What is Immersive Storytelling (and Why Should You Do It)?

Immersive storytelling will unlock the true potential of your museum or attraction. But what is it precisely? And how can it increase visitor satisfaction and attract new audiences?

what_is_immersive_storytelling

“Stepping forward, you feel a slight shiver of trepidation as your eyes struggle to penetrate the gloom. The first thing you sense is the noise – the distant howling of an Antarctic wind outside and, more loudly and worryingly, a series of ominous, sometimes downright alarming, creaks all round you.

You can feel the wooden planks of a ship’s deck under your feet and the smell of pitch fills your nose. As your eyes adjust, you realise the dim light is cast by oil lamps, gently flickering. Suddenly, the lamps sputter out and you’re pitched into utter darkness. Your breath quickens and your heart thuds loudly in your chest as, frantically, you wonder what will happen next.”

Those aren’t the first few lines of Patrick’s Cornwall’s latest naval blockbuster but the first few seconds of our Shackleton Immersive Cinema experience at the Fram Museum in Oslo. The experience of those first few moments demonstrates the power of immersive storytelling and highlights its two key aspects.

Shackleton Immersive Cinema at the Fram Museum, Oslo.

What is Immersive Storytelling (and Why Should You Do It)?

Firstly, this is all about placing your audience at the heart of the story. They’re there – in this case, stepping back 100 years into the gloomy hold of Shackleton’s Endurance as the life is slowly crushed out of it by the asphyxiating sea ice. They may be able to influence events, or they may be mere bystanders, but they’re going to experience the same events, the same emotions, as the people who were actually there.

Secondly, all of their senses are engaged. The distant howl of the Antarctic wind, the dim glow of the oil lamps, the feel of the wooden deck underfoot, the strong smell of pitch assailing their nostrils and snaking through their mouth on to their tongues.

So if that’s answered the question “what is immersion?”, what about the “why immersion?” query. Well, there are multiple reasons.

I’ve worked in marketing for over 20 years and the holy grail for marketers is word of mouth. That’s because people telling other people about your product or service is free. Of course, the theory’s the easy bit – in practice it’s much harder. But there are 2 key principals principles to generating word of mouth. The first is “unexpectedness“. The second is “emotion“.

It’s still the case that, the expectation of a museum experience involves lots of glass cases and lots of reading. Pitching people into the heart of an Antarctic ship as the sea ice squeezes it so hard it shoots out of the water, well, that’s unexpected – even in the most high profile of attractions.

Words can stir the emotions no doubt but nothing can top the emotional impact of being there – of seeing what those involved would have seen, hearing what they would have heard, feeling what they would have felt. Each emotion stimulated creates a little hook in the memory – making it more likely they’ll recall your story long after any written account would have been forgotten. The sheer impact of stirring all those emotions will mean they’ll be desperate to share their experience with their friends and family.

So immersion can help your stories live longer with your visitors, and compel them to tell their friends. Not bad. But I also think it can do more. It can not only can it bring you new visitors but, it can bring in a different type of visitor.

Two groups are key to audience development – they’re Out and Abouters and Explorer Families (as defined by our friends at the National Trust – you can read more about their audience segments here.)

For these two groups, museums and heritage attractions are just one of a number of leisure time options. They have the desire to learn but it’s balanced with the desire to have fun – either with their partner or with their kids (or both). The traditional museum experience holds limited appeal but the chance to have fun while adding to their knowledge – well, that’s very attractive. Immersive storytelling ticks all their boxes

But there’s one final reason for this approach, and it has nothing to do with your visitors. When I was young, I used to run around castles and yearn to be a knight – to experience the pomp and chivalry of the joust, or the adrenalin-pumping adventure of battle. I’m sure you had similar childhood fantasies, otherwise you wouldn’t be doing what you do.  With immersive storytelling, you can fulfill your own fantasies, and those of your visitors, even if they’ve been buried for decades. What could be more rewarding than that?

Immersive storytelling is groundbreaking, a little risky and may take you out of your comfort zone (although people like us are here to help.) But looking at your visitors ‘ wide-eyed stares of wonder and hearing their cries gasps of excitement makes all that effort worthwhile.

That’s why we do it, and why we think you should do it too.

What Families Want from Museums and Heritage Attractions

With the Summer holidays approaching, your mind will be turning to what you can do to attract more families. But first, you need to understand what they want. And that’s simpler to understand than you might think.

