Storytelling And Open-Source Internet: The Juxtaposition

I have always been fascinated by ‘Thalis’ in our country. The neat way in which food in served in a structured manner, in small katoris. Also, the word Thali sets our mind to expect the food to be served in a certain manner. Just like we’d be surprised if wine is served in a beer mug. That is the power of perception and how difficult it is to change. Its like in an ongoing 

However, the only thing that may have a scope to bring in any change in perception or to strengthen an existing perception, is the story and the way it is told.

For marketers, the below four questions form the four pillars, before we think of a campaign-

• Is the marketing happening from the target consumer’s lens or the marketer’s lens
• are we addressing any gap in demand 
• are we addressing a future need or solving for now
• How are we measuring 

From these broad pillars, we squeeze out the actual communication – the narrative that we need to take to our audience in the form of a story.

In the advertising world, a powerful storyline for a target audience is the pedestal. With the relevance being not only for ‘present’ but slightly ‘future looking’ as well, with the connect of an emotion while stitching the value a particular brand or the product brings/ adds to the life of the consumer. And at times, the hero emotion may supersede the value it brings. For example – a cold drink is primarily water, sugar and flavour. Here a specific emotion will play the hero. While a Ayurvedic face cream may be more ingredient driven. The Reason to Believe (RTB) needs to be consistent at least for a considerable time for the target audience, else it can leave them confused. 

The global open-source services market is predicted to grow from $21.7 B in 2021 to $50 B by 2026. With North America and Europe dominating, India’s contribution to OSS services is bit lagging behind despite 96% of the 600M 4G subscribers in India using open source-based operating systems. Simply put, open-source software is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify and enhance. Authors of such open-source software make their source code public so that programmers can learn from it, improve it, make it more secure and even earn from it. 

As an example, Microsoft Windows is proprietary OS software, whereas Linux is an open source where developers can use GitHub and start contributing to the Linux project.

That brings me to 3 key points in the rising relevance of how open-source technology and storytelling could be pivotal in the Digital ecosystem.

1. Conversational AI – this is becoming a key catalyst in reducing the turn around time for building on scripts and content writing.There are multiple alternatives(such as ChatSonic , Jasper Chat, Socratic to Chat-based Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT) that can not only understand but more importantly generate text based user input and respond. Though the accuracy and emotional quotient still has scope to evolve and has its limitations.  
2. Empowering a community – A positive side effect to open-source tools is a rising and thriving community of developers and users as nothing will actually work without this growing community, which is giving shape to this. Take the instance of NodeJS, a popular open-source web server which has a community of developers proficient in building large scale applications on it. According to GitHub COO Erica Brescia, India is the fastest growing country with respect to new developers contributing to open-source projects. 
3. Short Form Immersive Video in the Creator Economy – Capitalizing on shorter attention spans of audiences while increasing engagement is becoming a key driver in the Digital space. Think vertical as well, while creating videos in 2023 . Testing creatives organically first and then promoting the best performing content could be something that could work well. In addition, with the explosion of the creator economy, we have discovered various other facets for community building.  While approaching ideas for community building, it is also important to think through the hero feature in it as in what is the pivotal thing that the platform will be orchestrated around –

For example 

If it is content first   (then it competes with facebook groups)

If it is communication first (then it may compete with Discord, WhatsApp)

For say D2C brands in specific, in a way creators are becoming owners of the brands themselves while leveraging their reach. The overall market of the creator economy is around $104 Billion globally. Which includes the discovery platforms, monetisation platforms, and creator tools. With around ~450 Million social media users, we’ve 80 million content creators in India (according to Kalaari Capital’s report), which includes all the social media users creating content online. By 2026, social media users in India is expected to grow to ~650 Million. Out of these, around 150,000 in India are professional creators who command 5000 to 1M+ audience (Data from Social Blade)

To summarise, storytelling and the power of open-source technology need to be best-friends that are not only building but empowering a community strengthened by conversational AI, immersive videos in the creator economy, and on a lighter note who knows when we may get accustomed some say by being served wine in a beer mug as well!

 Ankoor Dasguupta is the Vice President – Content, Social & Creative at ARM Worldwide. With more than 2 decades of work experience, Ankoor identifies himself as a learner, mentor and a strong believer in network effects. He believes in the power of Energy and to Energize. His pedigree of experience covers the spectrum of marketing, media, product and advertising across functions in print, digital, mobile and events. Ankoor has been part of the core launch teams of conceptualizing and producing multiple international IPs in India and is an avid writer and active speaker at various forums.