Convey emotion through storytelling

This article sets out five tips for better storytelling in advertising, eliciting emotions from people and generating better business results.

Convey emotion through storytelling

Sarah WalkerMillward Brown

Brands increasingly want us to do more than just watch their ads, they want us to care about them. Storytelling techniques are key to transferring emotion from ad to consumer, but not all ads use them in the right way. Millward Brown's Sarah Walker outlines five rules for imparting emotion into storytelling.

BMW said it best when it launched its 'Joy' campaign back in 2009. The script told us that the company "realised a long time ago, that what you make people feel is just as important as what you make".

Unfortunately...

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands