What Color Has Your Story?

When was the last time, you thought about "color"? When your child ask you about your favorite color? Or when you thought about coloring the white walls of your home, as this seems to be the latest trend now? Or did color strike you in the last meeting with your marketing agency when they mentioned that the 30 year old logo of your company needs some polishing?

Color your Communication
Have you every thought about the importance of color for communication? And even more: for Storytelling? If not you definitely should have a look into Lewis Bond´s video "Color in Storytelling" - and you will see. Bond presents a wonderful collage of movies and films which all work so powerful with color. And he explains in a brilliant way why you should care about the hue, saturation and value of each color in your next story.

I am not talking about Hollywood. I am talking about Corporate Communication, Corporate Storytelling and Corporate Film. PR-Experts and marketing manager definitely have to learn more about the elements of a good story - visual story. And color is one of the areas to improve here. Here some examples:

Color helps the audience to immerge into your story

Ok, for a color brand like Dulux it seems easy to tell stories with the power of colors. But is it really that easy? With the story "Colourless Future" Dulux definitely presents its brand as a visionary visual storyteller with the courage to compete against Hollywood. The Science Fiction story fascinates its audience with a the cruel vision of a world where White is the dominating color and all other colors are banned or have to go "underground". Have a look how the future of color may look like - a great story by Dulux: "Colorless Future."

Color evokes emotions

To promote its new product Japanese cosmetic brand Lux hacked Google Maps and allowed its consumers with an App to paint any street or location on Google Maps in Pink - colored with a beautiful cherry blossoms bloom. Which color is better than pink to evoke the emotion of calmness and pleasure - like Lux perfumes.

Color supports our message

It´s not by coincidence that the main color of the award winning campaign "Tree concert Berlin" is green. Berlin is a green city. But everyday it loses 2000 trees which are affected by the polution of the city. To safe these trees the NGO "Friends of the Earth Germany" with the help of BBDO and Ketchum Pleon came up with the donation program "Tree Concert". Have a look into the case study of this program and see how the color supports the big idea and the key message of the whole campaign.

Color is a beast
It´s save to say that color is a very complex beast." - this are the words of graphic artist Mark D. West in his book "Stories that Move Mountains" who explains in detail how meaningful color in different cultures can be and how cultural sensitive Visual Storytellers have to be by using a specific color. But it´s not only the cultural contect - Eastern or Western  - which makes it complicated. It´s the usage, meaning and association of the color itself - in any culture.

Just take Red
The color Red stands for blood, danger and anger (see also the color of the character "Anger" in Pixars latest movie "Inside Out"). But it also stands for fire, warmth, passion and love. Visual Storytelling and the smart usage of color is more than just a checklist of associations and a fixed code of meanings. Every story needs its unique context and its own color code. So most important of all is that we - in marketing and PR - start to dive into the tool box of Visual Storytelling, become more sensible about each of its tools and learn how to use them. So: What´s the color of your next story?

The most relevant stories

"The most relevant stories connect on a personal level," this are the words of Beth Comstock, head of marketing and innovation of GE. And  she convesses claims, that in a world where more machines are talking, more people are talking, in a world where we are bombarded with information, simplicity is the key to success - and stories make our conversations much easier. Especially for companies with complicated products and services who want to be memorable and easy to understand. Whatch her talk on Corporate Storytelling at Future of Storytelling on Vimeo.

The Endless Story: Storytelling in Games is different

We should acknowledge that storytelling in games can be slightly different and has to in contrast to novels or movies. In our enthusiasm about Joseph Campbells world-formular "the Hero´s Journey" we might forget that not every plot of a computergame follows his rules and there are good reasons.

Douglas Rushkoff alerted us in his book Present Shock  about the "Narrative Colaps". The end of linear stories in the 21st century. Why? Well, since the 50s remote control has teached us how to interrupt tv shows, to jump from channel to channel and from story to story. We got used to switch from plot to plot and learned to anticipate story lines. Today it looks like that we´ve overcome  Aristotle´s plot structure or Gustav Freytag´s dramatic arch or pyramid. Are we bored about this old paradigm? Have we seen and heard to much?

In fact modern stories in social media and games seem to be just the opposite of traditional storytelling. In traditional storytelling we hang on a story as long as possible, we follow the hero through his journey, his call for adventure, his quests and trials and we can´t wait to come to the end. We read a book as quick as possible to find out how the hero´s journey might end, to learn how the hero will cope with all the mess and how he will return to his old world. Whether it´s a happy or a bad ending.

Storytelling in games is different. Joseph Campbell´s Hero´s Journey get´s a slight different interpretation and what´s key is the different exposure of the "ending" of a story. While in traditional storytelling the recipient wants to know the resolution of the end as soon as possible, the gamer in contrast wants to avoid the end as long as possible. The principle of a modern game is NOT to come to an end. A principle which Rushkoff calls the "endless story" - somehow described by Michael Ende in his novel "Neverending Story" but even better analysed by James Carse in his theory about "Finite and Infinite Games". And that´s just one difference between traditional and modern storytelling. The team of Extra Credits is doing a great job in explaining how the Hero´s Journey is still a useful concept to explain Video- and Computergames but Game-developer see Joseph Campbell´s theory more as a a framework than a rule. Two videos explain the differences: Part 1 - Part 2.

Stories are Journeys

And Lufthansa knows how to tell them - without any branding at all. Lovely. Have a look into this .
campaign

Irish Storytelling

Another great storytelling from Tullamore Drew Irish Wiskey Watch this video - ad find out about
the Hero and his journey

What makes a great story? A Hero

One of the most important corner stones of a great story: the hero. And when you follow Joseph Campbell there is only one story about the hero which is embedded into all stories. There is only one story: the hero´s journey. A wonderful animated video by Matthew Winkler is presenting you this idea. You definitely should watch this: What makes a hero. (photo: Petra Sammer@documenta13)