Alfred Malmros

I have a teacher in PR who really opened up the world of storytelling for me. I’ve been in contact with it before through rhetoric but I never seen it systematically applied to communications before. Advertising has a lot to learn from the PR field in this matter and it’s quite an efficient tool of analysis to use. Looking at Wieden + Kennedy’s Nokia campaign, Somebody Else’s Phone it’s interesting to see how important it is with a good story.

The idea is that you can follow three character’s lives via their mobile phones, you can add them on Facebook, read their texts, send them texts, see pictures, see what they’re doing tomorrow etc. They’ve created complete identities and you can follow the character’s pursuit in achieving…I don’t know what. This is a complete social media mash up using bascially any tool you can to follow a modern teenager, and I think that the target audience would be attracted to this transparancy, that they would follow them like sophisticated soap operas, if, if, if, there was a story. After 20 minutes on the campaign site I’ve read a couple of texts and I think that the character Anna, is trying to make it as a model but that’s about it.

There’s nothing that makes me wonder, makes me want to connect the dots, go back in history and find the reason for something. No matter how well executed it is, how good the idea is, it’s evident that the story is lacking, if there’s no story there’s no depth and you’re not engaging anyone. You’re simply spamming as usual.

If you want to text Anna, here’s her number: +447595780370