A Creative Way of Storytelling

Once you visualise your story, it does not belong to you anymore. It belongs to your audience to be perceived, to create ideas, emotions and experiences. In order to tell a great story to a wider audience, you need to visualise it thoroughly and share it in the most appealing and efficient way.

LET’S FOLLOW THE FOOTSTEPS:

We have a great example of digital storytelling for social impact and it is not from a social impact organisation; it is created by MTV. It is a perfect combination of traditional forms of oral storytelling, using great visuals and digital mediums.

STEP 1: EVERYTHING BEGINS WITH A SIMPLE DATA

The story emerges from an important statistic that reveals gender gap and inequality: “Unfairly women are paid only for 79% of their labor compared to their male coworkers in the United States. In other words, women are still paid less than their male coworkers even though they have the same full-time job.

STEP 2: CREATING THEIR OWN STORY

They created a simple but special clock for women which rings an alarm once 79% of the workday is done, so women can calculate the time they aren’t being paid for their work. The simplistic design of the clock reflects one simple fact that women are paid for 79% of their labor with its yellow 79% label. They have sent hundreds of “wage gap” alarm clocks to people in workspaces across the United States, as a daily reminder that gender pay gap is real.

STEP 3: CONSISTENCY AND CAUSALITY IN VISUALISATION AND SHARING

Besides, as a part of this campaign they created a simple, approximately 1-minute video and a website that reflects exactly the same design principle and style. Additionally on the website, there is a calculator that you can input the start and end time of your typical work-day and shows you when 79% of your day has passed and when you are no longer being paid.

STEP 4: INSPIRE THE WORLD

Even though it is not a social impact organisation, MTV used this data to protest gender pay gap on Equal Pay Day as a part of its ‘Look Different Campaign.’ Think about how beautiful, engaging and compelling stories you can tell as a social impact organisation that works on significant causes, touches the lives of a lot of people, collects valuable data, and has the greatest stories.