury. Crucially, by focusing on the idea of legacy, Patek Philippe has positioned itself as a guardian of heritage and excellence, appealing to consumers who view their purchases as long-term investments.
This use of storytelling in their marketing strategy illustrates the power of a well-crafted narrative in building a strong, emotionally resonant brand. In this guide, we distill over a decade of experience in helping brands craft and share their narratives into practical insights that everyone can use. Drawing from our extensive expertise, we outline what to do and what to avoid, highlighting the key elements that make a compelling story and exploring why even the best stories sometimes fall short.
Key takeaways:
Digital storytelling is crucial for brands as it helps engage audiences on a deeper emotional level, fostering stronger connections and brand loyalty
Focus on creating stories that evoke emotions and resonate with the audience’s experiences and values
Maintain consistent messaging across all platforms to prevent confusing your audience and diluting your brand identity
Contents:
What actually is digital storytelling?
Why is storytelling (still) important for brands?
Plot types to inspire your brand
Which stories should your brand be telling?
How to do it right
Common storytelling pitfalls
Case study
What actually is digital storytelling?
Digital storytelling is the art of creating and sharing compelling narratives using various digital media and platforms. It encompasses a wide range of formats, including videos, animations, social media posts, podcasts, and interactive websites. This modern approach to storytelling leverages technology to engage audiences on a deeper level and makes stories more accessible to a broader audience.
Whether it's a personal narrative, a company's journey, or a brand's message, digital storytelling enhances traditional storytelling by integrating multimedia elements that can evoke stronger emotional responses and foster greater connection.
Why is storytelling (still) important for brands?
We’re all bombarded with information every day. Storytelling helps brands cut through the noise. It makes people stop and pay attention. Stanford University found that brands use real-life stories or examples, retention rates skyrocket from an average of 5-10% to 65-70%. Turns out we are way better at holding onto info when it's wrapped up in a story instead of just some data or facts.
The reason is simple: storytelling makes brands, projects, projects or information more relatable and memorable. With social media campaigns, blog posts and email marketing, those stories can reach a massive audience.
“Storytelling can boost conversions by a massive 30% and improve perceived value”
But storytelling isn’t just about telling a story - it’s about getting people involved. Interactive elements make the experience more engaging. People love to participate and feel like they’re part of the story, which keeps them interested and coming back for more. Brands that actually do so reap great rewards.
Storytelling can boost conversions by a massive 30%. It also improves perceived product value. Experiments demonstrate that when a product is paired with a compelling narrative, its perceived worth can improve by an astonishing 2000%.
Plot types to inspire your brand
Certain types of stories resonate more effectively with audiences. These basic plots help brands tell compelling stories that engage, inspire, and connect with your target market.
Rags to Riches
This plot involves a transformation from humble beginnings to success and prosperity. Brands can use this plot to tell stories of their founders, their growth journey, or how their products have helped customers achieve success. Most tech storytelling revolves around this plot type: a startup company that started from a small garage becomes a market leader, highlighting key milestones and challenges overcome along the way.
The Quest
In this basic plot, the protagonist embarks on a journey to achieve a specific goal, facing numerous challenges and obstacles. Brands can use this plot to showcase their commitment to a mission, such as innovation, sustainability, or social impact.
For instance, a brand committed to sustainability might share its ongoing quest to create eco-friendly products, including the challenges faced and the milestones achieved in reducing environmental impact.
Overcoming the Monster
Another storytelling classic. Here, the protagonist faces a formidable foe or a threat that they must defeat. This plot is effective for brands addressing significant industry challenges or societal issues. McAfee famously used this plot to depict their battle against cyber threats, emphasizing their dedication to protecting clients from digital attacks.
Rebirth
This probably sounds familiar: the protagonist undergoes a profound transformation, emerging renewed or redeemed. Brands can use this plot to tell stories of reinvention, such as a rebranding effort, product revamp, or corporate turnaround. If your brand has undergone a major rebranding, share that story of transformation, detailing the reasons for the change and the positive outcomes resulting from it.
