BOOK REVIEW: STORYSCAPING

„Storyscaping“ is a beautiful designed book, written by Gaston Legorburu, World Chief Creative Officer of SapientNitro and Darren McColl, World Chief Strategy Officer of SapientNitro. That´s the agency behind the award-winning campaign “The Best Job in the World” and the heafty job titels of both authors say everything about the deep thinking in this book.

Although the headline of the book is a bit misleading. It gives the impression that this book is purely about storytelling. Yes, Legorburu and McColl help you crafting a great story. But after reading all 244 pages, 2 parts and 13 chapters my impression is that it is much more about “brand experience” than “storytelling”. But maybe that´s also the reason why Legorburu & McColl came up with the artificial word “Storyscaping”. A quite unusual word and - sorry - but I don´t fall in love with it – even after reading the whole thing.

Legorburu and McColl unveil a lot of insights around advertising, communication in general and how to come up with a state-of-the-art campaign. Of course they talk about Sinek´s Golden Circles (“Start with Why”), they refer to James Cameron´s work such as Terminator, Titanic and Avatar and they quote one of my favorite comedy movies: L.A.-Story.

Over all I love the idea of having an Organizing Idea instead of a Big Idea and Legorburu & McColl´s preference for Systematic Thinking instead of randomly picking an insight. There are some cool, easy to use, pragmatic tools which marketeers and also PR people can use right away such as a”4-Step-Box to create Consumer Connections” or a “Insight Mining Map”. 

The last chapter is a little bit too much “promoting their agency”. But hey, that´s the job of these too gentlemen. Overall is´s a great sneak preview into the way of working of a successful agency like SapientNitro and we should be thankful for the opportunity to look behind their curtains. My favorite quote: “The first step to a great insight is having a very clear view of consumers.”