By Doreen Malavanu, OnaStories
A Storytelling Safari
Our approach to building a leading storytelling company in East Africa
Stories Matter
Centuries ago, under a blanket of stars, our ancestors would gather by a fire and exchange stories. Back then, the art of storytelling was assigned and passed down from generation to generation. Today, with mobile phones, we are all storytellers — capturing and sharing any and every thing; from the wali maharage we had for lunch to our baby’s first steps.
Since everyone has become a storyteller, it has become difficult to find good and well rounded stories.
Stories, when told well, are the real deal — memorable, entertaining, informative and influential to people’s lives. We know this at OnaStories, and as a storytelling company, we dedicate ourselves to answering the question: So how do we tell our stories well?
“Narratives shape our understanding of the world. They also shape our decisions. In a very real sense, we become the stories we tell.”
— Princely H. Glorious, Founding Partner
Nowadays, most of the content we consume answers three basic questions — Who? What? and Where? This leaves people with a lot of surface deep information on different topics and little in depth knowledge on a specific topic. At OnaStories, one of our storytelling strategies is creating what we call Ona Originals — multi platform, deep dive explainer videos that go beyond answering only who, what and when. Our deep dive explainers, as the name suggests, give depth to stories by providing unique perspectives and asking the questions that not many people ask — why? how?
We kicked this off with our first video, looking at the move of Tanzania’s capital city to Dodoma ‘Dodoma Kunani’.
Brand Storytelling
OnaStories also helps brands and companies find and tell their stories well. Brands have many stories to tell — their vision, why they started, how they have helped society, how their products have been useful and many more.
When they fail to communicate these well, they run the risk of not reaching their targeted audience or leaving them with vague ideas and at times even wrong information on what the brand does and represents. Our storytelling approach for brands focuses on placing characters at the center of their stories and building around their experience with the brand’s services and products — an approach that has appealed to many.
“It is 2021 and people do not want to be talked at; they prefer conversation, emotional connection and generally relate more to other people’s experiences”, says OnaStories Founding Partner Tulanana Bohela.
People relate and engage more to such content compared to advertisements or having brand representatives recount how they have impacted people and customers.
The Future of Storytelling
There is still a lot of potential that is untapped in storytelling and even more so in the use of immersive media in doing so. Industries like tourism (which is a major source of income for Tanzania), real estate, medicine, sports and many more can highly benefit from using technology such has AR, VR and others to market their products, train people, practice and overall offer better customer experience.
Our immersive media unit OnaKesho continually explores and introduces innovative and futuristic ways of telling stories. Through the unit, OnaStories pioneers the use of Virtual and Augmented Reality (AR/VR) technology in Tanzania. The technology, which improves the user’s experience by altering aspects of and simulating reality is a real game changer in the world of storytelling. With our own clients, we have witnessed increasing intrigue and interest in creating these immersive media experiences for their audiences. A notable moment for us in this aspect has been creating a whole Augmented Reality Gallery for Vodacom Tanzania in 2019.
As pioneers, we are excited to see all the ways AR/VR technology can become more mainstream and look forward to the expansion of the AR/VR ecosystem in Tanzania.
Pursuing the less than conventional coup of running a company ‘telling stories’ in Tanzania has been a unique experience. The OnaStories team has gone through, grown through and learnt a great deal. Looking back on this five year journey, Tulanana credits the team’s unique approach, headstrong vision, dedication to excellence and sleepless nights for all the strides that the company has made.
When we started, telling someone we run a “storytelling company” would always elicit: “A what now?” The difference now is clients seek us out with a deep understanding of how foundational stories are in shaping the world.
