With strong stories to intense experiences

Storytelling via digital media can create intense brand experiences.The first part of the article on experiences in digital media dealt with Digital codes. The second part takes a closer look at digital storytelling, which is ideally suited to creating intense brand experiences. Stories are a great world of experience: we root for the hero, suffer with the victims, laugh at the court jester, love with the lovers. Stories are sometimes calming, sometimes enjoyable, sometimes exciting, sometimes electrifying. How can we use digital media to create a unique world of experience through their special features? How do we make our users laugh, cry, love? How do we ensure that we offer an outstanding experience that complements our corporate storytelling?The fascination of storiesDigital storytelling ties in with the ancient and highly effective tradition of storytelling, as everyone knows it from the campfire. Ultimately, these terms describe new technology to tell our stories - no more, no less.People have been telling stories since before language existed. With pictures. Sounds. Drawings in the sand. From pictures and painting to language and writing. Like all these forms, digital storytelling is a bundle of experiences: What harms us as human beings? So it's not the content that has changed, but the type of storytelling - from storytelling around the campfire, to pictures and writing, to stories on TV, in cinemas, audio books and podcasts - and finally the first narrative worlds in gaming and on interactive platforms. We love stories that inspire us, involve us, captivate us, are fun and keep us excited.Opportunities and limitations of digital storytellingBut what are stories in digital media? Do they work in the same way as stories around the campfire? What makes them special? What opportunities and limitations does digital storytelling offer for corporate communication? Digital brand storytelling is the telling of brand stories with the special features of digital media and digital technologies. These special features are the "Big Four": integration, availability, networking and interactivity. Digital brand storytelling aims to use these special features to raise brand awareness and develop a uniquely attractive brand image, and interest in digital brand storytelling continues to grow, as a survey by the agency Headstream shows. For example, 79% of respondents believe that it is relevant for a brand to tell a story. Important reasons for the proliferation of digital brand stories are the increasing spread of the internet worldwide, the growing importance of digital brand management and the reallocation of marketing budgets to digital channels.Effect of brand stories(Brand) stories have such a strong impact because they tie in with the basic principles of the brain, its absorption, processing and storage - storytelling is "brain-friendly" communication. The technique of storytelling draws on patterns (e.g. of people, actions, places) that consumers have already learned in their childhood and which make it so easy for them to absorb, process and store stories.The inner images created by the stories, which spontaneously arise in the user's mind's eye when they think of the unique brand experiences, are particularly effective in terms of behavior in storytelling. Due to the mental images of the brand, customers are willing to spend more money on the brand than without this image. Storytelling can contribute to the creation and development of mental images of companies and their services, which have a strong impact on behavior. Pöppel summarizes the importance of stories for people's behaviour: Only those who reach the pictorial or episodic memory can permanently change people's behavior.

Helping others to live better lives with fun.

 Stories as personal experiencesOne of the fascinating effects of digital storytelling is that users store our stories as their own experiences - provided they experience the associated feelings and physical reactions: "...The human brain does not distinguish between reading or hearing a story and experiencing it in real life. In both cases, the same neurological regions are activated." (Rush, 2014)

How can this be explained? The brain stores experiences with the knowledge about them,

- what happened (cognitive)- what feelings are associated with it (affective)- how the experience felt physically (somatic).

When people experience stories and images, they can store them as their own experiences. This is very useful because it allows people to learn from the experiences of others without having to go through them themselves, which is particularly helpful in the case of bad experiences.

ConclusionDigital brand storytelling can be an essential element of brand storytelling. Due to the extremely high degree of networking of people and content, the term "digital campfire" would not be appropriate in the traditional form of storytelling: users do not meet in one place, but are highly active, unpredictable and jump at will from device to device, from platform to platform, from application to application.

However, digital brand storytelling is not just a question of technology, but also touches on cultural, social and communicative aspects. A good story needs a methodology, a dramaturgy (hero journey) and a structure (plot, presentation and impact). In addition, the brand manager must be fit in dealing with digital media and the latest digital technologies (keyword digital literacy).

Digital storytelling will continue to spread rapidly in the future. This is to be expected due to the increasing spread of the Internet worldwide as a result of technological developments, the opening up of markets, etc. and the redistribution of marketing budgets to digital channels.

From hobby to dream job.

Key questions in digital storytellingIf you want to be successful in digital storytelling, you should answer the following key questions:

- What are the special features of digital media on the Internet, cell phones, smartphones and other digital media? How do digital technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, Bluetooth and QR codes make a unique contribution to digital storytelling? how do we exploit the potential for our stories? how can we build and continuously develop experiences? how do they increase the value of the company? how will digital storytelling develop in the coming years?The third part of this article is about multi-sensory appeal to all the senses. Here you will find the first article on digital brand management.Authors: Prof. Dr. Dieter Georg Herbst is head of the Master's program "Leadership in Digital Communication" at the Berlin University of the Arts (www.dietergeorgherbst.de). Thomas Heinrich Musiolik is his doctoral student and also Scientific Director of the Digital Brand Lab (www.digitalbrandlab.org). The agency partner of the two in Switzerland is www.startbahnwest.ch