Live Storytelling for Brands.

A live session about what happens when brands go live — featuring, Grey, Droga5, Tool and Twitch. Recorded at Betaworks Studios, New York City.

In this episode of our Podcast we hear from some of the people that are at the forefront of ‘immersive storytelling’ with brands. We have Justin Durazo, director of interactive at Droga five, Kenny Gold, director of social media for Grey, Ronan Shapiro — director of client strategy Twitch and Dustin Calif — Managing Partner from Tool.

You’ll hear how the technology has changed rapidly over the last few years. Dustin from Tool tells the story of one of the first live broadcasting experiences David on Demand which was a guy at Cannes getting twitter requests over six days and 144 consecutive hours.

A lot of people in the advertising industry saw this ‘live’ experience. It was a unique idea at the time. What was interesting was the makeshift technology that made it happen:

And the crazy part is that when we were doing this, there was just, there was Ustream and there was JustinTV which eventually became twitch. We were literally using backpacks and six 3G cards in them to live stream.

He took requests from 130 countries around the world, accommodating as many as he could live in real time at great peril to his health, his hair and his sobriety. That that guy’s still has that tattoo today. They don’t wear off, unfortunately.

Thankfully things have progressed pretty rapidly. With Twitch and Facebook live now making it pretty easy for anyone — brand or individual — to stream.

For example Droga made the whole of the New Museum into a live stream experience. Creating 100 different live streams from all over the museum and then playing them on different ad panels throughout New York and the world. That would have been pretty hard with 3G cards.

Twitch allows users to interact more than ever before. Ronan from Twitch showed the example of Amazon using Twitch to create an interactive live streamed game for the show Grand Tour (Top Gear to everyone else!) that included contestants blowing up cars. (You can change the name from Top Gear but some things remain the same. )

So those are the cool things you can do. But in the podcast we’ll go into some of the things that go on behind the scenes. What it really takes to build these amazing experiences and some of the pitfalls:

Anytime you have 10,000 people in chat voicing their opinion it can get dicey and it’s a scary place for brands to go in there.

You have to do it right, if you do it wrong, you’re going to be scorched.

You’ll also hear how these guys feel about influencers. With the idea that maybe it’s a good idea to talk these professional streamers before you stream. Ask them what works, rather than just put your stuff out and pay them to promote it.

I would much rather pay an influencer to tell me how to use the channel. Then tell them then try and reach their audience. I think their value is just unbelievable.

And of course we’ll get into what ‘immersive actually means’ without trying to get too buzzwordy.

Immersive is, is a dangerous word. I think it is. It is a full on Buzzword at this point. But when I hear it and when I use it, I try to think about the depth of the canvas that you are putting in front of the person. How deep is the story, how far can they go in, what worlds can they explore and how can. That to me is what is different.

Take a listen to the whole podcast. It’s essential listening for any agencies, brands or organizations interested in creating live experiences.

This panel was put together by Jake Neske from Hustle. Jakes also put together the panel on building experiences in the age of Instagram which has been a hugely popular episode of the podcast. For that episode and all others check out the stories page at Studios.

And for more great sessions coming up take a look at the calendar. Only we are able to connect the people making the next generation of companies with the surrounding ecosystem that supports startups. So there is always something interesting happening. If you’d like to see for yourself contact me for a daypass.

See you soon, until then, happy building

James and the Studios team.