Content 2020: How Coca Cola sees Storytelling in the Center of their Marketing

On Chris Schaumann's blog "Advertising 3.0" I have stumbled upon this Video by Coca Cola explaining their Content Strategies till the year 2020. It offers some very interesting ideas (and lot of buzzy sounding words ;-) ).

I really like that they still see storytelling in the center of their marketing activities. Because even

if "markets are conversations" - you need a good story to start a conversation and to keep it going. So that is not that new. But the social web - with its more direct and participatory forms of communication - forces us to remember that a great storyteller should always be able to react to his audience. Despite all the new technology an old picture comes into my mind: Think about a Bard in ancient times travelling from city to city, explaining the world through his stories. Like him a modern brand needs to tell stories while fluidly reacting to audience feedback.

This is not an easy task. Because the audience doesn't always know what it wants to hear. Or it changes his mind very quickly depending of their context of Life.

Every Bard knew that a new story always poses a threat. If the audience don't like it, they will throw tomatoes. If the King doesn't like it, you may loose your head. But telling only save (pretested) stories (those everybody likes an knew) won't make you famous. And sooner or later your stories will bore people (with the same effects : Tomatoes and Hangmens).

So striving for "Content Excellence" - telling great stories means - to be ready for an adventure. An adventure with many creative and corporate obstacles. So whoever builds such stories - he will need a lot of persistence: