How Episodic Series Spotlight Brands Making A Difference

By Jordan P. Kelley, Content Director, BrandStorytelling

Historically, brands have tried to keep the customer-facing side of their business all about products and services. Consumer goods brands have centered consumer attention on said goods, banking and financial services have focused on safety and security of consumer funds, travel and hospitality brands have worked to offer consumers the best stay, and so on. However, today’s consumer is more discerning. Having experienced a rapid evolution over the last decade and catalyzed in large part by the social, economic, political, and ecological tumult of the last half-decade, the consumer position on the brands they choose to engage with is no longer an idle one.

As the socio-political position of people in the United States becomes more divisive, as the planet experiences the long-portended effects of climate change, and as millennials and gen z become more vocal and active in the way these changes impact their lives, it has become abundantly clear that brands cannot survive if they are part of the problem, or even non-participatory. Today’s major brands must be a part of the solution. They must be active in making a better world for the customers they seek loyalty from – a loyalty that now must be earned.

But the truth is that most major brands have historically taken part in corporate social responsibility initiatives. Consumer goods brands recycle, banks buy and preserve forests, and travel and hospitality brands give back to the communities where they build their hotels. In the past, these deeds have lived at the back of a brief or buried at the bottom of a web page. They weren’t customer-facing because they weren’t important to the customer then. But today’s customer wants to know how the brands they buy and support are doing good in and for the world. For this reason, brands are turning to the best method around for grabbing and retaining audience attention to communicate their message: storytelling.

More specifically, episodic storytelling has become an effective approach for brands looking to communicate their involvement in upholding values and pursuing outcomes desired by their customers. Episodes invite viewers to watch more content in memorable, more consumable chunks than longer-form versions of entertainment, while providing more in the way of information and engaging entertainment than short-form videos. Most importantly for brands, the storytelling initiative functions as a hook. Stories are the tip of the spear, with the rest being the action and dollars brands put behind working to impact the subjects in their story’s focus.

Brand Storytelling 2023: a Sanctioned Event of Sundance Film Festival featured three episodic series entries in its screening showcase, each of which told stories that communicated larger initiatives on the part of the brands that produced them. The Lesbian Bar Project, presented by Jägermeister and distributed on the Roku Channel, was the product of a mission to generate awareness around the disappearance of lesbian bars in the United States. The multi-episode series beautifully captures the interior worlds of these bars, giving audiences the opportunity to see what special places they are. The brand, in turn, participates in continuing efforts to support and preserve the 27 lesbian bars left in the country. Generation Impact, a web series from HP, spotlights young people implementing technology in their efforts to build a better world for themselves now and in the future. These true stories of teen empowering themselves with education and technology dovetails perfectly with HP’s youth initiatives behind the scenes. The company is committed to justice, sustainability, and building a better world for young people through their sustainable impact initiative and HP Foundation programs. Future Forward, the episodic series from The Climate Pledge (part of Amazon’s environmental sustainability efforts), exposes audiences to corporate climate solutions related to air travel, civic infrastructure, clean water, and more. Each episode features solutions from one of the more than three hundred signatories of the Climate Pledge, all of whom are committing to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.

Each of these brand series exemplifies the efficacy of using story to awaken audiences to a brand’s social responsibility mission. By shining a light on these initiatives for consumers to see, brands can simultaneously satisfy the discerning consumer’s desire to understand how brands are contributing to the betterment of our world and endear consumers to their cause. The episodic format allows for the coverage of multiple subjects, each driving home a singular theme that is then internalized by the viewer, giving them an opportunity to reflect on the issue in focus and decide where they stand on it and the brand tackling it. Implementing the use of storytelling to entertain, educate, and inform today’s audiences gives them the confidence to stand by the brands they care about because they can take comfort in the knowledge that those brands care about something, too.