The Law of Story
Our brains are hardwired uk email address list to learn from stories. It is confidently speculated by anthropologists that the first of what we would call ‘stories’ today would have been nothing more than tribal gossip thousands of years ago; about where there was food, where there were predators, about what leaves and flowers the cave women liked etc.
Our love and need for stories (or flowers) has not dimmed, as seen by the colossal success of Marvel and Disney, and our obsessive enthusiasm for the people who play characters in those movies. Brands use – or at least should use stories – in much the same way; to activate emotions, communicate values and build self-sustaining communities that will be both helpful and profitable.
Donald Miller, author of Building a Story Brand, recommends that marketers so that customers are no longer seen as anonymous but as the main characters of a story you (and your product or service) are about to help them embark on. He says:
“Every human being wakes up each morning and sees the world through the lens of a protagonist. The world revolves around us, regardless of how altruistic, generous, and selfless a person we may be.”
Television producer John Yorke :We Tell Them, says that stories are “at some level a journey into the woods to find the missing part of us, to retrieve it and make ourselves whole. It is as simple - and complex - as that.”
As marketers, it is our duty to explore this psychological law of narrative and ensure our products and services support our customers in creating a transformational story of their own. Can you help your customers – even in a small way – say they lived “happily ever after?”
Discovering how your brand fits into the ongoing story of your customer, and then communicating that via your promotional materials, website, social media channels and apps, is perhaps your most difficult – and potentially most rewarding – challenge yet. A story that resonates with your audience is the difference between a famous brand and the rest of the pack, and fulfils the psychological need of every person to feel that their life is an unbroken series of purposeful events leading to a satisfying climax.
To Understand Marketing, You Must Understand the Human Brain
From the outside looking in, digital marketing can sometimes appear haphazard and its success the result of luck rather than skill. For those who understand the human brain, and how psychology powers behaviour however, there is an ironclad method behind the perceived madness.