Mystery
People just love a mystery story, where the protagonist works to solve a puzzle or crime, uncovering secrets along the way. This plot can be used to build intrigue around product launches or to engage audiences with problem-solving content. If your brand has a product launch coming up, use teasers and clues to build anticipation and engage the audience in solving the mystery of what the new product will be.
Tragicomedy
Tragicomedy has been around for thousands of years and is probably one of the oldest forms of storytelling. This plot blends elements of both tragedy and comedy, often leading to a bittersweet or ironic ending. Brands can use this plot to humanize their stories, acknowledging both the challenges and the lighter moments in their journey. For instance, your brand might share a behind-the-scenes look at a failed product launch that eventually led to a successful pivot, mixing humor with the lessons learned from the experience.
These plot types provide versatile frameworks for brands to tell engaging and relatable stories in the digital space. By leveraging these classic narrative structures, brands can connect with their audiences on a deeper level, making their messages more impactful and memorable.
Which stories should your brand be telling?
Brands can tell a wide range of stories, about their products, their people, their customers or even their quarterly reports. With a storytelling mindset, it is possible to breathe new life into everyday operations. Here are a few examples of great brand stories.
Customer Stories
Highlighting the experiences and success of your customers who have benefited from your products or services builds credibility and trust, showing real-world applications and satisfaction.
Examples: Testimonials, case studies, or success stories featuring customers' journeys and outcomes.
Employee Stories
Sharing insights and experiences from the people who work for your company humanizes the brand, showcasing the company culture and the people behind the products.
Examples: Employee spotlights, day-in-the-life videos, or stories about career growth within the company.
Founder/Origin Stories
Narratives about how the brand was founded, the challenges faced, and the vision that drove its creation build a strong emotional connection by sharing the brand's journey and core values.
Examples: The brand’s journey from inception to success, highlighting the founders’ motivations and milestones.
Product/Service Stories
Detailed stories about the development, features, and benefits of your products or services educates the audience about what makes your offerings unique and valuable.
Example: Behind-the-scenes looks at the product development process, stories about innovation, and the impact of the products on users' lives.
Mission and Vision Stories
Stories that communicate the brand’s core mission and vision, often tied to broader social, environmental, or economic goals, attract customers who support these causes.
Examples: Narratives about sustainability efforts, community involvement, or charitable initiatives.
Crisis and Challenge Stories
These explain how the brand overcame significant challenges or crises, demonstrating resilience, problem-solving abilities, and commitment to quality and customer satisfaction.
Examples: stories about overcoming production challenges, navigating market changes, or responding to customer feedback.
User-Generated Content
Stories created by your customers or community members about their experiences with your brand encourage community engagement and authentic representation of the brand through customers' eyes.
Example: Social media posts, videos, or reviews shared by customers, often curated and reshared by the brand.
Educational Stories
Content aimed at teaching the audience something new, related to your industry or expertise establishes the brand as a thought leader and valuable resource in the industry.
Example: How-to guides, tutorials, industry insights, and tips that provide value to the reader.
Innovation and Future Stories
Sharing your vision for the future, including upcoming innovations, trends, and forward-thinking projects, positions the brand as a leader in its industry and excites the audience about what’s coming next.
Example: Research and development insights, future plans, and visionary statements.
Customer Support Stories
Showing how your brand goes above and beyond to support and assist customers demonstrates your commitment to customer satisfaction and builds trust.
Example: Support team highlights and success stories from customer interactions.
Crisis Management Stories
Communicating how your brand handled a crisis or challenge, detailing the actions taken and lessons learned, builds transparency and trust by showing accountability and resilience.
Example: Case studies of crisis management, recovery strategies, and stakeholder communications.
Digital storytelling in the age of AI: how to do it right
Digital storytelling remains a powerful tool for engaging audiences, even as AI transforms the way we create and share content.
Stories from the Airbnb community
Here’s a breakdown of how to craft your own digital storytelling project effectively in the age of AI:
1. Pick a hot topic
Think about what story you want to tell - and why it matters to your audience. What should the headline read? Is a hot, trending topic that they care about? If you can link a relevant, buzzing theme and build a story from there, you are more likely to engage your audience. You can use our free keyword tool to find relevant keywords that users actively search or see what keywords your competitors are targetting.
