The future of storytelling - Interview with Charles Melcher

0:00So welcome to the next edition of the Punk CX podcast. With me today I have Charles Melcher. Charlie to his friends apparently, so I'm going to call him Charlie. He said that was going to be okay, so I'm going to go with that. Charlie is the founder and CEO of Future of Storytelling, and now for decades, Charlie has been helping brands like Meta, PepsiCo, Netflix and HBO reimagine how they connect with customers through immersive print, digital and live experiences. and he recently published a book called the future of storytelling how immersive experiences are transforming our world now this is a groundbreaking book i've got i got a um a copy of it it was lovely enough to send me a copy of it it's a tome it's a hefty thing i'm in my recording sort of like place at home and actually left it in the office kind of like that's my mistake uh but there you go yeah jolly's got one and so it is a is a beast of a hardback thing it's and And it's got this really interactive, brilliant sort of like cover that you can fold out and kind of like refold and kind of change the kind of look and feel of the book, which is great.

1:02But the book itself explores why immersive strategies are critical for business success and how companies can leverage interactive media. Now, Charlie, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Adrian. I'm so excited to be here with you today. You're very welcome. Now, is there anything that I missed out in my intro that you'd like to add? Well, it's very generous of you. I've been a storyteller my whole life. And this book was the culmination of 15 years of running something called The Future of Storytelling. I started as a humble summit for 300 people and then grew to become this big event for almost 6 ,000 over the years.

1:45And the extraordinary thing was that our job was to curate the future. Right. And I was being invited to go experience and to see and participate in all of these extraordinary next generation storytelling creations. Some of them were analog. Some of them were digital. And I just started to realize that there were trends, that there were commonalities, and that there was a shift taking place from a world where storytelling was flat and linear and fixed and passively consumed to a world where stories were participatory, immersive, embodied, agentic, social. and because of all those things so powerful as to be transformative.

2:27So this book is the accumulation of the learnings I've had over 15 years of having a front row seat, which is really the wrong analogy because I got to be in them, but also an opportunity to celebrate the extraordinary creators and technologists who are making these things. There are over 50 or approximately 50 examples of my favorites that we celebrate in the book. Yeah, and I took a wade, I waded through the book, let's say, because there are a lot in there. But before getting into some of the stuff in the book, I mean, I wanted to maybe back up a little bit and ask about just storytelling kind of per se.

3:08because you know storytelling is long we type it as a really key way of engaging everyone from leaders to employees to customers and it's sort of a thing that we do naturally as human beings yeah we tell stories to our family our friends and and things but oftentimes i also find that we find it hard to tell good stories despite the fact that we do it naturally in particularly in different contexts. And I wonder why you think that is. I mean, because it feels like it's a natural thing that we do, but actually transferring it into different contexts is sometimes a little bit harder, particularly when it comes to kind of business and experiences and engaging employees and engaging customers.

3:54I'd be interested to hear your perspective on that. Yeah, I am a strong believer that stories are the programming language of the human species. Right. Right. They're literally how we learn about the world, how we learn about others and how we even come to understand ourselves. And I think people are naturally good at storytelling. Now, that doesn't mean that they get up and recount a novel length story. People tell short stories. They tell stories about their lives, about their days, about the people they care about. And I think if people struggle to tell stories, let's say, in a business context, it's because they think it's a different type of storytelling.

4:34Right. It's maybe because they lose touch with the human components that make stories flow as part of our daily lives. And they think that it has to be filled with numbers. It has to be about product features or they get confused about what story they're telling. Right. I think it comes up very quickly. I really believe that good corporate storytelling is actually to understand a shift that is that your customer is the hero of your story. Right. And I think too many brands think that they or their product or their service is the hero. And so they're basically trying to tell a story that says, hey, look at me, look at me.

5:18Let me tell you about this. That's big. It's fast. It's cheap. And they forget that actually if a real person did that, you would think they were a bit of an ass and you wouldn't want to talk to them and you wouldn't really listen to their stories. Whereas when we sit and have a story exchange between us, we have empathy. We listen to the other person. We tailor our stories to what we think they'd be interested in, and we get real-time feedback. I can see in your face that you're leaning in, or you're feeling sympathetic, or you're bored and I've lost you. And I think that feedback is another important part that gets lost in the corporate effort to tell stories.

