David Shing: The Art of Storytelling #TNWEurope

Op de 8e editie van The Next Web-conference in Amsterdam draaide het dit jaar allemaal om het thema ‘POWER TO THE PPL.’ Een thema dat 8 jaar geleden ook al centraal stond op het web, toen TIME Magazine “You” uitroep als “Person of the Year”. AOL-goeroe David Shing, uitgedost in zebraprint broek, zwart jasje en flinke haardos begon zijn betoog met de volgende tip aan het TNW publiek: “Here's the deal man, the secret about future storystelling is really simple: It's about you. You've the power of doing it”.

Kijkend naar de “Conversation prism” 2014 van Brian Solis en Jess 3, zijn we sinds het begin van dit millenium in rap tempo de offline wereld om ons heen digitaliseren.

De vragen die we moeten stellen is over de “Connected Human”. David Shing: “Begrijpen we eigenlijk wat consumenten van plan zijn”? Het antwoord: “No way”.

Een mooi voorbeeld die David liet zien was een tas die hij ontvang op de Venice Biennale met de tekst: “Ik SMS, Ik Google, Ik Email, Ik Twitter en weet nog steeds niet wie ik ben.”

TLA (three letter acronym)

FYI (For Your Information), CYA (Cover Your Ass), YOLO (You Only Live Once), FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), TL;DR (Too Long Didn't Read)

Content vs Popular Culture. Little bits of gratification

Content strategy doesn't compete not just with advertising but competes with popular culture.

Little bits of gratification that we are all building right now, here and now. Creativity now has to be redefined.

Ex-publisher. Head media & marketing for Europe for a couple of years

We we launch products of wanneer we een verhaal willen vertellen, we always go to ever

Evergreen.

When we go to storytell we always go to evergreen content.

What stuff we can put of the shelf and we can reuse.

Content that is really good, easy to repurpose.

Seasonal

What the sort of content we can target, when people are thinking about purchaing products

How can you program for a one time experience, like the kings jubilee birthday

Breaking news

Brands wanna own breaking news (Travel by Stork by Air New Zealand; Prince George Born; Coca Cola, Starbucks, Oreo, Playdoh)

Naar Real-time marketing

David Shing bezit 15 jaar lang al geen televisie, dat bemoeilijkt live experiences op social. Voorbeeld: Pharell hoed ontworpen door Vivian Westwood.

Inhakers: Arby's, Pepsi.

Brand attention curve: before, now, next

Brands can not originate the story, they can actually own it

A lot of people talk about things before and they blast it when it happens, high, high, high right now

and suddenly, You never hear from them again. They treating poeple like a one night stand.

“Ik denk dat als merken zich willen verbeteren ze de brand attention curve van before, now, next moeten begrijpen”.

The Next is really important: Can you create the calm in the chaos, the chaos of consumers.

Here is the good news, at that is why you here today, this is why the word digital is still around.

Digital first, original news.

That's why the word digital is still around.

You can not do this on TV, Newspaper, Print, Radio

You can only own digital first is the only place where you can break news.

So as a brand we need to embrace it differently.

Because people live, they communicate, they get information, and entertainment fundamentelly differently than ever before.

So Ideas have to become big news fast, that's the new “new”.

The future is now, mobile local alerts, crowd-cheap payment, augmented reality games, recommendation, sementatic integration, distributed social network, wearable tech, screen-less devices, nano, ecosystem, personal transport, living services,

Live is changed, you can buy that thing. I would love to have flown from NY to here on that bloody thing.

But live has changed since I have grown up in Australia. If you know about my accent that's where I am from.

1 in 10 kids.

Freedom, independence, self expression. I'm from that generation. I'm also the first planker on the planet

Kids are now born connected.

About 36% of the children under the age of 2 can operate your devices with a touchscreen. Amazing. 5:19

Switched On. They find the difficulty to switch off. They are just one click away from their interpersonal thoughts.

Meaning personal expression is the new form of entertainment.

So when somebody asked me, who won the Oscars Shing. I said “Bloody Samsung won the Oscars dude, check that out”

Then you also have celebreties that do their own photo bombs, thought that was quite amazing as well.

“So personal expression is the new form of entertainment”

It's all about transparency, so what this transparency mean for me.

It means that you are actually not the curator of content, you are not the curator of storytelling,

you are the curator of these conversations.

Now consumers talk about their own brand, and they want to talk back to you.

The World is different. Context matters. Can you build good content and put it in smart places.

It's sounds really simple, but it is really difficult to do.

So let's cover the basis here:

Understand humans make decisions emotionally, and we justify our purchase rationally.

It doens't matter if it is a $5 bottle of water or $5 Heineken during the break or it is a $50000 car

That's just what we do.

Here's an example. In the summer time in NY city, that's 6:30 in the morning. Gues what that is.

That's not a line form Samsung nor Apple products. It's a bloody line for Cronuts. So people will line up

in 6:30 in the morning for a croissant meet donut. And by 8:30 its store opens Ansel sells out of Cronuts.

And you can only buy 2 of them. By 9 o'clock all sold out. Only can buy 2. Top of the black market. You

can buy Cronuts for 10X. Basicly it tells you that humans are idots. Because people's behaviours are

influenced by their peers. It's that how we are today.

Social Media Frenzy & Opportunities to fall in love

So if you think about it, given all these digital amplifiers the ability for you to

have your brand be bragged about less than actually you think it is. You only have 5-9 opportunities for

people to fall in love with your brand. That is actually how many people will brag about your brand in the

phyical sense. And fragmentation is getting broader. For every single new surprise experiences you see,

that are actually 20-30 versions of those. So fragmentation is actually only getting wider.

So what's going to happen. I have grown up in the information age. We are right in the middle in the age of social.

This is my all time favorite social image. (jesus, not talking about Twitter).

How good is that. That is by Greg Olsen. That really sum up the world of the follower frenzy we are today.

And then it's a landgrab for likes, people just want to have a million likes on their videos. And then, you are bullshitting me right.

You can buy likes. It's rubbish. I like the verbs: I love share, want, purchase, desire, sympatyze, love, all those things have been tauted,

for you to determine the value of your social currency. And why I like share most. 70% of consumers last month shared something.

And the vast majoriity of those shares have links, that link goes to content that you want them to consume. Maybe it even your products.

That's really important. KLM airlines in your backyard. They used to allow me to checkin to my flight, by checking out someone's facebook and LinkedIn

profile, That shit in the real world is called stalking by the way.

And then this came along. This is the country of Sweden. They are so proud of their their brand. We'll give you the keys to our Twitter account, the official Twitter account for a week and you can be the brand ampilifier for their country. That's incredible powerful. However the world has become completely overwhelming. We are here with 1900 messages a day, and 250 of them are ads. And then it becomes underwhelming, as I can't find what I am looking for. Search doesn't do what it used to do. And social is really crowded. So the fear of missing out, one of those four letter acronyms I just spoke about, the thing that is the 6th largest contributor to stress today is media overload. So the thing that we feel we are missing out on is actually killing us. Which I think is fascinating.

When it comes to holding the attention of a consumer it is about presence. It's not about clicks. It's a total different paradigm in my mind. because it is all about the attention economy. Can you actually hold in the calm of the chaos the attention of consumers. Because this is what you are up with in 2005 when the pope was sworn in, versus last year 2013. That's just the world we are in. very similar to this here. But what is also fascinating is