CHAPTER 10
MEET YOUR STORYSCAPE
When Your Organizing Idea and the Experience Space Soulfully Meet
We all know that some things just go smashingly well together and sometimes their combination is better than the individual elements. It’s the 1 + 1 = 3 equation. Take, for example, peanut butter and jelly, Vegemite and cheese, gin and tonic—all better when combined together. The combos hold more weight than connections; there is a soulful amplification effect. this is how we see the joining of Organizing Ideas and Experience Spaces. By bringing them together, we get a more meaningfully constructed and effective Storyscape—one that enables connections to more than a brand logo or design style. we achieve the creation of worlds that are connected through relevant stories, technologies, and experiences that the consumer becomes immersed in.
You have studied the overall model and approach for Storyscaping. Throughout your journey, you have uncovered your brand’s Purpose uncovered a key emotional insight, uncovered a behavioral insight, and developed product or service differentiation that delivers big on these values. By connecting these four pillars, you have inspired an Organizing Idea. This is a powerful thing. Now we will learn how to soulfully connect the Organizing Idea and Experience Space to create a Story System and ultimately derive a Storyscape. To do so, we focus on the new applications in the model, the Organizing Idea and the Experience Space. we then apply Systems Thinking to build a Story System and ultimately derive the Storyscape.
let’s start by digging into the Experience Space. Think of it as the canvas upon which you will work to create a Storyscape. The Experience Space is a three-dimensional canvas that we first need to define. This canvas holds more than just physical environments—it also includes the virtual ones people create. Here we see beyond just the experiences with the products and enjoy the immersion with content. This canvas showcases more than consumer connection with channels, it is also a place to show the technologies and platforms that connect the many points of the consumer experience. and this canvas, with all these components, is not just a media space; it also includes media channels. We have to change our perspective on all of these things, especially the well-worn world of media.
The Trouble with Media Myopia. We started this book by reinforcing that story is one of the most timeless and powerful weapons in our arsenal to connect brands and consumers. Another incredibly important weapon we all use is media. Unlike storytelling, which we consider to be a timeless craft, everything we know about media is fleeting or has an expiration date. The media landscape, which is a part of the world around us, is constantly changing and evolving, and so is the way we live. On the other hand, the human condition does not change much over time. People will always be people, but the world we live in changes every day. This is the reason our storytelling journey will continue on its path of evolution. We build on top of valuable lessons we have learned about story over time. Conversely, our media journey is not an evolution at all; rather it’s about revolution. Practices from the past, so-called “best practices,” preconceived notions, and muscle memory just get in the way.
Our perspective on media really started to change for us some years ago. In early 2004, we had a bit of a revelation about the media planning process that changed our perspective forever. At that time, we were buying a ton of media for Citibank. in fact, our agency was one of the top digital media buyers in North America. This gave us enormous leverage and we gained valuable experience. most important, it provided a multitude of opportunities to learn in what was a relatively new space. We were working with a number of Citi business groups and they extended an opportunity in the student loans business. This client was a very progressive thinker and was looking for an agency partner that was “digitally centered.” Their target was young college students, whom they assumed were always online. As part of our discovery, we sent a team of charismatic folks out with a video camera to capture some “person-on-the-street” interviews—a little ethnography, a simple conversation with desired consumers. Our intention was to gather a quick, real-world understanding about how students financed their education and their thought process. Because most of us, agency and client alike, had been out of school for a few years—or a lot of years—the reality was that we all had dated perspectives on the subject.