5:59Yeah, no, that's interesting. It's almost overthinking it rather than actually embracing it as a natural sort of tendency that we do. And then also making sure that you're not the hero and you're not doing the big I am. And actually you've got to make the other person the hero. yeah and so then now i want to kind of then just kind of ask because i this as i explained to you before we started i mean the podcast focuses on how to improve customer engagement customer service customer experience and and a lot of the things that you're talking about these immersive experiences are very much customer or visitor or etc etc sort of focused yes and because it's the The book's also talked about the future of storytelling.

6:46I wonder if you can paint a picture to help me understand how you think the future of storytelling is likely to figure and play out in that sort of whole service and engagement and experience space and what sort of things we're likely to see. um well it's a it's a great question in that i appreciate your understanding the the very um i wouldn't say obvious but the very direct relationship between an audience and a customer and i really i use those terms honestly interchangeably because i think you have the same need to have that same kind of relationship between the two so when i when i talk about the future of storytelling, I'm a big believer that there's a profound shift that's taking place in the 21st century.

7:34And that is from a world where stories were top-down, authored, and fixed and linear. You would sit and write your story as an author, and then the audience, well, they could read it or listen to it or watch it, but they had no opportunity to engage in it. They were passive consumers' stories. And what's happened now, and truthfully, it's really because of technology or the changing of people's expectations because of technology. That is, when we were growing up, all mass media was unidirectional. You couldn't talk to the TV. You couldn't interact with the radio. Now you can, right? The internet came and mobile, and all of a sudden we had two-way mass media and it opened up consumers' expectation to have a voice, to have some agency.

8:30And frankly, we've just broken open Pandora's box because people now, they don't just want to like or share or comment. They want to tell you what they think. They want to co-create. They want to make their own. They want to be the heroes in their own stories. And that's the shift that storytellers and brands have to make to accommodate this new expectation. I will make a little footnote that I don't think that this is actually a change in human nature. I think this is how we've always been. You go back to preliterate cultures, stories were communal, social, co-created experiences. So we're really just rediscovering something that's innate to us as human beings.

9:16but brands have to realize that they are not that this idea of telling stories that that are fixed and that the role of the consumer is to just be passive or or perhaps in this case to do nothing but just purchase like we need to empower the customer to have a role to to be able to contribute to collaborate to to be social and to be empowered and and the best ways to do that in part is to is to actually make it personalized. Yes. Right? To let that person feel like they're seen, they're cared for. It's to enable their creativity. Let them bring themselves into that discussion, into that story, into that process, into that journey.

10:02And to do that in a way that's supportive and provides for success. Right. Because that sort of aligns with... So every year for the last sort of seven years, I've done this sort of annual predictions piece around sort of trends for the coming year in customer service and customer experience. And the way I've gone about it is that I've curated what I thought made sense out of a whole set of submissions. And so last year I got 700 and nearly 780 different predictions from about 400 different people. And it was, and I had to sift through it, trying to make sense of the whole thing and then organize it into a bunch of themes and cut it down to about 60 that sort of spoke to those themes.

10:52And one of the big themes was that actually people are starting to tire of digital, i.e. digital only. And they're looking for more sort of authentic in real life sort of experiences so they can build connections and have real in-person experiences. And it feels like the storytelling sort of trend fits with that. So it's not that it's digital only. It might be enabled by digital. It might have digital kind of wrapped around it. It might have digital elements to it. But it's not the only format, as it were. And that sort of makes sense. It sort of fits in that. But if you're doing those offline, face-to-face experiences, then to make it make sense, you have to tell a story about that.

11:48I think one of the most beautiful elements of that, or beautiful illustrations of that, which is from a long time ago, and it's completely non-technical and non-digital. now i remember going to a restaurant in brighton where we used to live a number of years ago and it's like the place called bills and it was their second restaurant but it was probably their busiest was in brighton and it was just like i guess in american terms it's a bit like a deli type of thing but it was in an old firehouse so it's like a it's a great building so you go in and it's like high there's the mezzanine sort of floor around the back and it was always always packed but when you went in there and you waited for a table you queued up inside so they started the queue at the back and came all down the uh the wall and then basically snaked out the door but what they did which was beautiful was while you were in the queue they used to pass out menus and you should take drinks orders kind of while kind of like when you were in the kind of queue and because you were leaning up against this display of ingredients that they used to use when they're cooking and things, you become almost immersed in that experience.

