No, it’s not the artificial dialogue. Not the predictable story lines. Or the lame special effects. The main reason why I don’t like old movies is being confronted with a linear story in a non-linear world.

And, as you can imagine, these linear story lines are not limited to movies: Almost all campaigns are linear, same is true for books, magazines, radio programs. The majority of our entertainment industrial complex is based on linear storytelling.

In the new marketing reality, good advertising is non-linear: It’s relevant, personal, exploratory, weird, interesting, bizarre, different. Budweiser UK gets it in above commercial: Building an emotional environment, an intellectual platform to communicate to people is all they were looking for. A story that starts to build, a story intriguing enough to make me look again for the next storyline

Providing a non-linear storytelling experience will satisfy the desires of people (who hunger for these kinds of stories) by connecting their actions, channel choices and media snacking to the unfolding story directly. Game developers have understood the potential of non-linear stories a long time ago and the IGDA offers a few good pointers to make the complexity work.

Since our lives are increasingly non-linear, the stories that surround us need to adjust: When TV started to develop programs, they showed mostly theatrical plays because they didn’t know what to do with the medium. It took a long time to develop soaps, sitcoms, etc. We still try to transfer the TV format to the digital medium. That’s not a solution. It’s a pity.

In 20 years, we’ll look back at these stone-age attempts to digital storytelling and in our memories will be black and white. And grainy.