A number of years back, a good friend of mine was adamant that if there was someone who was willing to pay him to go out and tell stories, he would have taken it up and happily lived out the rest of his days. A large part of this, he proposed was due to the assertion that the true art of story telling in the every day arena has been lost in the mists of time, we were all the poorer because of it and a champion of sorts was needed to roam the countryside resurrecting this lost art.

The whole assertion of whether the art of story telling is truly lost of course is a moot point, but what this brief illustration does highlight, is that the world wide web today is the perfect place to start a story-telling adventure should the aforementioned scenario be played out. This is because:

• there is an unlimited audience
• there is an unlimited timeframe
• there is unlimited archival capacity

Furthermore when this is related to doing business, the opportunity to tell stories on the internet is all about your brand. So what does the word brand really mean? In The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier he explains that a brand is not your logo, your corporate identity document or a product you sell, but that it is the gut feeling that a person has about your product, service or organisation. A demonstration of this concept can be seen in Apple’s clever Get a Mac advertising campaign where they make direct comparisons between their own products and services using two actors – Justin Long as the Mac and John Hodgman as the PC.

In the majority of the ads, there’s no talk of product specs, or software features – they hardly talk about Macs at all, but they don’t really need to, because they’re telling a story. And the narrative of the story is that PC’s suck and are riddled with divers problems, and Macs are awesome and if you buy one you’ll immediately turn into Justin Long (or the female equivalent) and girls will flock to your side to watch your iMovie creations. Arguably, Apple are the most gut-feeling-a-licious technology brand in the world, and accordingly they have a specific approach to their advertising promotion.

So that begs the question, “In the changing face of media what is your approach to placing your brand in the hearts and mind’s of your customers?”. Below is an excellent graph from baekdal.com that shows changing media trends over a disproportionate amount of time. Although I think the definitions of media are slightly wonky as Newspaper, Radio and Television are platforms with a diverse range of implementations – and on the graph from Websites to Targeted these fields should probably be replaced with desktop computers, moving into mobile phones, with an allowance somewhere for e-book readers and the fresher than fresh Apple i-pad that no one quite knows what to do with yet that sits somewhere between the desktop computer and mobile phone. What follows that, is most probably ubiquitous computing in a rainbow of shapes and forms.

In a presentation I gave recently on business and the internet, I stated that “Not since the introduction of television, has business had such an opportunity to deliver their brand into the hearts and minds of their audience”. Today we live in the Wild-West of the Internet age where there is great opportunity, great risk and plenty of Cowboys. It’s often difficult to know where to start, and therefore building a website (your online brand) can be a bit of a daunting process. It’s vital that you find someone that listens to your story and understands your business. It’s only through understanding that your business story (brand) can be translated into an online experience that engages your customers. If you need a kick start, feel free to use our requirements questionnaire to start to build a picture of what you might need.