12:58It's like your experience started before you expected to, because you become involved. And I just thought that would be an example of telling a story, but not necessarily a beginning, middle and end sort of story. It's like, but by framing it, that you're part of this broader, bigger experience and it starts even before you sat down. Does that make sense? Yes. And you touch on a number of important tenets of immersive experience design. And one is certainly that the story starts before you even arrive. Right. You know, with the permission, the call to adventure or participation. But another is the important role of world building.

13:38Right. And particularly when you're dealing with nonlinear narratives, world building is actually the authorship. A huge amount of it is right there. It's creating such a rich and detailed world that people, when they come into it, can discover or find different paths, find their own stories within it. And I think that's a huge shift for people because most people just think of authorship as I start with word one and I create a narrative arc and I end with word 80 ,000 and there's my novel. Yeah. But world building is about understanding everything from the physics of the place, the economics, the food, the culture, the history.

14:26All of those things get so deeply expressed in a world that people can go into it and uncover or discover or create their own narratives in that world. So it's a big part of the book, which is to create good immersive design, you need to start with a very detailed enriched world building process. Right. So yes, I'm a big believer. And by the way, I look forward to being invited to brunch there. Well, I hasten to add that that restaurant opened up another branch or another couple of branches and then got acquired. because a whole bunch of investors decided they liked the format and then they wanted to scale it.

15:14But in scaling it, they forgot about some of those elements because they were interested in what they saw as being the brand rather than being some of these more interesting elements that enriched the brand experience. and so another one that you mentioned in that example is the multi-sensorial component right you're having a drink you were smelling the food you were seeing the ingredients you were touching the menu like being able to engage the whole body is a again extraordinarily powerful way to create more emotionally resonant and memorable experiences and i think people we just so wildly over-indexed for our eyes and our ears.

16:04Literally almost all of our stories are consumed through our eyes and our ears, the ones that are commercially produced, audio, television, things on our phone. And we, of course, developed as an entire body over millions of years to experience things not just with five senses, the big five, But scientists have suggested we have somewhere between 20 and 30 senses, things like interoception, being able to be aware of our own heart rate internally, or being able to be aware of sense of balance or temperature. There's a whole slew of other senses that are going on, some of which we're conscious of, some we're not.

16:46But if as storytellers or brands, we could play our stories to the whole body, they're incredibly memorable and powerful. And again, in the book, I reference different research that's been done that shows that if you learn things using your whole body, they're much more memorable. That actually emotions originate in the body. sensory input that then gets fed up into the brain that then maybe makes sense of it but it starts in the body so i describe this as if we as as storytellers or artists had only been working our entire lives in two colors you know every painting we'd ever done was in two colors and then all of a sudden shows somebody shows up and gives us 30 colors like the opportunities are extraordinary and and the people our audience our customers our consumers they're going to so appreciate if we can meet them in a more immersive immersive and multi-sensorial way because that's that's what really makes it more emotional more more memorable yeah absolutely i should also kind of add final point on that that example is because they that what they did with dealing with people in the queue, nobody left the queue.

18:06So smart. Yeah. It was a sticky experience right from the point that you step into the queue. Right. You'd ordered a drink. You got to personalize the experience because you've now chosen something you want to drink. You also became part of the scene. You became an actor in the play that was brunch at that restaurant. Absolutely. but enough about my example i mean i know that you've assembled this this this an array of examples in the in the book i wonder if you could maybe share a couple of examples that are kind of relevant for sort of this this service and experience audience that i have and tell me about you know what the brands did kind of what happened sort of impact that you know that uh uh that it had just to sort of bring some of this sort of like stuff to life sure i i will give two examples one is from the world of of marketing for for entertainment so netflix has made a real commitment to the world of immersive experience they they've developed immersive experiences that travel from city to city based on some of their most popular ip like money heist and bridgerton and Stranger Things.

19:24Okay. One of my favorites, and I'll just describe this simple thing, they created what they called the Queen's Ball. And the conceit was just like in the show. I don't know if you've watched it, but there's a big party and the Queen is at the party, right? And everyone comes dressed up to be presented in society. And there's a ball. You learn to dance. Many of the guests who came actually wore, you know, kind of like regent era costumes and their hair done, you know, it turns out there seems to be a lot of wish fulfillment to be able to do this. But they designed, there were many activations and different things you could do.

