Earlier today, our friends over at Digital Buzz covered Dentsu’s campaign for Sapporo in Canada. The agency has created a competition based around the beer’s brewing process, which asks users to collect special scrolls inside “a large interactive world designed to bring the story to life”. If a player finds all 15, they’re then entered into the draw to win a trip to Japan. However, the interactive aspect didn’t quite align with the journey the brand was trying to take people on, and the results – including a mere 26 Facebook fans – speak for themselves.

On Friday we spent some time discussing the increase in brands wanting to ‘tell stories’ within their ad campaigns during 2010 and into 2011. But what’s the secret to success? We’ve highlighted three of our favourites and pulled out some of the reasons we think they worked well;

Gatorade’s Replay shows how to make an authentic story-led campaign like no other.

The brand wanted to target men over 30 who found it difficult to get back into sport, or just don’t have the time to do so. To inspire this demographic into action, it revisited an old school rivalry between two high school football teams, putting the original players through a two-month training schedule and replaying their final game (which had previously ended in a tie). The success was phenomenal, sales in the region that the match was played in soared by 63% and the campaign generated more than $3m worth of media coverage. Gatorade tapped into strong emotions attached to an existing situation (one that’s replicated in almost every school in America) instead of trying to create them from scratch. What’s more, the theme fits perfectly with the product.

Similarly tapping into a pre-existing emotion is legacy brand Marmite’s Marmarati campaign, which we’ve covered at length here on Reputation Online. The popularity of this evangelist-focused activity is based on multiple factors (including most obviously, senior management buy-in), but one of the recurring pieces of feedback from those involved was the sheer quality of the offline components. Print, design, attention to detail, hiring an actor to retain the consistent feeling of being part of a secret society – even the Marmite canapés and location of the ‘inauguration’. Even for a campaign that’s meant to grow via social media, tangible experiences are often the best way to plant the seed and get something talked about.

Using high quality objects to surprise and delight was the cornerstone of Wieden & Kennedy’s efforts for the film Coraline as well.  First, the agency created 50 unique boxes and filled them with desirable relics from the movie, as well as a key to a secret part of the main website that only the recipients could access. Part two took this a step further and sparked mass intrigue by putting objects in the right place, at the right time. Throughout this phase, the marketing team placed mysterious objects both on and offline to build curiosity among the public about Coraline.

Following a huge amount of excitement from the original 50 influencers, just as mainstream press were catching on, a website was launched that only required a quick Google search to find the code to. Beautifully designed posters starting cropping up in places with high footfall and interactive storefronts appeared that included everything from a ‘Meet the Cast’ style interview to an interactive button-eye portrait of yourself as well as holograms. Nike even launched trainers called ‘Coraline Dunks’ that people interacting with any of the component of the campaign could win in their size. Then came stage three, with billboards, television and radio ads galore.

Telling stories, no matter how easy it might appear to be, is a tough thing for a brand to get right. So many times, the easy route is to get fans/customers to do it themselves. Companies attempt to create user-generated content by offering up prizes as an incentive, or try to build something heartwarming but miss the mark wildly. Maintaining a high quality of production offline, realising that authenticity trumps all, and then choosing the right moment to reveal real-world objects are three ways to do it. But storytelling requires something a lot more emotive than that, and there’s most certainly no definitive answer for how to create it.

Tags: brands, coraline, dentsu, gatorade, marmarati, marmite, nike, replay, sapporo, storytelling