Skip the ads, start telling stories

While the stats vary, there's evidence that around nine out of 10 people who can skip an ad do—whether by hitting the ‘skip ad’ button online or fast-forwarding through a commercial break while watching time-shifted programming.

Why? Because most brands don’t know how to advertise what they sell.

We all know that nothing passes across a good info than when its infused with a juicy story to drive the readers curiosity home- doubt it? Let’s use religion as our reference point here, the bible could have simply stated out rightly ‘God detests disobedience’ but hey, he did- can’t remember the verse?

Exactly! Because such messages don’t exactly ‘sink’ into our memory. But when the same story got infused time and again through stories such as Jonah and the fish as well as Lot’s wife, it stuck faster than the speed of light!

Moral of the lesson: The best and most celebrated ads have always been those that tell great stories because the best creatives know the key to winning over consumers is to share stories that are worthy of their time.

It's a simple human fact: We are all suckers for a great, well-told story.

Audiences have always had the power to skip ads. Those of us old enough to remember a world without remote controls know that skipping ads was as simple as heading to the kitchen for a snack during the commercial break. Or heading to the bathroom to, um, fix your hair.

If we're in search of a narrative thread, the last 20 years in this business have been about one thing: consumer empowerment.

While ad avoidance has always been an issue, there's a reason we were able to largely ignore it for decades. Advertising was viewed by many as a necessary evil, the price consumers paid to access free content.

Some brands smugly believed they could never lose their seat at the table because they presumed consumers would never pay for content and would rely on brands to subsidize their media diets. Wrong.

Just ask Netflix. Hulu. Amazon. Seeso. Vessel. Spotify Premium. YouTube Red.Fullscreen.

Audiences have shown they are willing to pay for quality content, especially if those payments make the ads disappear. Some subscription services don't even offer exclusive content to paid subscribers; the sole benefit of ponying up a couple of dollars per month is the elimination of ads.

The end result of all these factors: We now consume only what we want, when we want, where we want and how we want it. And if we want it. That's a good thing for audiences.

At the same time, new technologies and platforms — from virtual reality to live video — are transforming the way stories are created, distributed, consumed and shared.The golden age of advertising may be coming to a close, but the golden age of storytelling is just getting started. Don't skip it. Contact us at RDM today.

Written by Hauwa Yakubu

This is a feature by RDM.