Every day storytelling

This post is not just about a great storytelling example. It's about a brand that is employing storytelling in a day-to-day practice.

Maybe not in an outstanding way day after day, but praiseworthy it is. We're talking Microsoft, the software (and hardware) giant that has been dealt some serious blows the past few years but is presenting itself in a friendlier manner than ever.

Microsoft is using storytelling quite some time in order to expand its brand presence. Sometimes its part of its advertising strategy, sometimes it looks just like another service to its visitors. The microsoft website is featuring a news section with interesting stories on just a bunch of ordinary people, standing out in their own way.

Randomly, it tells stories on people doing something special. It uses social media intensively to advertise the content.

Microsoft is not the arrogant, sometimes bragging industry leader anymore it was under Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. The battering it took in the market changed Microsofts brand reputation. It turned into a giant with feet of clay, lagging the great innovators Apple, Google and Facebook, at least in the minds of consumers. (Let's not forget it is still making an awful lot of money with software everybody uses everyday).

It made the company a bit humblier and friendly. Telling stories about people, linked to Microsoft one way or another, seems more suitable nowadays. And now and then the software giant even creates something great. Take the beautiful animated story "The Random Stories of the Brandon Generator" of 2013, a great example of multiplatform storytelling with a large user generated content part. It's a stunning production made by Edgar Wright and Tommy Lee Edwards that "put the audience center-stage to shape each chapter". Great comic-book storytelling with an extraordinary music score as well, to show the people that the new Internet Explore 9 is as good as contender Google Chrome, or better.

Watch this instructive video on this awarded storytelling campaign that was originated in the UK.