Velocidi

I’m a technology evolutionist. Granted I just made that up, but it fits.

I don’t believe new technology is just created -- I believe it evolves, with each innovation building on the other. No printing press, no iPad. These technologies are from different centuries yet share the same DNA.

And like technology, content evolves too:

• Radio started with low-quality programming — but better content (and a world war) drove mass adoption
• Television started with little original programming, mostly re-purposing radio serials — but better content and Madison Avenue made TV must-see
• Then came the Internet, which began with grainy postage-stamp sized video and the Star Wars Kid. Now we have Old Spice, “amateurs” making HD-quality videos and former presidents doing live Q&As on Facebook
• Media is about sociology and not technology. As the stories we tell get better, the mediums we use will adapt and interfaces will morph to meet modern cultural demands. Better content will drive scale.

I know it’s cliche, but the technology “revolution” is just an evolution. What we are experiencing today is nothing less than history in motion.

Written by Velocidi’s Gary Goldhammer. Find him on Twitter @g24khamr and on his blog, http://belowthefold.typepad.com.

My daughter doesn’t think I’m cool.

She thinks I’m a geek -- not in the good Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs way, but rather in the “who gives a crap whether Picard or Kirk was the better Star Trek captain and besides isn’t the captain played by Chris Pine now?”

This used to bother me. After all, my life is all about early adoption. I have the latest gadgets, know the important cultural trends and participate in All Things Online. Yet to my 12-year-old I’m just another old dude trying to act young -- and failing miserably.

“Blogging is stupid, Twitter is lame and Facebook is dumb.” So says the Next Generation.

Thank God.

Yes, believe it or not, appearing out of touch to a 12-year-old makes me profoundly happy. The last thing I want is for her and her friends to take my technology lead.

Young people are supposed to disagree with we “older” folks. They are supposed to think we’re lame and do the exact opposite of what we think is cool.

This is how innovation happens. Not through agreement and replication, but via rebellion and transformation. It doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong, only that the younger generation believes we’re full of crap and an embarrassment to humanity.

Every generation needs to chart its own path. My daughter doesn’t tweet or check-in, you know what she does instead? She texts, she goes to movies, she reads like crazy. She never uses her e-mail (Zuck got that one right) but she likes listening to her iPod or playing games on the iPad. She talks on the phone and video chats with her relatives and friends.

While I use a social network, she actually has one. She uses technology rather than allowing it to use her, or make her feel as if she needs to be connected at all times.

Of course Blogging isn’t stupid, Twitter isn’t lame and Facebook isn’t dumb -- they are important and transformative technologies, driven as well as caused by societal shifts were are just beginning to understand. But that doesn’t mean new generations shouldn’t challenge and change our perceptions.

You think Facebook sucks? Great, then create something better. You think Twitter doesn’t speak to you? Perfect, make something that does. You think adults are out of touch? Awesome, then call us on it and show us where we’re wrong.

Just don’t agree with us. The future demands it.

Written by Velocidi’s Gary Goldhammer. Find him on Twitter @g24khamr and on his blog, http://belowthefold.typepad.com.

Mercedes-Benz brings us the story of a baby named “Crash,” a miracle to his parents for surviving a collision that, by the looks of the car his mom was driving, should have been impossible. It’s a chilling video piece, dramatic yet real: produced, yet personal.

But that’s just part of the story. There are also copies of the accident report, a freeway map to show where the accident occurred, and another video of the baby’s post-accident first steps. Another story about an aspiring athlete nearly killed by a drunken driver connects to pictures of the totaled vehicle and a live highway video feed.

Each of these narratives continue beyond the microsite. Web and iAds show us the storytellers but this time emphasize safety features. A slogan underscores the safety message and links to more information about Mercedes cars.

This is not the first experiment in telling a story differently based on the medium in which it’s told, with each line of narrative adding new information rather than repackaging. The Living Stories project tried it with journalism, and NBC’s “Heroes” did it with original webisodes and digital comic books.

Life is linear but living is not--and neither should be our storytelling.

As traditional online and social channels multiply, the way we tell and consume stories needs to change. We can’t express the same story the same way across media platforms--new distribution methods, from blogs and Twitter to tablets and smart phones, require that we tell distinct elements of a single narrative depending on the channel.

Each story layer contributes to the whole--the layers rely on each other, held together by the connective tissue of human emotion.

Welcome to the Age of the Layered Narrative.

Our Brains, Rewired
Today, right now, should be a new golden age for storytelling. We have all the information we could ever want at our fingertips. And that is the problem.

This blessing of plenty is also a curse. There is so much, coming at us so fast, that our brains can’t handle it. So in a desperate attempt at cognitive self-defense, we create more distance. Stories are now “content,” and words like “post” and “engagement” are the cold lingua franca for the Always On generation.

Our species craves stories; to us, stories are the intellectual fuel that drive us and bind us to each other. Thousands of years wired our brains for narratives, but a couple decades of e-mail and the Internet ripped our circuits and rewired our synapses, turning our minds into short attention span theaters.

Nevertheless, time is an arrow and technology is a bullet train--we can’t turn back nor should we. Our brains have adapted to a world of social media, 140 character bursts and life at light speed.

Fortunately, while our world can’t change, the way in which we approach storytelling can.

The Solution: The Layered Narrative
If stories bring us together, then we need to make stories--narratives--the universal DNA of digital communication.

People have shared stories for centuries--from cave carvings to campfires and books to television, this is how culture passes through the generations. We tell stories, embellish them and create our own. Storytelling is as universal as breathing.

Many brands, however, haven't done this very well. The “early days” of social media marketing--you know, 2005 or so--saw brands simply putting their commercials on YouTube or posting press releases on their blogs. The "stories" were meant to be consumed, not shared. Narrative became lecture and story became content. The digital world expanded but how brands approached this new reality did not.

Layered narratives allow more space for interaction, sharing, collaboration and contribution. Every unique layer makes the source material stronger and the story more engaging. And because our involvement is essential to the story, we allow the story to transcend technology. We become the “social objects.” 

Research tells us that people need to be exposed to information multiple times before they remember or, more importantly, before they trust it. Layered narratives fulfill this need for a variety of touch points, giving people room both to consume and explore a story as well as inject their own layers.

And if people can find and assemble these layers, so should search. Smarter algorithms and social data will put the river of content into context, giving preferential treatment to layered storytelling. The parts will gel and rise together.

Layered narratives help ensure that marketing is not just integrated but that it also cohesive. It’s time to clear the way for a new generation of brand storytellers who abhor silos, crave interaction and embrace leaps of function and format as well as faith.

Multiple layers, varied content--but in the end, one powerful story.

Written by Velocidi’s Gary Goldhammer. Find him on Twitter @g24khamr and on his blog, http://belowthefold.typepad.com.