Corporate Publishing
Tell to sell, or How to Chart a Browsing Trail
for Readers to Follow
The biggest demands:
- How do I handle the technical tools necessary to implement creative ideas that engage and inspire customers and target audience?
- How do I put innovative and interactive concepts into practice for digital editions, Web communities, and print offerings?
- How do I chart a browsing trail for readers to follow?
Today, classic target audiences and niche communities intersect and overlap. A corporate publisher must reach out to all these different interest groups by preparing and delivering content across multiple channels. Storytelling has remained corporate publishing's most important instrument, as printed literature and Web sites attest. But Apple’s iPad and similar devices afford users unprecedented possibilities, changing the concept of what makes up a good story. The challenge now is to cater to these perceptions and tell a compelling story that fits this new format.
This provides an excellent opportunity for corporate publishers to get the message across quickly and more persistently. Readers begin delving into a topic by first scratching at the surface, and then digging deeper as fancy strikes and time permits. They scroll further, push screenshots aside, and click to explore sidetracks and retrieve background information, an illuminating video clip, or explanatory animation. The scope and depth of this browsing are all but unlimited. Corporate publishers can orchestrate text, artworks, and motion pictures to create a dramatic setting and storyline that captivates readers, prompting them to interact with the topic in greater depth. In this way, storytelling becomes a strategic instrument that sells.
