As a child growing up in Railway Compound in Ebute Metta in Lagos, I and my neighbours had a date with the communal TV in my family living room at 6:30 PM. Tales by Moonlight would play, and even the adults seemed to not mind watching the show created to teach children about morality.
The older I grew, I fell in love with stories. Stories made me connect to subjects in secondary school, and as a Philosophy student in the university of Lagos. At first, the best stories were written and as the world changed so did the formats, we entered the world of films, music, and the media adapted to videos and audio formats to give everyone a story regardless of the format. It wasn’t rocket science that stories had formed a bed of my major thoughts and opinions about life.
Stories and their impact made me connect more as the Editor of Guardian Life. But, I did not know much about storytelling until I dug deeper into the timeline that had not only influenced me but society.
Why did stories make us connect?
People are drawn to things bigger than themselves and stories are the best ways to connect this bigger picture. This influenced the invention of the newspaper in 1605 in Germany to the appearance of the television in 1939. As society grew, we became fascinated with more ways to tell our stories.
This fascination transcends personal experiences or the use of media. It is what draws attention to the brands you love and are loyal to.
What did you hear about them?
How do they make you feel?
What makes the connection turn to loyalty?
Nike answered these questions in 1988 with the very first “Just Do It” commercial, which featured 80-year-old Walt Scott jogging shirtless across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
(OPTIONAL – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_xozTo6wrU)
This commercial did two things for the brand: it aligned with the hero archetype, because it said, “Hey! If an old man can jog on this bridge, then what is stopping you?”. It did also solidify the brand as a pioneer brand storyteller.
Over the years, at the heart of Nike, is an interesting story told across different mediums and channels that says, Yes You Can! (Shout out to Barack Obama’s adoption for his campaign strategy.) Be it with Serena Williams or Colin Kaepernick, the brand has remained consistent and innovative in the ways it tells its story that blends sports with activism and real-life events. An excellent example is their latest commercial #YouCantStopUs that created a united front of humanity against the coronavirus pandemic.
Data would say that before April 2011, there were no brand storytellers in the marketing industry, but Nike has held the torch since 1988. Tom Fishburne instigated the concept of marketers as storytellers with his now well-established Marketoonist cartoon series.
They call 2012 the year of storytelling; it all started with the Content 2020 initiative by Coca-Cola that sought to define brand storytelling as it connected with their brand. LinkedIn Data would tell you this was the trigger that led to the rise of 5,000 storytellers in 2012.
The ripple effect continued with the announcement of a new category at the Cannes Lions Festival – Branded Content and Entertainment to the release of Seth Godin’s All Marketers tell Stories. He was the first person to attribute that storytelling was essential to the brand and not just part of its marketing endeavours.
By the end of August 2012, LinkedIn Data reports about 25,000 storytellers in marketing. This number moved to 250,000 in October in 2013 and over a million in 2020. The data seems to back 2012 as the year of storytelling, however; the art precedes it.
We have been telling stories since men started documenting our history in caves. We’ve been telling stories in marketing with adverts like Peak’s Papilo in the 90s and MTN’s “Oh Jerry” in the early 2000s. Storytelling has remained at the core of sustainable brands like Apple and Coca-Cola even before CONTENT2020.
The rise of social media has seen the adaptation of content marketing, which is only but a fragment of storytelling which has exposed brands to a world they didn’t know existed. Brand storytelling is not a new thing, the world is finally catching up.
Chidera Muoka is a multipotentialite and creative director. A firm believer of storytelling committed to pushing compelling narratives through her storytelling agency, House of ZETA.
Social media handles
IG: @themadamezeta
Twitter: @TheMadameZeta
LinkedIn: Chidera Muoka