2. Focus on a clear message
Keep it simple, but make it count. What's the one thing you want the audience to take away from your story? What do you want them to learn, feel, or do after the experience? Spell it out loud and clear so there's no confusion.
3. Plan your plot
Once you've got your story idea, map out the plot. What's the beginning, middle, and end? Who are the main characters? What twists and turns will keep them hooked? Make sure your stories offer something meaningful and relevant. Consider the needs and interests of your audience at every stage of the storytelling process.
4. Make sure your story has emotional significance
Whether it's a heartwarming moment, a tear-jerking story, or a laugh-out-loud joke, aim to stir up those emotions and make them stick around for more. Emotions help create a deeper connection with the story and make it more memorable.
5. Start with an engaging hook
Start with a hook that grabs the audience's attention right away. It could be a mind-blowing fact, a striking image, an intriguing question, or a compelling statement that stops them mid-scroll.
6. Use a conversational tone
Tell your story like you're chatting with a friend over coffee. Keep it flowing smoothly from beginning to end, with enough juicy details to keep them hooked. Make sure it has a beginning, middle, and end, with a strong emotional arc if possible.
7. Bring your story to life with audio and visuals
Once you know the story you want to tell, gather the materials that will help bring it to life. Spice things up with a mix of multimedia elements such as images, videos, audio clips, and animations to enhance the storytelling experience. These elements complement the narrative and help convey the message effectively.
8. Develop your characters
If your story involves characters, make them feel real. Give them quirks, backstories, and dreams just like real people. That way, your audience will root for them like they're old friends.
9. Throw in some twists and turns
Incorporating unexpected twists and turns into your storytelling can captivate your audience and keep them engaged. These elements add intrigue and excitement, making your narrative more memorable and impactful. For instance, introduce challenges or conflicts that your characters or brand must overcome. This adds depth to the story and keeps the audience invested in seeing how the situation will be resolved. Also, incorporate surprising events or revelations that change the direction of the story.
10. Share relatable experiences
Draw on relatable experiences and emotions to create stories that resonate with your audience on a personal level. When viewers see reflections of their own struggles and triumphs in your story, they are more likely to be engaged and moved by the narrative.
10. Add a call to action
End your story with a clear call to action that prompts the audience to take the next step, whether it's visiting your website, signing up for a newsletter, or sharing the story with others.
11. End with suspense
End sections or episodes of your story with cliffhangers that leave your audience eager for more. This technique is particularly effective in serialized content, where each installment builds anticipation for the next.
12. Add teasers for future content
Use cliffhangers to tease future developments in your story. By hinting at upcoming twists and turns, you can keep your audience engaged and coming back for more.
13. Test & adapt
Before you hit that share button, give your masterpiece a once-over. Step back and take a look with fresh eyes. Does it flow smoothly from start to finish? Are all the pieces in place? Make any final tweaks and adjustments until everything looks and sounds just right.
14. Measure how you did
Use analytics tools to measure how your storytelling content performs across different platforms. Analyze engagement metrics, click-through rates, and user feedback to refine your story.
8 Common storytelling pitfalls
At Articulate, we’ve helped hundreds of brands share their stories - and those of their people, products, customers and projects. Along the way, we’ve picked up a few mission critical mistakes that hinder the power of a great story.
Here are some to avoid at all costs.
1. Lack of authenticity
Audiences can easily detect inauthenticity. When brands create stories that feel insincere or contrived, it can damage their credibility and trust. Overly polished or exaggerated success stories that don’t align with the brand’s actual history or values can come off as fake.
What to do: ensure your stories are genuine and reflect the true values, mission, and experiences of your brand. Authenticity builds trust and emotional connection.
2. Ignoring the audience
Brands often fail to consider the needs, preferences, and behaviors of their audience, leading to stories that don’t resonate. For instance, a luxury brand sharing great stories during economic crisis is still missing the mark.
What to do: Conduct thorough audience research to understand what resonates with them. Tailor your storytelling to address their pain points, interests, and aspirations.