When we played back the video from the field, we observed and learned a hell of a lot more than we were expecting, and it proved our perspectives certainly were dated. We were vastly wrong about one key assumption—that college students spent a ton of time online. All our media tools told us they did, our preconceptions told us they did, and all available third-party research confirmed the same. What we found directly from students is that they don’t spend much time online at all. They have superactive lives: studying, partying, dating, exploring the outdoors, and did we mention lots of partying? They don’t have time to sit in front of a computer (remember in 2004, the internet was available only on your desktop computer). With this discovery, further research showed that high school students spent lots of time online—most every demographic group did. Even little old ladies spent more time messing around on their computers than college students. When it came to computer usage, our video interviews also revealed one hugely consistent thing—our students used their computers for MySpace. None of us had even heard of MySpace, and we were the ones who were expected to be hip to these trendy social happenings. In fact, 90 percent of our interviewees from different campuses mentioned MySpace. This revelation was not a “hidden gem” of an insight. It was the obvious, brought to light for anyone who simply took the time to ask. It changed the way we looked at media forever. What we learned, and this is foundational to the concept of Systems Thinking, was quite simply to understand the Experience Space of now, not just the media data of yesterday’s perceived behavior. The world around us is changing constantly and media data tools are just a subset of our personal world; the media consumption data is a subset of that. In short, defining your canvas based on a database with an incomplete and dated perspective gives you a small flat space—not a three-dimensional dynamic world. And, the bonus of this discovery? We had the thrill of buying some of the first ads on MySpace (basically the first ads in social media and), they were rather effective too.
Bring Back the Art. Back in the Mad Men era we could count the TV, local radio stations, and print publications on our fingers and toes. The folks in the media department were cultural junkies who read every TV script. We were attuned to the editorial calendars at every publication. We were all consumers of all the same content. These folks were “agents.” Along came the explosion of media outlets and the foothold of fragmentation where hundreds of cable channels and millions of websites popped up overnight—these certainly changed the media placement scene. It’s virtually impossible to keep up with that level of marketplace understanding. Today you would describe a 20-something planner as one who sits in front of a screen, punching in some demographic parameters: males, 24–30 that make $50,000+, perhaps some psychographic parameters: likes fishing; and roll in segmentation filters: has purchased a car in the last 12 months. Click enter and wait (a nanosecond) for a list of media venues, which index high across this “target audience.” This person then sends those “just right” outlets a request for proposal, receives some pricing, and creates a spreadsheet for the media buy. Then, that spreadsheet gets tweaked. Finally, a little legwork and some negotiation is completed before the spreadsheet is turned into a PowerPoint deck and presented to the client for approval. We oversimplified this for the sake of making a point, but where the hell is the art in this? Where are the insights and the science? It’s obviously flawed. An assumption, built on an assumption, built on another assumption is not science. Are all the possible media outlets and all the possible experiences or interactions in that database? MySpace certainly was not.
We reinforce the point here that media planning databases are a crutch that we should not solely depend on, and the media landscape changes so fast that any book you write on the subject today will be considered a history book tomorrow. Furthermore, media channels only exist in one part of the consumer’s world; they do not encompass it all. We need to get out of the office and go walk in the shoes of our consumers in order to inventory and understand their world (their Experience Space). Only then can we define the canvas upon which you will create your Storyscape. Let us reiterate: a media plan is not that canvas; it’s only a small part of it.
Inventory the Experience Space. Although we like the “paid, owned, earned” approach to media better than the status quo, even this is still not perfect. We believe it aligns more closely with how you should think about the Experience Space, but it too falls short. To us, an obvious gap opens when considering a view of the world as built around the brand’s ecosystem versus building the Experience Space model around the consumer’s ecosystem. Consider for a moment how making that seemingly small shift in context would have uncovered the role that MySpace played in those college students’ lives in 2004. This same gap exists in connections planning as it is routinely done with a “brand out to consumer” lens instead of a “consumer out to world” perspective. Our goal is to understand the consumers’ world and, with that knowledge, craft ways in which a product or service can be invited into it.
In Chapter 8, we offered a glimpse into the kind of primary research tools and methods we use to inventory the entire list of key touch points between your brand and its potential customer. By combining those findings with media planning data, you will end up with a bit more than an all-inclusive list. You will possess a valuable consumer journey map in the form of a matrix. This is a huge leap forward from connections planning. You now have a current view of the consumers’ world, which extends way beyond paid media. The challenge now is focus and prioritization. We all have limited time, budget, and staff—how could we possibly do so much? Isn’t it easier to just crank out another TV commercial? Or not? And that’s why we believe this is a great practical benefit of the Storyscaping approach.
In fact, the reactions we get to this particular dimension of Storyscaping are off the charts. Although we don’t believe you can build a great brand with a spreadsheet, we emphasize that this is the part where utilizing one becomes very handy. Businesses are clearly struggling with the number of tactics, channels and needs for new capabilities this digital world is throwing at them. Budgets are not growing as fast as the number of things businesses feel they need to keep up with: “We need a Facebook presence. Not just one, one for each product, and what are we doing with Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Tumblr? we need to be more mobile. where’s that app? what about upsell? and let’s not forget YouTube! let’s do that, and have our own channel . . .” Dramatized? A little. A real challenge? Definitely. This model really helps you manage this challenge.
To See or To Leave Be? Which touch points should we focus on? What can we do with Pinterest? Should we invest in redesigning our website, or should we focus on our Facebook presence? Is our mobile platform effective? These are much more relevant questions to ask and they serve a greater Purpose than just building more stuff and disseminating more content. all of these questions are much easier to answer if you have a current understanding of the consumers’ environment and experience. You are probably wondering how you can solve for nonlinear experience paths and reduce the number of touch points for which you create content or build either digital or physical experiences. Or, you may be trying to grasp the role of the channel in the consumer’s world.
Our goal here is to define a model of the Experience Space that enables dynamic adaption, adjustment, and evolution. More on that later, but for now we need to understand and dig into the stages of creating a Story System. These are:
It’s a pretty straightforward process, but the value is in how you manage each stage.
1. Cast: Our goal is to list all of the probable touch points. As discussed earlier in this chapter, you will draw on your primary research and media planning tools to maximize this list and ensure it is relevant to the consumers of today. Leverage the opportunity mapping, the experience modeling, and the customer journey you have used to understand the potential points of connection and interaction. Use media tools in association with real-world data to build a complete list of probable and opportunistic touch points. List them out (probably in a spreadsheet).
2. Score: This is where strategic analysis kicks in. (Note, the criteria in the sample table that follows—cost per reach, engagement, influence and so on—are just for illustrative purposes and are a few of the common data points that you could use for scoring.) Establish a series of relevant data points and scoring weights based on what you are trying to accomplish. Obviously, they need to include the dimensions of effectiveness for your brand or product, which will be drawn from the understanding of the consumer and insights. Of course, you will always need some dimension of engagement, as that is a foundational element of a Storyscape in which we are building a world of immersion that needs engagement. You might also consider using levels of participation to score relative consumer involvement if that is the best way to achieve your business goals. Another dimension may include the emotional influence on your consumers along their journey. Your optimal levers and criteria should be logically tweaked to determine what touch points will dominate your Storyscape.
Add these dimensions and scores to the spreadsheet. Essentially, you will be creating a scorecard by touch point and channel in order to determine relative priorities.
The ultimate goal is to determine the priority of channels and touch points based on effectiveness in achieving your goals or objectives. For example, if you happen to have an older, well-known but perhaps tarnished brand and a great new product or service that needs to be experienced, in order to change those perceptions, you could set your model to optimize for cost-per-reach with maximum engagement. Let’s explore that as a “completely redesigned and shiny new car.” Start with scoring 1 to 10 for engagement. The highest level of engagement happens when a person is actually sitting in the car, gripping the steering wheel with both hands, smelling the leather, and hearing the engine roar while they take that last corner on their test drive—that experience earns a score of 10. Coming across a banner ad while checking your e-mail at work earns a 1. In relative terms that might score a TV spot as a 5, and an awesome TV spot could earn a 6.
BUILDING YOUR EXPERIENCE SPACE: sample spreadsheet
Alternatively, if you were launching a new brand, you may look at a very different set of optimizing criteria. Pure reach might be more valuable, likewise with frequency. Are you clear on what you are trying to accomplish? If so, the formula you choose to utilize in efforts to identify the optimal experience will be relatively easy and straightforward to develop. It is important to always look for multiple criteria that match up both your business objectives and the principals of Storyscaping—such as engagement, immersion, and participation. Otherwise, you will end up with a one-dimensional brand first system, or worse, a broadcast only system that has no room for consumer involvement.
