We do it all day and all night. We can’t even imagine life – not even a single day – without it because we’ve been at it since we came into existence. As human beings we think in narratives, we are all storytellers: we love telling and listening to stories, transporting ourselves into another world.
This is why for many companies and organizations, using storytelling can be a more effective route of delivering information. Why? Because stories stick, facts don’t. As the famous screenwriter Robert McKee says in an article for Harvard Business Review, there are two ways to persuade people: “The first is by using conventional rhetoric, which is what most executives are trained in. […] The other way to persuade people – and ultimately a much more powerful way – is by uniting an idea with an emotion. The best way to do that is by telling a compelling story.”
A good example of this is the video that Google produced to promote the search function, under the tagline “Google Search helps you find whatever you’re looking for.” But the thing is that in the digital age we live in, the way we tell stories doesn’t need to be the same way we used to do it in 2000.
Companies can go further than a video on YouTube or a TV ad. Storytelling needs to be adapted: the medium chosen must be the best one to fit the content. We’ve picked some nice examples of storytelling on websites that are rich in content (predominantly visual) and that use a bunch of different elements (audio, video, infographics…) to make the most of the story.
Take a look at the examples below and experience them for yourself!
A Short History of the Highrise