Immersive Digital StorytellingConnecting with Audiences through Long-Form Content

Overview

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While the digital community has optimized the

creation and delivery of short-form content,

it has become clear that telling a story should

not be restricted to solely a sound bite. If

anything, the massive collection of short-form

content generated over the past few years has

highlighted not only the void around, but the

current challenges facing the creation of long-

form, immersive experiences on the internet.

Unfortunately, telling stories in this way

remains expensive and inaccessible for most

businesses given the available technology.

1 The Evolution of Sound Bite Stories Part 1 explores how the evolution of technology

has impacted the societal dynamic around storytelling.

2 The Resurgence of Long-form Storytelling Part 2 addresses the resurgence of

interactive, long-form storytelling. We review several creative ways businesses and publications are using

immersive content experiences to tell stories, market products, and communicate messages.

3 The Storytelling Technology Gap Part 3 examines how the lack of a viable tool for

accessible, in-house storytelling has created a gap in the marketplace.

4 Introducing Fable Part 4 reviews noteworthy features of Fable, one solution filling the

marketplace gap discussed in Part 3.

5 Concluding Thoughts on Storytelling Part 5 concludes with an overview of the

elements of successful digital storytelling.

As the demand for rich, in-depth content grows, how can organizations navigate the technology gap and

become better online storytellers?

Storytelling has always existed as a foundation of human interaction.

Regardless of the cultural or environmental specifics at play, as long as there

has been a need to exchange information, storytelling has provided humans

with a conduit to share their experiences. While the mediums, styles, and

formatting in which storytelling occurs shift to meet the trends of the day, at

its core, a good story is one that captures the hearts, minds, and attentions

of the audience in question. Whether that be in the more traditional forms

of oral histories, novels, and theatrical narratives, or more modern shapes

of videographies or data visualizations, storytelling always aims to foster

connection with others.

The Impact of the Internet

The advent of the internet marked a significant paradigm shift for

storytellers worldwide. The speed at which both the breadth and depth of

a subject could be retrieved, shared, altered, and managed far surpassed

the previously substantial impact of the printing press. In its infancy, the

internet was a flurry of people merely excited to make their information

available to others on this massive, interconnected network. Little attention

was paid to the relationships between, the display of, or users’ engagement

with the stories being shared.

However, fast forward by about a decade and storytellers found themselves

in a dramatically different landscape. While a gigantic repository of

knowledge had been created, there was no way to really navigate it in an

efficient or productive manner, let alone weave that knowledge together

into a narrative. Naturally, people set out to solve this exact problem, which

ushered in the age of the content management system (CMS).

Volumes Upon Volumes

While computers may possess the processing power necessary to quickly and

efficiently navigate a large collection of items, humans aren’t quite so adept.

The same influx of information and data that was once novel and exciting

rapidly transformed into a self-imposed burden that needed to be dealt with.

CMS’s caught on quickly in response to demand and rapidly became the

primary platform for organizations to edit, modify, and publish their digital

content. As a point of unified integration for nearly any content format,

the CMS was an incredible boon for short-form content, particularly in the

form of articles and blogs. Social media plugins, data streams, internal

video hosting, and other multimedia content providers support more

sophisticated short-form content today than ever before. Both PAC-12

Part 1:

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The Evolution of Sound Bite Stories

and the NBA suite of sites, for example, present multimedia content by

integrating content and data from services like Ooyala, Brightcove, and other

internal video hosting platforms.

This brings us to today, where short-form content has been supposedly

boiled down to a science. As a result, we’ve witnessed a proliferation of

“click bait” headlines, animated GIFs, and simplified lists. Media sites like

Buzzfeed have perfected the “news snacking” content type, catering to

those with short, sharp bursts of attention. Much of the content served up

today is in some variation of a sound bite story - nothing more than a few

seconds for fear the attention will be lost.

Short-form content is created fast and consumed faster. Examples include

things like tweets, status updates, short infographics, Instagram photos,

Snapchat images, Vine videos, short blog posts, and articles under 350

words. As new short-form platforms spring up with dizzying speed,

excitement about their possibilities have gripped some in the digital world,

causing some writers and speakers to declare (a bit hyperbolically) that “the

future is short-form,” “brands must master short-form storytelling,”

and “short-form video is the future of marketing.”

