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Tech Digital Marketing Storytelling

This ain't no age of technology – but it is the age of the story

By Ethan Decker, VP of insight & strategy

March 19, 2015 | 4 min read

Supposedly, we live in the age of technology.

All the news is about tech companies. Silicon Valley. Mobile computing. Tablets. Wearables. Autonomous vehicles.

The covers of all our business magazines are a revolving door of tech companies: Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Alibaba, Uber, Square. If you build cars—one of the most expensive things a person might ever buy—the only way to get on the cover is to be Tesla.

In marketing, we flock to technology like pigeons around the Pigeon Lady. Augmented reality! 3D printing! Adaptive websites! Digital coupons! Holograms! Vine content! Pinterest promotions!

The only way to help our kids get ahead in this digital future is apparently STEM: Science. Tech. Math. Engineering. Go to a magnet school and end up at Stanford or MIT.

Meanwhile, public funding for art has been flat for 30 years, schools are cutting music and art, and theater is struggling. Kids these days speak in emojis. They don’t use punctuation and they have the attention span of a flea.

It would seem that the robots have won. But that’s crap. That’s a really selective view of this age.

That view has clearly never seen a Peter Jackson movie. He can’t tell a story in less than 10 hours, with an extended director’s cut on DVD.

That view neglects binge watching, where people spend whole weekends absorbed in these long, complex, nuanced stories like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones.

That view neglects the rise of artisan culture, which is all about slowing down, building things by hand, being connected to a place and rooted in your origins. Picture gorgeous videos with things that are out of focus, and leather-aproned guys with beards and mellow alt-indie-folk music.

That view neglects how brands, packaging, advertising and even tchotchkes are more artistic and aesthetic than ever before. Design is no longer the secret sauce; it’s the price of entry. That view also ignores how even standing in the aisles of a store, people want to know the back-story of the products they buy and the companies that make them.

That view neglects how all these technology companies rely on the arts. They produce limited editions with artists and designers. They film these warm, emotional ads. They suckerfish themselves onto music and videos and events and celebrities. They’re buying garages so they can have a good origin story.

I would argue that this is the age of the story.

Why? Because stories are how we relate to things. How we learn about them, how we ascribe meaning to them, and how we figure out how to feel about them. Stories also connect us to our family and our culture.

Stories have a huge role in technology. And if we want to succeed, in marketing or manufacturing, we damn well better understand how stories work, and why they work on us the way that they do.

Ethan Decker is VP of insight & strategy at The Integer Group. He’s a PhD in urban ecology and human evolution, a graphic novel collector, and a cheesesteak snob.

Tech Digital Marketing Storytelling

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