Associative memory studies show that brands that are closely connected with a product struggle to get beyond line extensions, but brands that are connected with an idea can go wherever that idea allows them to go. A storyworld is a powerful way for a brand to build and expand an intriguing mythology that goes beyond the product and invites brand fans to enter and explore a whole branded world.
What is a storyworld?
A storyworld is our name for this expanded environment which a brand inhabits. It’s also known as a narrative universe or a metaverse. The key driver for such a world is a powerful mythology, made up of the structures, relationships, rules and ideas that hold that universe together. The power of a universe is that it is non-sequential: it literally gives the brand space to roam, uncover, segueway, go back, elaborate … It works well for brands with big imaginations or who want to offer immersive experiences.
Not just in entertainment
While many people will be familiar with the movie and gaming franchises that use this approach, business-to-consumer and business-to-business brands can also build out brand stories with structures, relationships, rules and ideas that keep people engaged with the brand.
Indeed, the concept can be applied to any situation where you need to tell an integrated story. A storyworld is a particularly powerful mechanism if you’re planning a long-release brand and you need to maintain attention and loyalty.
The most well-known exponent of course is Disney, which introduces stories with characters, but then not only elaborates on those stories and the worlds they inhabit, but introduces new stories for side-characters that take on a life, world and brand of their own.
One of the key challenges for any storyteller, if you want to tell an enduring story, is to strike the balance between history and future. Storyworlds work for brands looking to scale because they support expansion, both literally and psychologically.
Some examples of storyworlds
Many stories are self-encased. They exist without reference to anything else around them. But gaming companies and corporations like Disney in particular have taken branded storytelling to the universal level: creating connected storylines and worlds that revolve around a group of characters that people care about. Star Wars is a longstanding example.
Done well, storyworlds deliver powerful stickability. Think Taylor Swift. In a storyworld, the brand tells stories that involve people in the present and offer them a range of ways to engage. At the same time, they use backstories, slow-release narratives, experiences and moments of discovery such as Swift’s “Easter eggs” to keep their audience involved and immersed over a long period of time.
Getting that balance of continuity and discovery right is something every brand wrestles with. As my friend Christine Arden puts it so well, the best brand storytellers are consistently surprising and surprisingly consistent.
For a B2C brand, that mythology may well focus on the product itself and the world it inhabits. For a B2B brand, it may be driven by your wish to shape history, technology or both.
Intel’s storyworld
Intel bases its storytelling on a mythology based around Moore’s Law. Their products loom larger because the story of those products is steeped in an idea bigger than their immediate functionality.
The origins of Moore’s Law date back to 1965 when Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder of Intel, observed that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit had doubled between 1960 and 1965.
Later, he evolved his observation to state that the number of components per single chip would double every two years. In time, the idea, which started out as an observation on emerging trends, became the guiding principle for the semiconductor industry, treated almost as a rule of physics in long-term planning and setting targets.
The difficulty for Intel is that the world of Moore’s Law is becoming harder to realise. Nevertheless, it remains a powerful storytelling factor that encompasses so much of what they bring to market.
Two important out-takes that apply to both B2C and B2B storyworlds. You need to tell a story beyond the product. But, ironically, the universe you are building needs to make sense to people because of their understanding of the brand.
Not without its challenges
For a start, you need to keep people wanting more, which requires ongoing inventiveness to reveal parts of the world they don’t know well or have yet to discover.
Another difficulty is building on-ramps, so that new people can join the branded world at any time and not feel lost or overwhelmed.
The third is that the world itself must keep pace with the business and vice versa. For example, if you add scale without story, you gain weight and footprint but lose immersion. If you add story without experience, you risk lifting expectations but missing out on potential revenue.
Storyworlds are three dimensional
B2C and B2B as examples of where a storyworld can work – but you can apply the same principles to any situation where you need to tell an integrated story. For example, we often use a version of this idea to define how the elements of an investor reporting suite will work together.
Our approach to defining a storyworld is not dissimilar to how we define the boundaries of the Principled Culture. There we use longitude and latitude to frame how people interact with the culture. In building a storyworld, we apply the following:
Wide Lens
Defines the overall timeframe for your storyworld and what is and is not included. A heritage brand, for example, will span a longer period than a start-up or a challenger brand. So, some Wide Lens will focus more on the past to explain where they are heading, whereas others may lean on their strategic plan or their manifesto to concentrate on their trajectory. This is also where we set out the overall shape of the story.
Depthfinder
Defines the levels of details that you want to go to, and the relationships between those details. Again, some brands will want to develop a detailed backstory or side-stories that they can reveal over time; others, not so much.
Chronology
What elements are revealed when – and why. Some supporting storylines for example may work in the present to support what you are looking to release now. Others may look back or forward to provide context for a current story.
Ready to build a storyworld around your brand?
The key requirement is understanding the stories within the story and how, when, where and why you will use these to help people discover something new. If you’re interested in building such a brand, Long Arc is our storytelling workshop. It’s an opportunity to appraise what your story is and the best ways for you to articulate it. More on how we can help here.
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