MAM
Story-living: How digital creativity is immersing audiences in PR campaigns
Digital creativity impacts the relationship between brands and their audiences. Instead of only telling a story, efforts have expanded to allow people to experience the storyline. The change from reading a book that contains illustrations to the use of pictures, moving images, or animations in public relations refers to the strategy of ‘story-living’ whereby users are transported into a narrative environment. This change has also transformed the campaigns to become more immersive, increasing user interactions with the brand.
What is story-living?
To put it simply, story living embraces the thought of experiencing a message rather than just showing it. To be exact, story living allows people to be part of a narrative, within a certain time and possibly in a great amount of detail. Indeed, with all of the tools at their disposal, audiences today expect to be able to witness self-exploration in both real and virtual contexts. Virtual reality, augmented reality, and live online interactions give realistic insights into the journey. With these experiences, audiences are encompassed in the story and made to feel that they are part of the brand’s universe.
Why story-living is effective in PR
The main reason for this is that the audience is usually fully engaged and costs less to execute. Emotional experience is the main reason a brand succeeds. If the audience takes part in an event, they will have a greater emotional response to the brand. This emotional response causes them to have a better important than usual recall of the brand and a positive feeling towards the brand, making them tell their story to others.
Differently from the classic advertisements that can be seen as just noise among other mundane content, an interaction is something that engages the audience and extends their loyalty towards the brand. When audiences get personally involved, they are more likely to mention it on social media networks or endorse it to more people, thus increasing the number of the audience of the given brand organically.
Tools that bring story-living to life
Well, with the improvement in technology, PR teams now have a variety of instruments to make story-living events a reality. Here are some of the famous ones:
1. Virtual reality (VR): VR places audience members into completely new spaces and enables them to navigate and interact within them in a real life setting this creates remarkable impressions of the brand’s universe for the audience.
2. Augmented reality (AR): AR adds a layer of digital interaction to the physical world, allowing users to interact with different elements. AR can be used by brands in a number of creative ways so that people can engage with the brands in a more fun and entertaining manner.
3. Live streaming and interactive videos: Live video makes it possible to stream events as they occur and to view additional interactions such as questions and comments direct to the presenters. Engagement in this manner makes people feel much closer to the action and hence the feeling of immediacy.
4. Social media polls and quizzes: Involving, engaging, and simple tools such as polls and quizzes require the audiences to become part of the narrative. Such tools assist the audience in taking part in the evolution or strategy of a brand.
5. Custom-made content: Thanks to modern analytics, brands may now provide a high level of customization and create messages and contents that are suitable for every user. This makes an interaction personal, consequently creating a bond.
The future of story-living in PR
In the wake of new technological changes, story-living will undoubtedly be included in the core blocks of PR practices and approaches. Such digital tools enable brands to capture the audience’s attention in diverse significant experiences. This particular trend shows a change in PR practice as the bulk of it will not revolve around storytelling but rather engagement.
Turning the audience into a key piece of the brand story is what story-living brings into PR and transforms it into something new. It is changing how brands speak as they create deeper and better connection with customers in the process. Story-living is bound to trend as companies diversify it, while at the same time cutting through the noise in today’s digital world and maintaining relevance.
The article has been authored by The Right PR founder & director Harday Gupta.
MAM
GUEST COLUMN: How data and adtech are driving OOH growth in India
Data and technology are reshaping OOH and boosting advertiser confidence.
MUMBAI: Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising is evolving from a traditional, location-driven medium into a data-informed channel that blends physical presence with digital intelligence. For Nipun Arora, co-founder of Osmo, this transformation is redefining how advertisers plan, execute, and measure campaigns in India. In this piece, Arora explores how traffic, mobility, and AI-powered data are enhancing site and audience insights, why DOOH is accelerating precision planning, and how authenticity, creativity, and repeat exposure are driving renewed advertiser confidence in OOH.
For years, Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising operated with minimal reliance on data. Site selection was largely driven by visibility, location, and a planner’s understanding of traffic patterns.
That is now changing rapidly.
The first shift came with traffic data, offering basic estimates of vehicular movement. This evolved into mobility data powered by GPS signals, enabling deeper insights into audience movement and behavior. Point-of-interest data further refined this by helping advertisers understand who is likely to be present around a location.
Today, artificial intelligence and computer vision are unlocking an entirely new layer of site and audience intelligence. Together, these data streams are transforming OOH from a real estate-led medium into a data-backed one.
The rise of Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) is accelerating this shift. Campaigns can now be planned, scheduled, and optimized with increasing precision bringing OOH closer to an adtech model. That said, as a physical medium, OOH still operates within real-world constraints, making this transition gradual rather than absolute.
At the same time, advertisers are returning to OOH with renewed interest.
One of the biggest drivers is authenticity. Unlike digital platforms, OOH offers real-world visibility free from bots, fraudulent impressions, or ad blockers. What you see is what exists.
There’s also growing digital fatigue. Consumers are overwhelmed by constant online advertising, often choosing to skip or ignore it. OOH, by contrast, engages audiences naturally within their environment, without interruption.
Mobility further strengthens its impact. As people move through cities daily, OOH benefits from repeated exposure building recall over time in a way few channels can match.
Add to this the power of creativity. Large formats and contextual executions don’t just capture attention, they often extend beyond the physical space, finding life on social media.
Finally, the increasing availability of data at the planning stage is boosting advertiser confidence. Better insights mean better decisions and more accountability.
As cities grow and movement increases, OOH is uniquely positioned at the intersection of physical presence and data intelligence. Its evolution from billboards to big data isn’t just a technological shift, it’s a redefinition of the medium itself.
Note: The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect our own.
