This article discusses the importance of storytelling in communications and its effect on creating strong bonds between people, consumers, and businesses. The article also talks about the effect of technology and interactive media on business and consumer interactions. http://adage.com/article/guest-columnists/storytelling-apple-google-chevy-led-success/229814/

Throughout ages storytelling has been used as a tool to convey our thoughts, educate ourselves and help others to shape their opinion about us. The article uses “journalists”, “teachers”, “athletic coaches” and even “moms and dads” and “little kids playing with dolls and fire engines” as examples of storytellers that each have their own tale to talk to others about.

Storytelling is also essential to the success of many businesses: how effective they interact with consumers and how well they build value with them. The article points out a creative method used by successful companies to build upon their stories; “creation myths: Jobs and Wozniak toiling away in a garage; Page and Brin penning plans for Google at Stanford; Coca-Cola’s secret formula locked in a vault”; these tales convey company cultures to consumers and help businesses to shape consumers view about the company and build value with them.

The importance of storytelling can specially be appreciated in the advertising industry as it plays a key role in creating bonds between consumers and the brands. The article uses Chevrolet and Pepsi as examples: “Chevrolet has been associated with “baseball,” “hot dogs,” “apple pie” and the American ethic for almost 100 years. Pepsi has been “the choice of a new generation” in one way, shape or form for more than half a century.”; I think diligent communication and well-crafted storytelling techniques helped these to companies to build special bonds with their consumers.

Thanks to today’s advanced technology, consumers and business are able to communicate more effectively via interactive media. Just like this very blog that we are using, consumers can leave their comments about a particular product and the feedback can then be expanded by other people’s comments. I think this type of storytelling benefits both sides as producers can improve their products based on the collective feedback ‘story’ received from consumers.

While interactive media provides a communication channel between businesses and consumers, it may have some shortcomings as well. Focusing only on boosting their efficiency, some advertising and distribution companies have missed on building ‘deep relationships’ with their consumers and instead focused on how many ‘likes’ or ‘clicks’ they are receiving; I believe that by using such techniques, not only the companies do not receive in-depth product feedbacks, but also they weaken their relationship with the users! This is a limiting factor for interactive media and needs to get improved over time.