Simon Veksner: Will the next person to use the word ‘Storytelling’ please report for their slap
August 12 2013, 12:25 pm | | 5 Comments
By Simon Veksner
Head of Ideas at
Naked Communications
What we do is increasingly being called ‘storytelling’ but actually I think that definition is completely wrong, and it’s really starting to annoy me.
Yes, ads do often have a narrative. This brilliant spot that came out last week, for Devondale Dairy Soft butter, uses many common narrative techniques – it has an ‘inciting incident’, comedic misunderstanding, and even a twist. Not bad for a film that’s only 30 seconds long and also sells a product. But it’s still not a story. READ ON….
5 Comments
How about we stop referring to ads, regardless of length, as films…..
if you think a story has to have a conventional beginning-middle-end structure to be a story, you have no business calling yourself a writer. If only people used the term storytelling more often in advertising, we might produce great work more often.
The only people whom refer to TV ads as fil-ums’ are the imported Poms from the 1990’s and early 2000’s.
They’re almost all past their use-by-dates, so no need to worry for much longer.
Can people who are just CDs stop making up stupid titles like “Head of Ideas”.
Likes ‘ironic’s’ comment.