While short-form content most certainly has its time and place, it is clearly

not capable of telling the whole story alone; it is not truly providing an

immersive experience for the audience that allows for a deeper connection

to be established.

Battling the Filter

As products of our environment, storytellers and audiences alike have

internalized the behaviors of skimming, summarizing, paraphrasing,

and filtering. Such a response is essentially mandated in a world that

seemingly never ceases to accelerate and continues to multiply in volume

as people become more and more connected. Yet, even with a proliferation

of content to satiate this incessant need for “fresh” and “new,” there is

clearly a longing for something more substantial. A desire to find a deeper

connection in a world full of superficial ones. A request for the balance and

interplay between short-form and long-form to be restored.

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Continued

While short-form content may be great for keeping pace and driving traffic, it is long-form content that builds lasting, long-term relationships that

keep your audience coming back time and time again.

In contrast to short-form, long-form content can be defined as in-depth

content designed to give its audience a large amount of detail and

information. Over the past two to three years, there’s been a major

resurgence in long-form content, accompanied by a growing recognition

of its importance in digital marketing and journalism. Long-form allows

organizations to demonstrate their expertise and build credibility to an

extent that is just not possible in a shorter format. In addition to requiring a

deeper investment in time and attention from potential customers, long-form

content does not suffer from the short virtual lifespan that plagues its short-

form cousins. The average tweet, for instance, only has about 18 minutes

of prime time before it becomes largely irrelevant. A white paper’s deep

technical dive, on the other hand, may attract readers for months, if not years.

Long-Form Journalism

Businesses and publications are getting more creative about how they

use immersive content experiences to tell stories, expose products, and

communicate brand messages. The most successful are those which treat

the internet as a medium in and of itself, not just a location for content.

In the sweet spot between ‘list-icles’ and solid blocks of unpalatable text,

some media companies have fused journalism and web design to effectively

tell powerful stories.

The New York Times has been at the forefront of this effort, launching

into the digital storytelling scene with the “wildly ambitious” Snow Fall in

2012, a six-part narrative of John Branch’s account of a deadly avalanche in

Washington state. The project was recognized in April 2013 with a Pulitzer

Prize for feature writing. Other publications like the Washington Post

have experimented with new storytelling models for long-form pieces,

and increasingly employ clever data visualizations to make statistics

more approachable. More recently, MSNBC’s Dying Cities uses an endless

scrolling mechanism to keep users engaged as they move through the story

of the struggling American Rust Belt.

In an interview with USA Today, emerging media columnist Barb Palser

points out that heightened interest in long-form coincides with the

proliferation of mobile devices. Data from the Pew Research Center’s

Project for Excellence in Journalism reinforces this. In a study on the

Future of Mobile News, Pew found that 73% of tablet owners access long-

form content either regularly or sometimes; 19% do so every day. About 60%

of those users read two to three long articles in a sitting, and another 17%

read four or more. Tablets and phones, Palser says, are “more conducive

to spending time on content… [Mobile devices are] more analogous to

carrying around a newspaper or a magazine.”

Many publications now employ teams of experienced developers solely

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The Resurgence of Long-Form Content

for the purpose of creating long-form articles, recognizing the draw they

have on readers. According to Palser, “Investing in quality talent and

producing great examples of reporting and interactive storytelling can

have an important brand-building effect.”

Building Brand Stories with Creative Interactives

It’s not only media companies that have embraced immersive, long-form

content as their preferred medium for storytelling. The Council on Foreign

Relations (CFR), a think tank and publisher, explored a visual storytelling

model that treats written narratives not as ends, but rather beginnings.

With its interactive InfoGuide series, CFR focused on user interaction and

design, presenting stories on a single page in order to surface as much

content as possible in an engaging scrolling experience.

