Insights

Native advertising, content marketing, curation, death. Ah, I love our 2013 advertising buzzwords. I also love seeing companies that are perfectly positioned to take advantage of these buzzwords. This week’s Agency of the Week is just that. They also going to be unhappy with me because I call  them the dirty words “advertising agency.”

StoryWorldwide calls itself a “post-advertising” agency that engages consumers through storytelling. The agency sure makes it sound like it’s the right agency for the right time. By the way, the “death” from above is about the looming death of advertising as we know it. I think that Digiday writes about the death of traditional advertising agencies every day. I’m not saying they are wrong. But, it has become an ever evergreen theme for them.

Here is the essence of the StoryWorldwide story – it’s a nice clear message in a word of fuzzy agency messaging:

In this post-advertising age, we work to connect brands directly to customers by telling engaging stories that audiences actually want to hear.

The idea of building audience engagement is not wholly unique, but StoryWorldwide grabbed the idea long before other agencies started to glom on. Plus, they managed to grab the brand name “story.”

StoryWorldwide goes further with this competitive stake-in-the-ground…

Today, brands are competing with filmmakers, writers and entertainers, not other brands.

Story is the world’s first post-advertising agency, applying established storytelling techniques and talent to marketing and communications.

Our work includes integrated campaigns and through-media content for clients such as Lexus, Unilever, Estee Lauder Companies and J&J.

The agency delivers a complete package by “creating stories, telling stories and spreading stories.”

StoryWorldwide is interestingly worldwide, with offices in Asia, Europe and North America. They seem to be cooking with a blue-chip client list that includes Bank of America, Chile’s Epica Wines, Columbia University, Holland America (talk about an industry that needs some good news), Lexus and Starbucks to name a few. They also own a Cannes Lion Bronze.

Why Do I Dig?

StoryWorldwide hammers home a few key, compelling points.

• They have positioned themselves to own the storytelling niche. What client wouldn’t want to tell a story? Hey, they love their stories.
• Their niche has legs. They can do digital, video, publishing and installations. They can even do good old-fashioned TV if they wanted to.
• Business development should be a slam-dunk.
• The agency likes to sound smart. This is always good news for nervous CMO’s.

Here is one of their videos (they have 20 on their YouTube channel.) At 52,000 views it has a decent view count. For a comparative YouTube view count, Ogilvy’s “Storytelling: Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland on Defining the Narrative” has only 900 views.

Last week’s Agency of the Week was Jess3.