More than 1,500 narrations collected on the storytelling platform. But the numbers do not reflect the importance of the people and their stories, the true value of this initiative, which goes beyond socials and beyond the Web
More than 1,500 stories told by 19 to 60 year old people. When we launched on the Web the first suggestions of the #guerrieri campaign, I tried to imagine what might happen, and even if I had guessed (more or less) what was ahead of us in terms in value, issues and answers, today I can once again confirm that reality goes beyond imagination.
Reading the stories of the #guerrieri and devoting them all the time they deserve is becoming far more interesting than what I could foresee and confirms the intuition that originated the launching of the campaign. Because the true value of the whole initiative consists in the actual stories. We have wanted to listen to those who are usually ignored and have now seized the opportunity to narrate their experiences, even when the occasion is “strangely” granted by a company which, instead of offering a service or sending a bill, simply invites people to tell their stories.
The criticism which #guerrieri received on the social media does not diminish this achievement. It teaches a lot, especially since it helps to understand how communication can be useful to people. In order to achieve this we were directly involved in #guerrieri and we gave the “warriors” a space for expression that most of them – who were unfamiliar with social networks, storytelling and narration techniques – have conquered, with the wish to narrate prevailing over the difficulties of being initiated into the digital world.
Collective storytelling is spreading at a fast pace. Corporate and brand initiatives are becoming increasingly frequent and it seems a long time ago – it was 2011 – that Telecom’s Futura Francesca asked people to talk about themselves. This trend has evolved rapidly, deviating from the adv and becoming actual narrations. The list of this sort of initiatives has become long and diversified. Besides #guerrieri I can immediately think – among the most recent examples – of “Give the best” launched by Gillette for sports people and the Luxottica storytelling project. Two examples amongst many which, even if launched by companies, recall the philosophy of “Italy in a day”, the collage of clips of common people presented by Gabriele Salvatores as “an amazing democratic experiment of current moviemaking”.
With #guerrieri Enel did not mean to invent, but rather to innovate. We proposed an experience that would not be fulfilled on the campaign website but would go on in the name of the stories, and also be told in television, revealing the face of a number of #guerrieri and penetrating even more in their daily lives. Even having this wide (and ambitious) prospect in mind since the beginning of the campaign, I was amazed to see it combined with Nutella and Coca-Cola by Repubblica’s Venerdì magazine, which observed that if the two giants gave the consumers the chance to associate their names to their brands”, Enel “gave a name and a role to consumers”, further strengthening the relationship with them.
Storytelling has still a long way to go and we have moved along this path imagining that there might be a way to share by making the best possible use of a unique tool like social media, which is not limited to the Web. The path we have created originates from everyday situations, emerges on the media and then goes back to real life after the stories have been shared, and have therefore been reinforced and intensified. At the beginning of the #guerrieri campaign we said: “Whatever your battle, you have all the energy to win it. Including ours”. We have observed this ongoing commitment, even beyond the Web.
