Were the Ancient Storytellers of Qissa Khawani Bazar Actually Marketing People?

 

Visiting Qissa Khawani Bazar in Peshawar was my childhood dream.  When I finally succeeded in materializing this dream  in 2012, along with my three daughters, they were shocked to see  the weird place. Nonetheless, I was able to visualize the foggy evenings thousand years back. I could see merchants  from central Asia, China and far off places like Arabia sitting on charpoys, enjoying qahwa, from hot samawars outside nanbai shops near the woodfire, surrounded by smoke and smell of freshly baked nans, telling stories to each other.

Storytelling is one of the most ancient arts man has ever practiced. We find pictorial stories in the rock arts and cave paintings. Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets and Egyptian hieroglyphs introduce us to non-fiction stories of the rulers. They made stories for whatever they wanted to convey to the next generations. Heavenly scriptures are full of storytelling about both prophets and common man. Mythological stories appeared in almost all ancient religious texts. Almost every nation and ethnicity have its own set of folk tales. Today. when data has become the single most  powerful entity in our lives, we need to learn this art of storytelling to present data effectively more than ever.

Data surrounds everything we do. But as more and more data becomes available, the key messages can be lost in the heaps of reports. So to make informed decisions possible we need to organize data in a way to communicate our message and what makes this communication is called storytelling. For effective storytelling,we need to visualize the data in a certain way with the spectacles of the audience.

"Bad visualization can even lead to our audiences misinterpreting the data and making bad decisions based on incorrect assumptions," says Chris Taylor, Maxus Global Data Platform Director in his article,  Data and the art of storytelling, published on Max Global Web site.

While storytelling is the act of communication through the use of narrative elements with the purpose of educating, entertaining or influencing others, it is one of the most ancient arts man has practiced. When it comes to visualizing data the same key concepts need to be adopted.

A good digital story  should guide the audience to the key information they need to understand what is going on, keeping them engaged throughout the process and helping them to make educated decisions.

Applying some of the rules of storytelling to data presentation can make a huge difference to the way it is received. Below are some of the key rules of good storytelling and how they can help get the right message across.

When you decide to present data visually you need to think about your audience. What matters to them most?  how they can comprehend your statistics effectively. whether it will be useful to tell them percentage or fractions or simply telling them the numbers will be useful? So don't see f a chart looks fancy, visualize does it present the information in a way suitable to the message you are conveying. Selection of data to be presented is of crucial importance. We, journalists, are told about journalistic preferences, the digital storytellers must also learn to select the data. How you have to aggregate date is of extreme significance when it comes to storytelling.

A layman simply can't make the difference in millions and billions. He should be told the difference before you are overloading him with these numbers if your report or presentation contains these mathematical jargons. Yes, these are mathematical jargons for a common man.

What data pieces will make your story easy to understand and interesting? You may need to write different digital stories for a different audience from the same data.

Defining your final aim and target of presentation first is an important clue. Come up with the end first. How much revenue you earned after changing the social media strategy? or how much you lost when your competitor hired a new media company? If you give five percent discount for the whole month of Ramadan how much rise in the  sales are expected?

Deciding a Narrative is next important milestone in storytelling. How you are going to tell the story. How you will grab the attention of your audience j the first scene and how you will introduce the characters. How will you engage them throughout? Above all the metrics we are using to convey the message in the story has to prioritize and organized effectively on screen.

Focus on the figures, statistics and metric. Does it tell the story more effectively? If yes. It should be on top. The metric with the most impact should get more time on screen than less significant facts. If the weight of a product is not relevant to final sales, why should we discuss it in presentation or video?


Always avoid misrepresentation of data and don't pollute data on screen and graphs. Your graphs should be clear with minimum information. Don't display unconnected variables;they will simply confuse your audience.

Selection of appropriate color schemes, consistency of the layout makes the story effective. However selection of key information is the key of success for any digital story. It is hard to say,  how many traders from far off lands  were actually selling their merchandise through the art of storytelling in Qissa Khawani Bazar. Who knows?

Media Bites Editorial - Tazeen Hasan