Tell Me A Story

One day, a bored computer scientist typed into his computer, "Can you compute whether computers will someday think like humans?" The computer hummed, whirred, then displayed its answer: "Let me tell you a story."

The ability to tell stories separates us from other creatures. New theories view stories and such storytelling tools as metaphors and analogies as the basis of human discovery and understanding. Cognitive scientist Mark Turner says:

“Narrative imagining – story – is the fundamental instrument of thought. Rational capacities depend on it. It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning, of explaining.”

We usually think of a story as a narrative with characters, plot and story line involving a series of events. But not all stories are that complete. Stories may be as elaborate as War and Peace or as simple as the one that opened this blog.

While writing a cover letter for a mail campaign, you scour your left brain for a compelling reason why people should read your letter. But you’re working in the wrong hemisphere brain. You need to hop over to the right side of the brain and conjure up a story because the emotional right brain is the gatekeeper to the analytic left brain.

In its early years FedEx’s advertising stressed the value of saving time, a left brain pitch. Then it tried stories showing anxious workers who screwed up getting their bosses’ packages delivered on time in comparison with happy office warriors who did. Shifting to emotionally evocative right brain storytelling helped put FedEx’s growth into overdrive.

Attentionality begins with emotional involvement; sustained attention is determined more by emotions than by reasoning. In the end, the heart trumps the reasoning mind, for as Blaise Pascal said nearly 400 years ago, “The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing; we know this in a thousand ways.”

Comments

[Christian Cantrell]

I seem to remember reading that something similar happened with the famous "Got milk?" campaign. I believe the California Milk Board initially went with something like "Milk: it does the body good" which was never nearly as successful as the 10-year-old "Got milk?" campaign which shows people we all look up to and admire drinking milk and looking very happy about it. It's about as simple a campaign as I can think of, and has been enormously successful because it is emotionally evocative. Who cares if milk is good for you? What matters is that cool, rich, successful and beautiful people drink it!

[David Wolfe]

Christian, you're spot on. We live our lives more by what we feel more than by what we think. For example, with all the talk about obesity in America, will things really be turned around by reasoning that being over weight is bad for you? No, only emotionally evocative messages will put a dent in the problem.

About 400 years ago that French guy famous for uttering cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) sold the Western mind on the idea that emotions yield inferior representations of reality. We're now learning that there is more validity to what emotions have to say than dear old Rene Descartes would ever have dreamed. Psychologist Gary Klein does a brilliant job in his book "Sources of Power" in showing the awesome power of intuition (of which emotions are the substrate) in divining the best course of action in dangerous situations. He discovered in fact that in life and death situations, reason is a dangerous handicap, that "gut feelings" lead to quicker and often superior solutions to threatening situations. Bottom line: We need to take emotions out of the Roger Dangerfield category and give them more respect.

[Yvonne DiVita]

Interesting post and comments. I guess the world is finally getting it...all sales are emotional and stories are far more interesting than stats. Women, especially, LOVE stories! Stories involve sharing thoughts and feelings and when you do that with a woman, she begins to drop her guard, which opens the door for a friendship to begin. Make friends with your customers, men and women alike, and they will be more likely to buy from you.