20:06But there was one that was so simple and so brilliant, I love to describe it, which was they had the queen on a kind of throne, an actress playing the queen. She was sitting there kind of not that interested, you know, and sort of, And they would allow people to line up and be presented to the queen. So a man in waiting with the coat and the hair and all that would bring you forward and say, you know, I'd like to present, you know, Julie Smith. Right. And Julie Smith might be wearing, you know, maybe she's just wearing her jean jacket and her sneakers. Right. But she then proceeds to make the most elaborate curtsy I've ever seen.

20:50Each person brought their full creative experience to, it was almost like ballet. Right. This woman brought, and every one of them, no one just came up and kind of nodded. Everybody wanted to show their respect. They wanted to be recognized by the queen. It was a wish fulfillment of many, mostly women, but not entirely, of many people who had just always dreamt of having this opportunity to maybe be discovered as the jewel or what's the term, the diamond of the ball or whatever. They just wanted to make an impression and they brought all of their own personal creativity to this simple gesture of making a bow.

21:37It cost them almost nothing to do. And it was so valuable for the guests because they could put themselves into it because it was a fantasy that was being fulfilled and because they could really express their own creativity in that process. so just a brilliant moment and by the way i also love it because it shows you the power of that embodiment that i was talking about emotions that they had being able to do this very elaborate and flourished bowing head down foot behind you know like it it filled them with a certain set of emotions just by making that physical gesture yeah i guess i guess also gonna get to the point And it was particularly because I think the show you're talking about, that's Bridgerton, right?

22:26Yes. And I guess you're getting to the point where you've got people that are real fans of the show who are imagining themselves what it would be like if they were in the show. Then they'd be given an opportunity to be, in quotes, in the show. Exactly. And that's the wish fulfillment kind of bit. Yes. But I think it goes deeper because I think many people who are fans of the show are also fans of the monarchy. They're fans of the Queen. They're fans of English society back in the day or whatever. Maybe they've read Jane Austen. But definitely, yes, they're fans of the show and they're getting to live in that world and participate in it.

23:14I'll give you another example. And it's from your hometown of Edinburgh. Okay. So it's the Johnny Walker Princess Street experience. Yeah. It was designed by our friends at BRC, which is an experienced design firm. And there are many parts to that. They restored a historic building. It's in a key part of downtown. There's a retail component. But they had a very particular thing they were trying to address, which is that many young people, and particularly women, don't think of themselves as drinking scotch, as having a taste for that kind of alcohol. And they knew that. And they knew that they had a challenge to try to win over an audience that might come into the shop because it looks so great and there were all sorts of other things you could do there.

24:05And so they designed a simple set of questions that they would ask you on a tablet when you showed up. And there were just some things about things that you like, you know, flavors, foods that you like, that kind of thing. And based on that, using artificial intelligence and a lot of data from other people's taste profiles, they could create a profile for you. So they would realize, oh, you like savory or, you know, your wife likes sweets or your child likes, you know, your grown child, because these are alcohol, you know, likes this kind of smoky flavor, whatever. So they could quickly understand what your taste profile was.

24:45They gave you a little wristband of a different color. And then later in the experience, they pour you a drink. But the drink that they give you is reflective of what they now know about your profile of flavor, your palate, basically. Right. Okay. And so the first drink you taste tastes great. Right. It's exactly a drink you like. Okay. And it works. Like a very large percentage of the people end up responding and saying, I really enjoyed that drink. I didn't realize I like scotch. Right. I see. I see. interesting and they knew that if the first drink you tasted didn't meet your play you know wasn't pleasurable it would reinforce your perception that you don't because because you probably had a scotch once at a party and wasn't you were like if this isn't for me but now they could mix it in a way that made you realize oh i like this it's brilliant and it's done like they've done the the the testing and it's created a very high number of conversions, particularly amongst a group of, of demographics that they don't really appeal to traditionally.

25:55Well, that's kind of, that's interesting. I mean, cause I must say, I, I know it. I've never, I know where exactly where it is. It's on the West end of British street. I must admit, I've never been there. I also know that the, you know, whilst I'm partial to the odd bit of scotch, that my wife is not a whiskey drinker. So that might be an interesting challenge to pose to see you about going along and having a look at it at some point. Yeah. But that's really interesting. I mean, going back to the broader storytelling sort of thing, I mean, I guess my question would also be is this just for big businesses that can do grandiose sort of things?

