Tuners Automotive Group's 'Tina from Turners' advertising campaign.
Tuners Automotive Group's 'Tina from Turners' advertising campaign.
The inaugural Create Symposium will bring leading creators and innovators from across Aotearoa to Hawke’s Bay at Matariki. One of the speakers on “The Power of Storytelling” is Black Barn’s Kim Thorp, a veteran of the advertising industry.
Why is storytelling so important?
Captivating storytelling for a business or brandis more important now than ever. It used to be that most of a brand’s story was told through its advertising. Now, it needs to be so much more than that. People want and need to know more about the company and the people they are buying from. Their ethics, how they treat staff, their environmental policies, the quality of their production all add up to how people feel about a brand, and it all needs to be consistently wrapped up in a compelling story.
How do we implement storytelling in business?
I think there are two critical things we can learn and implement as businesses.
Firstly, our story needs longevity. It needs to be able to survive things like new product development, changes of staff and management, updates to design and logo development – and, most critically for larger companies, changes in marketing departments. This, more than anything, has seen the death of many great brand stories.
Kim Thorp of Black Barn.
Secondly, your story needs to be your “honesty stick”. You need to use it not only as an inspiration for what you do and how you behave, but you need to use it as a cross-check on how you are honestly delivering against it. If you’re not living up to your brand story, you need to change the way you’re behaving, not change your story.
For example, at Black Barn, our story is based around the promise of being “the experts at giving people a good time”. Sometimes, for whatever reason, we might not always nail it. But when we don’t, we take fixing it really seriously.
What campaign told an enduring story successfully?
There are a few that I have been involved in that spring to mind. Here are three.
1. The Anchor Family. This was a long-running campaign that evolved around what looked like a real family with all its trials and ups and downs. It went from the daughter being a very young girl to her being proposed to – all with the same actor. It was originated by Roy Meares, and I only wrote the last few seasons, but it had the country gripped through the 80s and 90s.
2. Mainland Cheese – good things take time. We originated this idea way back in the early 80s with two old boys complaining about the pace of life. It survived several actors, writers and even a change in advertising agency and was still running as a storyline until recently.
3. A recent idea I created (and others executed) was Tina from Turners. While it hasn’t had longevity yet, I believe it is a complete story where the name is memorable and it also happens to be the name of the company. Everything from the personality to the colours used, to the cheek of the messaging, is cohesive and tells an arresting story.
What advertising campaign/creative director do you admire and why?
There are a lot. But one famous advertising storyteller I always admired was Paul Arden. He was exec creative director of Saatchi London while I was the same at Saatchi Wellington. He was an art director and I am a writer. He always told his stories visually and he was truly extraordinary in both his eccentricity and his talent. He died in 2008. Two of his famous campaigns were making British Airways “the world’s favourite airline” with a truly arresting execution of bringing the world together as a human face, which ran globally. Another I thought was genius was for Silk Cut cigarettes, which simply used a gash of purple silk to say everything he wanted to say.
What is your favourite story?
My favourite story is always the last great one I either read, watched or was told. The last great one I just finished was Catherine Chidgey’s new novel The Book of Guilt - an extraordinarily disturbing and totally compelling piece of writing.
The power of her words means you can almost hear the voices and visualise the locations – especially Margate (for those who have read it)!
Create 2025: The Power of Storytelling is planned and hosted by Ngā Toi Creative Hawke’s Bay in partnership with Ngāti Kahungunu and with support from Creative New Zealand. It will be held at the Napier War Memorial Centre on Tuesday, June 17. Guests include David Downs, film producer Emma Slade, and brand expert Kim Thorp, plus representatives from iwi, tourism, logistics, the arts, media production and more. More information and tickets athttps://www.ngatoihawkesbay.co.nz/