A powerful application of this approach is that you can be dynamic and adjust the scores based on performance data. The world of media and its role in how we connect and engage constantly changes, so this should be a working dynamic approach—not a plan and set-aside map. Make it dynamic, and evolve your Story System structure and priorities to be in line with what works and what doesn’t or as you change the content, the systems, and platforms.
3. Tag: Through score-carding, as just explained, the point that not all channels or touch points are the same is reinforced. Beyond effect, cost, and whatever other dimension you score, they vary by nature and by the role they play in the Experience Space. At the broadest level, we can define channels by the roles they play relative to each other and by depth and type of engagement. We created a simple framework for this so we can tag touch points and channels with their optimal role.
This step is an important one and you must do it in order to assemble a Story System. Feel free to change the language to suit your style.
We imagine a roadway system to explain Story Systems: Each one has signposts, roundabouts, destinations, and town centers. Remember, the idea here is to ensure there are no dead ends for a consumer’s journey. All roads lead to “town centers, and destinations.” where you can engage with other people and content and buy the things you need or want. Call these four elements whatever you would like—as long as you understand the role and the reason each of these elements is meant to play.
Signposts. These are the easiest to understand because, for the most part, they resemble traditional ads—except these never end with a period. They always lead somewhere else, which is why they need to end with a comma. They have a clear and important job to accomplish: they must intrigue and entice a person to engage with the brand and encourage an experience. Total reach, cost-per-reach, frequency, and influence will play a big role in determining which of these will make it onto your plan. These ads serve to build awareness and drive acquisition and ultimately direct people to even greater engagement—like a signpost. These can include TV, radio, print, advertorial content, out of home, merchandising, banners, search terms, and so on. You get the point.
Roundabouts. These are the places where a customer or prospect may cross through during their journey. This could also be where they seek out information or inspiration related to your brand’s world. Keep in mind that, it’s likely you don’t have the time or budget to create a significant experience at every spot where your brand and the consumer could potentially connect. Therefore, some of the touch points you uncover can be deprioritized based on the criteria you have set and scored. As an example, you may uncover that your consumer is a heavy Instagram user, but based on the prioritization criteria, Instagram is not the place you have chosen to invest for this initiative. Instead, the numbers have informed you to invest heavily on Facebook. In a scenario like this, you would most likely ignore Instagram, thereby creating a dead end experience. In Storyscaping, we would create some very lightweight content on Instagram that would link or point to Facebook. That way, consumers remain connected to the story and pass through the roundabout without getting lost.
Town Centers. These are the places where people congregate and where things happen—the centers of commerce. After you’ve gone though the process of scoring all possible touch points, you categorize them into lists of probable, likely, and optimal. The optimal touch points are the ones we tag as “town centers” because that is where the bulk of your resources should be focused when you are creating memorable and immersive experiences that sell. We will spend more time on describing “worlds that sell” in the next chapter.
Destinations. These are places of deep and valuable engagement that enable active participation. They are similar to town centers, except they don’t have a form of transaction. The role here is to build on participation in an inspiring and immersed way, ultimately connecting to the town center through some form of system or content. An example of this is a game that you could play on a mobile device. It doesn’t have an e-commerce platform in it for the products you sell, but it might reward you with offers to save and use when you visit the brand’s website or store. A destination should always end in a comma and deeply engage. That engagement can be achieved through conversation, shared content, gaming, or other ways. The important part is that it must always connect to other destinations and/or town centers.
As we outlined previously, we include these tags in the spreadsheet for reference.
4. Inspire: We have effectively reimagined connections planning for a digitally disrupted world. The “build it and they will come” Field of Dreams promise comes to life when we uniquely apply story to this new breed of connections plan.
At this stage of the game you have inventoried, prioritized, and tagged the Experience Space (your canvas) to ultimately address your business objectives. This is where your Organizing Idea comes into play. Take every one of those touch points you identified as the center of your brief. For example, if you are Coca-Cola and your Organizing Idea is “Open Happiness” and one of the key touch points is a vending machine, what big ideas could you and/or your team come up with? Now you can see the intersection and value of an Organizing Idea and how it meets up with a Story System.
