The school of stor ytelling
Kate Magee takes part in Punchdrunk’s workshop in London to see what brands and marketers can learn from the company’s immersive theatre
I’m completely disoriented. For the past half-an-hour, I’ve been exploring the surreal, dream-like basement of an abandoned warehouse and found myself walking down a long, dark corridor. There is no-one else in sight. The music playing from a radio nearby could be straight out of a horror film.
A flickering tea light appears on my right with a piece of paper set in front. Behind it are strange shadows and objects I can’t make out. I crouch down and pick up the paper. It simply reads: “Someone is watching you.”
This is the scariest moment of the day-long workshop on the art of storytelling for the creative commercial sector, designed by the pioneering immersive theatre company Punchdrunk and the creativity specialists Now Go Create in London. There are 25 of us on the course: a mix of mar-
keting directors and people from experiential, advertising, research and PR agencies. We are all here to learn how to apply Punchdrunk’s storytelling approach to brands.
We are on the set of the company’s latest UK produc
tion, The Drowned Man: A
Hollywood Fable – a four-storey former office. After playing a series of games and group exercises designed to get us thinking creatively, the pinnacle of the morning session is a 45-minute game of hideand-seek on the set.
It’s hard to describe the sheer scale of the production. Not only is it spread across 200,000 square feet with 100 rooms, the level of detail is staggering. A rifle through a character’s bedside table reveals copies of her CV, make-up and love letters from a former paramour.
You decide where you go and what you see. You can open any door you want, follow any character you wish, but you never know what is coming next. It’s an exhilarating experience – it is storytelling at its best.
In 2010, Mother teamed up with Punchdrunk to create a two-week event to launch Stella Artois Black. It comprised a series of theatrical productions set in the 60s, which took place in a variety of pubs. This workshop aims to teach the marketing community how to apply the insights themselves. For brands, there are obvious lessons
about how to create engaging events. For example, the show deliberately takes its audience through a maze at the start to disorient them and separate real life from this world.
Participants are not provided with maps of the space, so it is easy to get lost. This feeling of being on edge is crucial to the experience because it makes people pay more attention. In a world of smartphone obsession, that’s some feat.
There are also broader lessons: the importance of personalisation, for example. No audience member will have the same experience, and that gives people stories they can tell their friends and experiences to share afterwards.
It is a brilliant demonstration of the power of live experiences and mystery at a time when almost everything is a click away on the internet.
It is also a timely reminder that, just as the actors are on stage and interacting with their audience for the full three-hour performance, so too are companies, which are now exposed to public scrutiny on social media. There are no longer any hiding places.
“Marketers increasingly need to learn and apply storytelling to their work, as consumers are more discerning about their content, and need to be surprised and delighted,” Paul Davies, Microsoft UK’s director of marketing communications and a workshop participant, said. “Marketers who embrace this cultural movement are the ones who will gain brand share and equity from their audiences.”
The workshop ended on a quote that, trite though it may seem, is a good summary of Punchdrunk’s approach and one that companies should not forget: people will always remember how you make them feel.