Brands, too, have discovered new ways to help users to experience their

products digitally through interactive design. Tesla, for example, provides

an in-depth look at the Model S, letting potential customers take a self-

guided tour through the car’s features, history, materials, performance

options, and more. We are truly given the full story of the Model S, as close to

comprehensive as possible without visiting the dealership floor. Apple, too,

is a recognized leader in innovative product experiences, utilizing simple,

bold design and an engaging scrolling technique to craft a narrative around

individual products. These products transform from something we observe

to something we explore. The interactive experience gives us a sense of

ownership and connection we would otherwise lack.

Like short-form, there is no set formula for effective long-form content, and

it’s amazing how companies have used this opportunity to be creative as

they push the boundaries of available technology. Unfortunately, the best

multimedia interactives are resource-intensive and not easily replicable with

limited time and/or staff. In Part 3, we’ll explain the technology gap making

it difficult for smaller organizations to keep pace with the interactive content

trend.

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People are willing to dig into content they truly care about. Marrying the best practices of short-form with long-form provides the double whammy

of engagement and retention.

In today’s world, one way to achieve design-intensive layouts like those

mentioned in Part 2 is to compose the HTML by hand. This proves to be

problematic for most content managers, who, after all, are not always

experienced developers. As Anthony Colangelo points out, there’s

a tension between long-form, immersive content and the CMS as a

mechanism for creating and deploying it: it’s difficult to wrangle unique

layouts and styles into a templated CMS. Most content management systems

are simply not built to accommodate the kind of flexibility that exquisite

long-form demands.

Limited Options

One solution to this dilemma is to hire experienced developers capable of

writing the custom code to create beautiful interactives. However, this is an

expensive option, one that can quickly become difficult to maintain as an

organization attempts to scale its content production. If you want to add

stories at a faster rate, you will be forced to expand your technical team. Very

few organizations have the budget to operate in this manner. Likewise, if the

team elects to implement their interactives outside of the CMS, the loss of

technical standards can prove problematic over the long term, increasing

maintenance and cost of ownership.

At the other end of the spectrum, out-of-the-box tools provide a relatively

inexpensive starting point for long-form content publishing. Tools like

Aesop Story Engine or Atavist give content managers a template to work

from, much like a CMS but with a focus on long-form narratives. While they

allow organizations to dip their toes in the world of digital storytelling,

these products are a far cry from the immersive, interactive experiences

possible with a dedicated development team. Like any templated layout, the

resulting story is restricted to a predetermined format, closing the door on

truly dynamic, intricate storytelling.

This is the storytelling technology gap: the space between restrictive layouts

and costly development resources.

In Part 4, we examine Phase2’s new technology solution built to fill this gap.

Part 3

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The Storytelling Technology Gap

When we realized that several of our clients were interested in exploring

long-form interactives and were frustrated by the lack of options, Phase2

set out to create a storytelling platform that would enable authors to build

immersive narratives through complex, flexible layouts. Development

revolved around resolving our clients’ pain points and addressing their

needs. The result was Fable.

Fable fills the marketplace gap, living in the middle ground between

expensive development teams and one-size-fits-all templating tools. It

requires no development skills to use, empowering non-technical content

managers to craft beautiful stories, but can be expanded on by development

teams who wish to be truly creative. Put simply, it is more ambitious than

the current tools on the market, but cheaper to maintain than a custom

development team.

What Sets Fable Apart?

While Fable has many benefits - including empowered authoring, device

optimization, embeddability, Drupal integration, and more - there are three

key features that make it truly unique in the marketplace.

• Nesting: Fable utilizes a nesting capability that has never been seen

in a tool of its kind. Elements such as interactive maps, timelines,

images, and videos can be nested within each other. Images can live

inside maps, which can live inside timelines, etc. Not only does this

inspire richer interactivity with readers, but it gives content managers

infinite options for designing layouts. Rather than being constricted

to one layer, as was the case with the previously mentioned tools,

they are free to nest elements allowing their audience to dig deeper.

The Carnegie Corporation of New York, for example, integrated an

interactive affiliate map into a long-form storyline about Andrew

Carnegie’s history. The graphic provides a space for relevant interludes

that enrich the narrative, but don’t detract from it if visitors aren’t

interested in exploring farther. Like most effective interactives, this

one allows readers to control the pace and direction of discovery. This

control creates not only a deeper connection to the content, but to the

organization providing that content as well.

