5 Digital Storytelling Mistakes You’re Probably Making

Great brands have great stories, are you telling yours in a way that’s allowing you to connect with your audience?

Today, we’re talking about the 5 biggest mistakes brands and businesses make in digital storytelling. Over the years we’ve helped many brands tell their stories in video and online and have found a pattern of 5 common pitfalls:

Trying to tell a perfect story vs. a human story
Not having an origin story
Having no purpose or call to action
Forgetting how humans make decisions
Trying to be the hero of the story

While discussing these 5 points, we covered a lot of ground when it comes to marketing, storytelling, and human behavior. We also talked about:

Brand storytelling over the long haul
Boring corporate videos
Being human vs trying to game search engines

In order for your brand's story to really resonate with your audience, it has to be a human story. Your story must illicit emotion and allow for people to connect with your brand. Share on X

Being relevant and authentic
The power of video to convey emotion
The importance of an origin story
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek
Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk on the golden circle
The theme songs to the The Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island and why producer Sherwood Schwartz thought they were important
Congruency in your brand’s purpose and individual calls to action
A marketer’s responsibility to have a purpose for creative output and to show results
How people use emotion to make decisions instead of logic
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
A study by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio
Childhood development and making decisions
Superhero movies and the hero’s journey
The customer as the hero of their story

“We want to be the hero and save the day for the customer, but that’s not how the customer thinks: The customer wants to be the hero.” -Michael T Johnson