MTV’s “Emily in Paris” is the story of an American marketing executive assigned to her agency’s Paris office. In each episode, she learns something new about the culture: She nails the pitch, there’s a montage of the campaign coming together, and then she celebrates with the brand owner at his castle. Along the way, her boyfriend (who is a chef) takes her to lunch at McDonald’s and explains the McBaguette. Emily and all her friends are dressed impeccably. And everything is shoppable on Instagram.
My colleague Chuck Gahun and I decided to go find some Emily types in real life — and to listen to how they used creativity to build immersive story-oriented experiences for their clients. They gave us a perspective that underlined how your brand experience is a story and how your customers are characters whose journeys are continuously unfolding at each point of interaction.
We asked them how they created shoppable content that enriched the story, about the principles and practices they used to craft the story with digital interactions, and about the technology they used to pull it off.
In our new report, we tell you what they did to be heroes for their clients. But here’s the catch: You can’t build these experiences from “Funnel World.” You can’t even plan every detail. Instead, you set the initial conditions and then let your experiences adapt with your audience — like how orchids adapt to their pollinators, who fall in love with them. Walmart calls this “rom-commerce.”
If you need help understanding how this plays out on the digital stage, give me a call.
Schedule an inquiry or guidance session with me to talk about how you can apply the principles of “Story World” to pivot from funnel-oriented approaches to story-oriented, cocreated experiences that deliver increased business value. I can help you and your teams make sense of this, as well as understand how to be adaptive as you (re-)align to your customers’ changing needs.
Forrester clients can read the new report from myself and Chuck Gahun, titled Unleash A Story-Oriented Commerce Experience Using Technology Creatively — Don’t Let Your Brand Story Be Caged Inside A Templated Page.
