Story Telling the New Way to Market

At Digitas' The NewFront, Federated Media's John Battelle led a panel that addressed the importance of story telling, content that engages and strikes a cord and the importance of community.

GE's Beth Comstock discussed the brand's Ecomagination campaign which invited people into the brand and asked them to be creative with the brand.

Battelle highlighted the fact brands are not good at listening. They still think they can pull out the bullhorn and just tell consumers what to do.

Addressing the concern over brand's creating content and the potentially biased nature of that content, SAP's Susan Popper said brands simply need to disclose the origin of the content. Consumers will be able to discern for themselves how biased or non-biased the content is.

AMEX's Susan Sobbott said Publishing is difficult and expensive bit if you are not doing it as your primary source of revenue it can, in fact, be of benefit to a marketer.

Here's Battelle's on take on the panel...and his six hours sitting on the tarmac at JFK.