like whom to marry, where to live, and what career to pursue. Think of the brands you trust and the ones you don't. Can you give a complete accounting of the thoughts and emotions that lead you to say “I do” or sign on the dotted line? Even if you remember the precise moment you made a choice or first believed in something, odds are you can't say exactly what got you there.
As long as we are partly a mystery to ourselves, we will be partly a mystery to every pollster, marketer, data scientist, or advertiser who wants to reach us.
And this is good news for content marketers, because the effectiveness of what we do is based not only on data but on enduring aspects of human nature. Good content, especially compelling stories, sits between science and mystery. Stories command our attention and open our minds to receive new ideas. They aren't effective because they force ideas, but because they awaken our vital needs for wisdom, wonder, and delight.
Wisdom is a distillation of what is useful. And in our accelerated, overmediated present, providing a steady stream of truly useful information is a surefire way to differentiate yourself and elevate your brand.
Wonder stories have been popular as long as humans have been communicating. From ancient myths to superhero movies, people have always craved to know about things that are bigger, faster, more powerful, or just different from their day‐to‐day experience. Wonder also inherently contains pleasure mixed with the unexpected. We love mysteries because their solutions both surprise and delight us. We love jokes because their punch lines catch us off guard.
To catch the essence of wonder, think of its opposite: boredom. Any topic can be boring if it is presented without surprise. When we know what's going to come next, we're bored. Whenever we have even the slightest reason to guess at what's next, we are on the road to wonder.
This state of consciousness is what your brand should always strive to evoke or be linked to. When people see your logo or hear your brand name, some part of them, however small, should open up to a world of greater possibility.
This Is Your Brain on Good Content
Psychology researchers at Johns Hopkins University discovered that the most favored of over 180 Super Bowl ads were the ones structured like stories. The product or brand being advertised didn't matter. To be loved, an ad only needed this basic structure: a beginning, middle, and end, with some conflict and tension along the way.1
Stories, even ones assembled from the barest minimum of ingredients, automatically tap into our attention, which is the most precious resource that every product of media and communications – from the biggest Hollywood blockbuster to the lowliest tweet – is in pursuit of. If you can find a way to use your particular medium to tell a story, do it. You are bound to be rewarded with the gift of willing attention.
But attention is not the only state of consciousness that stories are good at evoking. Once you are in the realm of story, your mind is also more trusting. Good stories release a cocktail of neurochemicals in the brain that simultaneously increase focus and empathy. When we are caught up in a good story, our minds are exactly where advertisers want us to be: paying attention and full of good feelings to attach to the focus of that attention.2 The more empathy we have for somebody, fictional or otherwise, the more we trust that person.
Brain scans reveal that the neural activity of a storyteller is the same as the neural activity of his or her listeners. As neuroscientist Josh Gowin puts it, when we tell stories we are actually taking our thoughts and implanting them in the minds of others.3
The hairs pricking up on the back of your neck during a horror film, or the warm feeling that fills your chest at the height of a love story are less intense versions of the same feelings you'd get if you were experiencing those moments firsthand.
This miraculous power isn't science fiction. It's simply the result of words, images, and sounds arranged in the right order.
What's more, there's an increasing amount of evidence that suggests that this synchronization of brain behavior actually translates to lasting empathy. When you share someone's thoughts, the aftereffect is that you are more receptive to the total way they see the world.4 Stories, then, transfer perspective along with emotion.
It's no mistake that certain vital industries, like finance, energy, and pharma have, as of this writing, some of the steepest reputational battles to win. These industries have been traditionally reticent to share what they do with the world. Decades of self‐defensive communications policies have insulated them from scrutiny and kept them safe. But in our fluid and volatile communications environment, safe is not enough. If you are not actively creating a future for your business, you will fall victim to a future created by others. A proactive approach to a reputation is the only truly safe approach.
Tech companies like Facebook and Apple, which are driving the transition to a digital‐dominant communications world, have so far done an excellent job, intentionally or not, of telling their own story. It's one in which they are the heroes, channeling the world‐changing forces of disruption and innovation to every corner of the economy. The companies of Silicon Valley are now some of the largest in the world, yet the feeling that they are still upstarts battling huge, conservative forces persists. This overarching narrative, which taps into currents of the narrative America tells about itself, has been of high strategic value to the tech industry.
When Apple publicly butted heads with the FBI in 2016 over the company's refusal to provide access to encrypted data on an iPhone, press coverage and public opinion sided quickly and overwhelmingly with Apple. Americans almost instinctively understood that they were siding with the forces of innovation and openness against the forces of tyranny and reaction. More than any factual nuance of the case, and whatever opinion of the case you may have, the overarching innovation story of which Apple has made itself the hero strengthened its negotiating position.
It is not just the ubiquity of its products that makes us feel so comfortable with the tech industry's place in our lives. We also consume medicine, clothing, and energy and use transportation just as frequently as we use our devices. But those industries lack the storytelling capital that Silicon Valley has amassed.
Successful new technologies have always needed stories to usher them into wider social acceptance. You can hear the evidence in our very language.
When we want to change, we talk about turning over a new leaf (“leaf” is an old word for page). When we agree with another person, we're “on the same page.”
When our plans go awry, they've been “derailed.” When things are on the verge of going well, they're “building up steam,” and when they've been going well for a while they're “on track.”
Even goofy terms like “blasting off” and “in orbit” are still in use. Each of these phrases has a nostalgic ring now, but when books, railroads, and rockets were first developed, the metaphors I've just listed were still fresh. People took what was exciting about new technology and used it to shape the way they saw moments in their own lives.
The power and the ongoing relevance of Silicon Valley's innovation story can be seen in the freshness of the metaphors it continues to give us. Being “online” is still a good thing both literally and metaphorically. The word “disruption” has flipped its polarity and gone from negative to positive, as has the phrase “going viral.” When we figure something out, we've “hacked” it. And now any small, new company, not just tech companies, employs that wonderful bit of self‐descriptive poetry, “startup,” so close to “upstart” with its inherent promise of insolence and sudden wealth.
These
Jill Rosen, “Super Bowl Ads: Stories Beat Sex and Humor, Johns Hopkins Researcher Finds,” January 31, 2014, http://hub.jhu.edu/2014/01/31/super‐bowl‐ads/.
Harrison Monarth, “The Irresistible Power of Storytelling as a Strategic Business Tool,”
Josh Gowin, “Why Sharing Stories Brings People Together,”
Paul J. Zak, “Why Your Brain Loves Good Storytelling,”