And by understanding the role of the touch point (destination, town center, etc.), you are better equipped to build ideas and technologies that are connected, engaging, participatory, and relevant to your consumer. In action, you will find a new ability to consider ideas for their role in the Story System and not just an extension of an idea, or worse, a matching luggage adaptation of an idea.
You will also appreciate that this approach gives you amazing experiences at each touch point. Why? Because you have already defined the Organizing Idea, which relates to your consumers, and because you are not forcing ideas into channels. instead, you are looking at channels as new opportunities. You will end with a different experience that is connected in story, in brand, and in experience. Wow, that’s starting to sound like a Storyscape.
5. Optimize: Whether or not you are religious, the King James Bible is a great example of a Story System. Depending on the size and type of book, a bible might be somewhere between 800 and 1,800 pages long. Very few people pick up the bible and read it in a linear manner from page 1 to page 1,800. The main reason for this is its structure. The bible is both a story and a series of stories—that’s a Story System. For the über story delivered through the bible, its Organizing Idea could be described as something like “your personal relationship with the beginning, middle, and end.” We’re not too religious, so we realize that may be rather general, but we’re confident you get the point. You could literally open the bible to any page and discover a substory within the big story, which in itself has a plot, characters, setting, and narrative point of view. There is a moral to each story, and most notably, each of these substories or “experiences” serves the Organizing Idea.
It’s very important to understand the distinction between Storyscaping and 360-degree marketing. In 360-degree marketing you effectively pummel the consumer with the same exact message or “matching luggage” from every angle. In a Story System like the bible, every story is not a different iteration of the same plot, it is its own story and it serves the bigger story.
Connecting Story and System for Behavior. The final step to explore is the unification of the story you tell, the content you produce, the experiences consumers have, and their participation with the brand. With ideas and stories in hand and an optimized Story System, we can more effectively consider the connection points between channels and touch points. You can consider this a process of inserting the commas in stories so they never end and inspire and facilitate connection to one another. Remember this important aspect in the definition of Storyscape, “. . . where each connection inspires engagement with another . . . ” Now is the time to help facilitate and inspire that imperative aspect. We recognize that the consumer is in control of how they interact with the story. That’s fundamental and will not change. As marketers, it is our job to inspire the journey and enable it where we can.
Start by looking at each idea and touch point and explore how it can connect with another, either in message or in system or both. At the most basic level, it could be a classic call to action such as “visit our website.” Or it could be a solution you create using technology like the RFID chips in the EpicMix story that connects your personal profile and your pictures. We should always look for “commas” more like the latter of these two examples.
You can then explore more deeply by asking, “What is the motivation of consumers to engage with more of the story?” Go back to the consumer insights you have worked with and look at how they play out in creating and enabling these connections. As you start to think about the principal of connections and the motivations, you will be able to draw lines and connect the points for your Story System. These connections will produce a complete Storyscape, a world of immersive experiences, that inspire connection with each other and where the brand story becomes part of your consumer’s story.
System Teams for Teamed Systems. Two quick notes on the series stages for Systems Thinking. First, it helps to create a collaboration team from multiple disciplines around this, which we detail in Chapter 12. Second, test and learn. Set up your approach and Story System so it is dynamic. Be flexible and prepare to start changing things. Be able to adapt to the performance variances, just like you might do with a call to action or with your landing pages from digital ads. It is quite common to do “test and learn” in a digital environment so that you maximize the value, but don’t stop there. Think about how you can optimize the Story System at each and every point.
Putting it All Together. You are now well equipped with the basic concepts and tools on how to create an immersive Storyscape. Hopefully by reading these chapters, following along with our directions, and observing a sampling of our real-life examples, you have learned to not only recognize it but to harness its power by organizing through Systems Thinking and making sense of it all through story.
Those are the basics; and in the next chapter, we will explore how to build measurement plans, how to value the return on experience, and how to plan for the enabling technology platforms that will make your worlds sensing and adapting.