Tell the story of your regional event - it's innovative!

You can learn all about how to innovate using storytelling in Tourism & Events Queensland’s guide on Extraordinary Experiences through Storytelling.

Rather than innovating with technology or infrastructure, innovate via storytelling - it's much less expensive.

We remember stories. Imagine if history were taught with stories – we’d never forget what we learned, living the stories of the explorers.

Increased dopamine = increased memorability

Great stories make people think more so they remember more

The world travels for transformative experiences

Stories

• promote wonder

• make people care

• help people remember

• Stories are not a data dump. They are sensory, create emotional connections, memorable, and surprise and delight
  
  
  

BENEFITS OF STORYTELLING

• Innovate without expense

• Improve visitor experience

• Increase word of mouth recommendations

• Increase repeat visitation

• Promote your event

• Engage media and via public relations
  
  
  
  

STORYCRAFTING

• Know your guests/audience

• Discover, develop, deliver your story – tie it to your region’s hero experiences

• There are templates for creating different types of stories: monomyths, mountains, nested loops, sparklines, in media res, converging ideas, false starts, petals (see p. 20 of the Extraordinary Experiences Through Storytelling guide)
  
  
  T.O.R.E:

• Create a Theme

• Have an Organised, easy-to-follow story

• Make it Relevant – ie meaningful and personal

• Make it Enjoyable!
  
  

  Having a story idea

• Use you: your perspective. Let others access your world, such as going down your country driveway to the mailbox in your ute in the Australian landscape. It is so different for city residents

• Set up the story (location, who’s there, what’s happening)

• Something happens

• Resolve it (what happens in response)

  
  
  Instagram stories

• Plan a story

• Take a series of photos to show the story:

• Who? People

• What? Turtle watching

• Where? On a boat

• What happens? Turtle comes, facial reactions

• Story resolves: Turtle swims away, the day ends with sunset and a beer

  Get others to tell your story

• What do your visitors love about your event?

• What happened to them there?

• “I’m a different person out here, under a blanket of stars”

• Video testimonials get lots of views!

TIPS ON FILMING YOUR STORY

Here are tips on how to create videos on a phone: 

• Breathe to have nerves under control. Big, deep breaths with arms raised. Twist your spine. Do it, don’t just read over it. Right, now you are ready to film yourself.

• Use a deep voice. Fill your lungs down. Extend your spine. Take a long breath as fuel to get you through your sentence. Move through pitch as you speak (don’t use a monotone) – pitch creates movement.

• Vary your pace. Take your time and don’t rush. Pause. Take a breath. Say the next thing. Give your audience time to absorb what you’re saying. Use a deeper pitch and slower pace for a sunset, but a exciting fast pace and higher pitch for a rodeo or cattle muster.

• Speak from the heart about what you are really interested in.

• Add movement to your clip by moving from Point A to Point B while telling one fact. This makes your shot dynamic and more engaging.

• Use horizontal landscape format for video.

• Break past the 15 seconds of when viewers get bored by using music.

• Think about your costume and how it sets the scene: unpretentious, earthy, authentic, approachable, Akubra hat, business uniform – create your character! You’re the face of your business. Be relatable.

• You’ll get better with practice! Think of your phone as your friend, someone you’re easy with, someone you can have a laugh with easily. Talk to one person. Don’t sound scripted. Look at the lens.

• For editing videos on your iPhone use iMovie. For Android do a search on Google Playstore to see what suits you.

What is your event’s story?

We would love you to share this in our Facebook group for regional events or via Instagram using #regionalevents

LEARN MORE

MASTER CLASS: Free media: Big PR ideas for smaller festivals and events

In this bite-sized one-hour Master Class coming up on 10 May PR whiz Anna Hayward will take you through 5 basic steps on free marketing for your event using media.

ONLINE TRAINING MODULE: Marketing success

Learn event marketing skills in our online training program with

• Training video

• Supporting resources, tools & templates to help you action learnings

• Successful case studies and examples to highlight how others do it

• Links to further supporting readings, podcasts and blog articles to extend your knowledge

• Access to Q&A sessions to allow for further discussion on the topic

Lesson 1: Planning to achieve results

Lesson 2: Working with media to showcase your event

Lesson 3: Digital marketing

Find out more about our online training program