26:40Or is it for all sizes of businesses? I would say it's for all sizes of businesses. You don't need to invest millions of dollars in order to create an experience that is powerful and memorable for people. Sometimes it can be, I mean, frankly, smaller scale is more intimate and more personalized and responsive. I think about some of my favorite immersive theater experiences. There was one called Then She Fell by a little production company called Third Rail in New York, and it was for 15 people at a time. Right. And it was in the basement of a church in Brooklyn. I think they got kind of free rent or very little rent.

27:23And this was not high production values, but it was very beautifully executed. And the interactions with the actors were, again, intimate. And you felt like you were really there with these actors and they were kind of caring for you, allowing you to participate to the level you felt comfortable. Some people wanted to, like, jump in and, you know, show their improv skills. And other people wanted to keep a little safer distance. And so it could be very responsive and very like the guests were really met where they were and encouraged to come a little out of their shell or a lot, depending. And it ran for 4 ,400 performances.

28:07Wow. For years and years and years. Wow. On a shoestring. So I just, and I'll never forget it. And most people who went will never forget it. So I just want to remind you, if that were an experience that a brand had created and it had that kind of responsiveness and care, it wouldn't cost a ton and it would make a very high level of impact on the people who went through it. That's good to know. I guess it's a function of thought and care and creativity rather than budget. Yes. Now, on the other side, there are some incredible ones that have been done with big budgets. I mean, you can't forget the HBO Westworld experience that was done at South by Southwest by Giant Spoon and Mike Otu.

28:59And there they had, I think, 50 actors or 60 actors and they rebuilt the town of Sweetwater and guests got to choose a white hat or a black hat and everyone had their own adventures. They really recreated the show in a major way. And I think they spent their entire marketing budget for the year on it. And it was worth every penny because the people went berserk. The social media coverage was insane. The earned media coverage was insane. I mean, they put all their shits on red and it paid off 30 to 1 or whatever. So there are examples like that. Or I love what Airbnb has been doing with their icons program where they will recreate a house from a famous IP like Barbie.

29:48They created Barbie's dream house on the beach. And some lucky Airbnb guest gets to go and spend a night in Barbie's dream house. And it's insanely perfectly done just like the movie. Okay. Or if you remember the movie Up, where the house floats with all those balloons up into the air, they recreated that house. Wow. With thousands of balloons on a giant crane. And you could step into the house and it would go up into the air and you could spend the night in the house in the air. They're just unbelievably creative. And there, of course, it's entirely a marketing thing. I don't think the lucky customers don't even pay.

30:36but the coverage they get for that and the marketing value and the social media pass along and all that has made it well worth the investment awesome well brilliant i i love the idea about staying in that in the house from up and just because i love the good i love the um i love the dog who is uh what's the word loyal and easily distracted by squirrels exactly he's like squirrel so i mean i hope charlie that that those questions have given people a sort of a flavor of the book and then hopefully entice them to kind of go and sort of check it out and because it's it's just a it's a beautiful thing just to kind of like thumb through and and immerse yourself in but before i go on to some sort of just quick fire wrap-up questions is there anything that you'd want to add or highlight that we've missed out?

31:31No, I think that, I mean, my hope is that people who get the book, there's a little bit of a conflict in this that here I am talking about immersive experiences and I've written a book. But I tried very hard to make it a book that you could easily choose your own path through so you don't have to read it in a linear way. If you just want to look at the 300 photographs of the extraordinary creative work of other immersive experience creators, you can do that and read about them. There's plenty of pull quotes. And then there's the full chapters, which I do hope people will read because there was a lot of thought put into it.

32:08And I think there are many interesting nuggets that could be applicable to any business today, anybody who's trying to tell stories in any way. And then lastly, as you mentioned, the cover, there's actually 12 covers and you get to choose and fold onto the cover, whichever one best suits your mood or the kind of story you are interested in. So anyway, thank you for saying such nice things about the book and I hope people will read it and go ahead, fire away. Perfect. So thank you for that. And as I say, I've got some three quick fire questions just to finish up on. And the first one is like a best advice one.