What do families want? Fun, family time and me time.

What do families want? Fun, family time and me time.

I’ve done some pretty challenging jobs in my time but nothing as tough as being a parent.

You want to nurture the innate talent in your child so they become a happy, productive and well regarded member of society. And sometimes, you genuinely think you’re achieving that. And at other times – usually after a blazing row over the removal of some electronic gadget – the only future you can imagine is one based around the visiting hours of whatever state institution they happen to locked up in.

Of course, there’s an opportunity for museums and heritage attractions here to help make the life of parents a little easier. But first, you have to know what families want. Lots of ‘experts’ in the field will tell you that’s terribly complicated, but actually it’s quite simple.

There are two sides to this ‘happy family’ equation – parent and child – so let’s focus on the child’s side first. And I have to admit that despite racking my brains for some considerable time, I could only come up with one ‘want’ which applied to my two boys – Fun (with a capital ‘F’!) Whether playing games on the Playstation, kicking a football around the garden, watching YouTube on their tablets or transforming the front room into a Ninja Warrior course, they just want to have fun. And let’s be frank – unencumbered by responsibility, that’s what we’d want too.

For parents, things are a little more complicated – but only a little more. They want two things rather than one – a little quality time with their kids, and a little ‘me time’ without their kids.

Quality time with your kids happens when they’re having fun and you’re having fun at the same time, whilst doing something together. Purely having fun is enough some of the time but it’s even better if that fun has an additional benefit – like getting some exercise or, and this is where museums and heritage attractions come in, learning something useful.

To give you can example, I took my kids to Jumptastic the other week. We had great fun leaping into foam pits and throwing soft balls at each other whilst bouncing on trampolines. But I had the added satisfaction of knowing both I, and my kids, where getting one of our two recommended weekly doses of strenuous exercise.

Quality family time at Jumptastic.

Quality family time at Jumptastic.

What ‘quality time with your kids’ isn’t is what’s billed as ‘family interpretation’ at some museums and heritage attractions. Let me give you an example.

Take my visit to a high profile castle recently. Audio guides were offered – one billed as the ‘adult’ version and one billed as the ‘child’ version. My 9 year old and I stood listening to our respective guides. We had no idea what the other was listening too and no prompts to interact with each other. We weren’t having a shared experience – we were having two parallel experiences. There wasn’t even an attempt to dovetail the length of commentary between guides – sometimes, my son would be standing there, bored rigid, for 2 minutes waiting for my commentary to finish. It was as if the designers of that tour had envisaged children visiting the castle by themselves.

Contrast that with going to the cinema to see a well written children’s movie like Minions. There’s plenty of slapstick to get the kids laughing like drains and lots of clever irony aimed at the adults. We can all enjoy the same movie even though we each get something different out of it. Surely that same approach can be easily extended to family interpretation in museums?

Let’s move on from that to the concept of child-free ‘me time’. This is the time that parents crave to have by themselves (and I challenge you to spend time with the same person 24/7 and not crave a little me-time) but frankly, feel a little guilty about. That guilt is lifted if you know your kids are engaged in doing something that’s both fun and good for them whilst you’ve got your feet up – in contrast to activities perceived to rot their brains like shooting zombies on their PS4 or being transfixed by a talking cat app on their tablet.

The museum cafe is the prime place for a little ‘me-time’ over a cuppa, but museums and attractions rarely take advantage of this opportunity to give parents a bit of a break. Adults and kids attitudes to the cafe are very different – adults want to take their time and have a little mental and physical break whilst children want to consume what’s in front of them as fast as they can and then bomb off to have some more fun. The logical thing to do is to offer the kids something to do in the vicinity to give the parents a bit more of break.

At a recent exhibtion I came across a company that offered interactive floor projection games. Their biggest clients? Family orientated cafes. If more museums and visitor attractions offered things like this to give parents an extra few minutes of ‘me-time’ while the kids have some educational fun, then families would be singing their praises.

Parents genuinely love their kids but keeping them entertained can be a challenge. Museums and heritage attractions can help by offering things that enable them to have fun together, and a little guilt free ‘me time’ apart. And your reward won’t just be the warm feeling that comes from creating happy memories of good times together – although that’s reward enough in itself – but by more families beating a path to your door.