3. Overemphasis on promotion
Constantly pushing promotional content can alienate your audience. Storytelling should not always be about selling but about engaging and adding value. A brand that only shares stories about product features and discounts, without offering any value or entertainment, can come off as too salesy.
What to do: Balance promotional content with value-driven stories. Share customer success stories, behind-the-scenes content, and insights that provide value beyond just a sales pitch.
4. Lack of emotional connection
Stories that fail to evoke emotions are not memorable and impactful. Emotional engagement is key to effective storytelling. Jargon-heavy stories, for instance, fail to engage.
What to do: Focus on creating emotional connections by highlighting human experiences, challenges, and triumphs that relate to your brand and audience.
5. Inconsistent messaging
Inconsistent messaging across different channels and campaigns can confuse the audience and dilute the brand’s narrative. For instance, a brand that portrays itself as environmentally friendly in one campaign but ignores sustainability in another can create mixed messages.
What to do: Ensure consistency in your storytelling across all channels and campaigns. Your brand voice, values, and core message should remain steady and clear.
6. Overlooking the power of simplicity
Complicated stories with too many details can lose the audience’s attention. Simple, clear, and focused narratives are more effective. A convoluted brand story with multiple plotlines can be hard to follow.
What to do: Keep your stories simple and focused. Highlight the core message and ensure it is easy for the audience to understand and remember.
7. Neglecting visual elements
Visual and interactive storytelling elements are crucial for engaging the audience. Relying solely on text can be less engaging. A brand that only uses text-based stories without images, videos, or interactive features might struggle to capture the audience’s interest.
What to do: Incorporate visuals, videos, and interactive elements into your storytelling. Use infographics, short videos, interactive polls, and other multimedia to enhance engagement.
8. Failing to measure impact
Without measuring the impact of your storytelling efforts, it’s difficult to understand what works and what doesn’t. Continuing to use a particular story format without any insights into its effectiveness can lead to wasted resources.
What to do: Use analytics tools to track the performance of your stories. Measure metrics such as engagement, reach, and conversions to refine your storytelling strategy.
Case Study: digital storytelling at a leading IT services provider
Client: Axians, the VINCI Energies group brand dedicated to Information and Communication Technologies and the challenge of Digital Transformation
Challenge: Axians was struggling to build a sense of community within their unit dedicated to customer teams. The lack of engagement and connection among employees was impacting morale and collaboration.
Solution: To address this challenge, we designed a project called Stories@Axians. This initiative focused on sharing employee stories through social media to foster a sense of community and engagement.
Each episode featured a hot topic such as intrapreneurism or career growth, highlighting one or several employees. The stories showcased who they were, where they came from, their backstory, and their aspirations.
Implementation:
Once we established the concept of sharing personal stories about trending topics for tech workers, here’s the process we followed to bring it to life:
Selection and Interviews: Carefully selected employees were interviewed to gather their stories, focusing on personal and professional journeys.
Story Crafting: Crafted engaging narratives that highlighted key themes.
Fact-Checking: Ensured accuracy and authenticity by fact-checking the stories.
Visual Design: Designed appealing visuals to complement the stories, making them more engaging for social media audiences.
Posting Schedule: Posted a new story every month for a year, maintaining a consistent and predictable schedule to build anticipation and engagement.
Results:
Increased Impressions: The new approach to storytelling led to a 350% increase in impressions compared to the brand’s average posts.
Enhanced Community: The initiative successfully built a stronger sense of community within the customer teams, fostering better collaboration and morale.
Employee Engagement: Highlighting employee stories engaged the audience and boosted the featured employees' morale and pride in their work.
The Stories@Axians project is just another example of the power of authentic storytelling in building community and engagement. By focusing on employee experiences and aspirations, Axians was able to create a more connected and motivated workforce, significantly enhancing their social media presence and internal culture.
Articulate, digital storytelling experts
Here at Articulate, we’re passionate about storytelling. We take our customers’ vision and put it down in writing, and then up in the digital world.
Our team of dedicated experts helps businesses reinvent themselves and their stories. We create relevant, tailored and unique content for each of our customers, optimising their digital marketing efforts.