For various reasons, storytelling has become increasingly popular. Let's start by examining the relationship between people and stories. Humans are natural storytellers, and our brains work in a narrative way. We are built for stories, and they help us understand the world around us. By telling and sharing big stories, also known as myths, we can learn important lessons and give meaning to our experiences. Stories have always had a huge appeal to people across cultures, and brands now play a big role in storytelling. By creating emotional narratives around products, brands can create needs and become metaphors for how to deal with things in life. To better understand the power of storytelling, we must dive deeper into the concept. At its core, storytelling is simply about telling stories.
Throughout all cultures, stories have always had a huge appeal to humans. By listening to stories we can empathize with the main characters and the storyteller. Stories also give structure to how we think about our world and how we should behave in it. The old myths aren't so different from today's stories. These stories still help shape our worldview and beliefs.
Today, brands play a big role in telling these stories. Why is that? Here's the quick version of the story: mass production arose from the industrial revolution, which in turn was seeking mass consumption. By telling stories around products in an emotional way, instead of simply describing the product's functional benefits, needs could be created more easily. Without these stories, Apple is just a fruit and the Nike Swoosh is just a sideways checkmark. These brands can also be seen as myths. Through their narratives, they transcend their physical appearance and become metaphors for how to deal with things in your life. For example, Nike running shoes represent surpassing yourself.
If you want to better understand the power of storytelling, we need to delve further into the subject of storytelling. What is storytelling? Purely translated, it is 'telling stories', but that doesn't get us much further. Maybe it's good to go back to the basics and answer the question, "What is a story?"
A story is a representation of events that are interconnected. It has the following characteristics:
There are several reasons why storytelling is on the rise. The most important reason is the increased focus on content marketing. A story is a very effective way to give substance to content. Telling and listening to stories is something that has been done throughout all times and cultures. Storytelling is the most natural way of communicating for humans. It is not a bad idea to use it in your content marketing and advertising. Storytelling also plays a central role in many moments of our lives. A bedtime story, but also at life events such as graduating, getting married, a funeral, or leaving a company. In many cases, it is about rituals in which telling a story has a fixed place. Everything we experience in our lives we share with others in the form of stories. Stories express our identity; they make us who we are. In our daily lives, as much as 65% of all our conversations are about personal stories and gossip.
In addition, stories strengthen the bonds between people. Stories give meaning to our lives and create a sense of connection. By sharing the events in our lives with others, we develop a "collective memory." This forms the basis on which a culture is built. The stories that we, as the Dutch, collectively tell each other, allow us to know what it means to be Dutch. They give us a shared bond and tell us about the common values that we as a people have. When we hear a story, we relate it to our own experiences, meaning we can easily empathize and identify ourselves with the characters. It creates a connection between ourselves and others.
Furthermore, our human brains remember stories more easily than isolated facts. Our brains look for connections (stories) to understand information. Neurological research shows that we think in narrative structures. We don't have a Rolodex in our heads that we can pull a card from when seeking information. Our brains seek the relationships between information units to store and remember information, which is exactly what stories do. They create coherence among different pieces of information. That is why stories are easier to remember than isolated statements, facts, and figures. Stories are easier to remember because they form a coherent whole. In contrast, some shampoo commercials are difficult to remember due to the lack of narrative structure. Often, these commercials are a list of separate elements: a happy lady with beautiful hair, a zoom on a hair root, indications of formulas and ingredients, followed by the promise that you are worth it. Since a story is a coherent whole, it is easier to remember than a series of separate pieces of information. Stories, therefore, align with the way our brains work.
Stories are also powerful because they can convey emotion. Therefore, telling stories is a very effective way to inspire and enthuse people. For example, the insula, an area in the brain that deals with emotions, lights up in a brain scan when we hear a story. Research also shows that stories activate our motor cortex, which coordinates our movements. This is especially the case when we tell each other stories about life-changing events. There is even synchronization between the brains of the speaker and the listener. If the subject who was speaking showed activity in the emotional part of the brain, the listeners also showed that. By telling a story, the speaker could transfer ideas, thoughts, and feelings to the brains of those who were listening to the story. That means. when we hear a story, we also "really" experience it in our brains. Therefore we can completely immerse ourselves in a movie and get startled when something unexpected happens. All in all, storytelling is a very good tool to use in marketing.