Tall Tales

The art of storytelling is undergoing a renaissance among Gen Ys. Though they are notoriously distracted from the written page by other modes of entertainment, Ys are transforming the way we approach stories: They share personal narratives in real-time via social media, appraise an item’s value by the power of its story, and assign fictional tales to objects. Indeed, storytelling has adopted a new air of cool and has become a coveted skill of the creative class. So, it follows that new apps, entertainment services, and brands are providing platforms for consumers to layer narratives onto their products.

Picle: Instagram excels at empowering users to put their best faces forward—those filters are superbly flattering—but playful color saturations aside, its chronicling capabilities are limited. Picle, an iOS app introduced in March by digital agency Made by Many, lets smartphone photographers simultaneously record a few seconds of ambient sound as they take a photo. The resultant audio/visual moments, known as Picles, reside somewhere between the photo and video as a unique medium that perhaps most closely resembles a multimedia children’s storybook. Picles can be shared individually or stitched together into longer stories—which sounds like a better way to show off vacation photos than yet another Facebook album.

Myxer Song Stories: Gen Ys already know what their friends are listening to, but when one sees a pal playing the same tune 15 times in a row, it begs the question: “What’s the story?” Music app Myxer Social Radio not only lets subscribers listen and chat with friends in real time but also flaunts an option called Song Stories that allows them to tag songs with short videos of themselves telling a story related to the track (kind of like Casey Kasem’s Long Distance Dedications). The feature, a highly distinguishing attribute in the congested social radio category, also lends itself to success with brands: Geico used it last fall to make integrated video ads.

Hiut Denim History Tags: Most denim brands are founded on principles of style or durability. David Hieatt started Hiut Denim to reintroduce employment opportunities in his hometown of Cardigan, a former denim-manufacturing hub until its factory closed in 2001. Now, he’s giving denim masters their jobs back and letting his consumers create their own legacies in the process. Each pair of Hiuts comes with an identification number, called a History Tag, through which wearers can register their jeans in a database and then submit photos and details about their adventures over time. This may seem obsessive, but for the premium brand’s target audience, knowing the origins of each pair is as important as the selvedge itself.