A story moves into stories that were there before it. Linguistics calls such framework stories frames. In the example above, for example, we go into a biblical narrative. As a result, we could hurt religious feelings – a communication that is spread at lightning speed through the social media. And we just wanted to say that stories are as vital as apples.

We knew that a campaign works best when it tells a story when nobody was talking about storytelling. But to tell your advertising story detached from existing narratives and frames works the longer the less. In the social media, the recipients not only receive them, they also tell them. This opens up possibilities, but also harbours dangers.

We speak of toxic narratives when stories are believed about your brand, your product, your service, your concern that contradict the facts and are harmful to you. In this situation you need an agency that is familiar with the social media, with marketing, PR and advertising anyway – but first and foremost with stories, symbols and contexts: us.