• Extended Development: In conjunction with Fable’s ability to enable

non-technical users, the tool also provides power to developers. Thanks

to Fable’s existing catalogue of sophisticated elements (as well as its

Markup Component, which supports a wide variety of embeddable

widgets), developers do not need to spend time hand-coding the basics

of the interactive; that’s already been handled. In addition, Fable is

optimized for multiple breakpoints out-of-the-box, so responsive design

is one less thing for developers to focus on. Fable provides, in essence,

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Introducing Fable

the building blocks necessary to construct a good story, with none of

the distractions. Instead, they are free to focus on more sophisticated

integrations, like data visualizations, custom widgets, or social media

content from a third party. Via UTF-8 support, the stories told through

Fable can be shared in multiple languages, giving developers bandwidth

when addressing different audiences. Furthermore, because the

technical team is not spending excessive amounts of time on the basic

widgets, organizations are able to make their resources go farther. Even a

small development team has a lot of room to maneuver.

• Performance & Hosting: Often times the power to create rich, long-

form content results in heavy pages that can have long initialization or

load times. Fable addresses this by only loading the needed content as

the user begins to interact with the page. Known as “lazy loading,” this

minimizes wait time and allows the user to begin enjoying the content as

soon as they are ready.

In addition, knowing that many organizations fear the increased cost

associated with high-volume traffic, Fable was designed to make hosting

a non-issue. Static files requiring no processing engine or database to run

and dynamic content running browser-side ensure no Fable user has to fear

the success of their interactive. When your content goes viral, Fable’s simple

hosting and publishing model will make sure your story reaches everyone

successfully on any device.

Who’s Using Fable?

To explore how Fable is being used today, take some time to poke around in

these interactives by Phase2’s partners, the Carnegie Corporation of New

York and the University of California San Francisco.

• Andrew Carnegie: Pioneer. Visionary. Innovator.

• Andrew Carnegie Fellows

• Great Immigrants

• Mobilizing for Math and Science

• UCSF 150

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Continued

In this white paper, we’ve discussed trends in both long- and short-form

content creation, the technology gap in the storytelling market, and Fable

as a reliable tool for filling this gap. To conclude, we’d like to leave you

with a caveat: technological innovation should always be in service to your

overarching story.

Organizations that tell stories successfully stay true to the age-old principles

of storytelling: their stories follow an arc that conveys a core message,

communicating what makes them unique and forging connections with their

audience in a real and powerful way. Technology can create new ways to

deepen those connections, but before it can be effective, the author needs

to know what she’s trying to say. Using a tool solely for technology’s sake

will eventually lead you back to square one. Therefore, it is important to

have consultants on staff that can help guide an organization down the path

of great storytelling.

Fable is a technology solution for organizations committed to not only great

storytelling, but their role in developing a strong story of their own. Digital

storytellers should know how to gather and surface story elements that

reflect who they are and where they want to go.

Let’s Tell Your Story.

Part 5:

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Concluding Thoughts on Storytelling

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Additional Resources

Phase2 Resources:

• Fable website

• The New Narrative

• Data Visualization in Journalism: An

Interview with Michael Keller

• Crafting Content Strategy for Interactive

Storytelling

• Visual Dimensions vodcast

• The Craft of Building Educational

Interactive Stories

• Data Visualizations in Journalism

• You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span

Than a Goldfish, Time.com

• 5 ways the listicle is changing journalism,

The Guardian

• Why Short-Form Video is the Future of

Marketing, Fast Company

• The Power of Long-form Content in the Age

of Short-form Content, Scripted

• When is my Tweet’s Prime of Life? Moz.com

• Snow Fall, New York Times

• Cycling’s Road Forward, Washington Post

• Sea of Steel, Washington Post

• The Rust Belt, MSNBC

• Long-form journalism makes a comeback,

USA Today

• Future of Mobile News, Pew Research Center

• An in-house CMS for immersive

storytelling, American Press Institute

• Longform Content with Craft Matrix,

A List Apart

Other Resources: