Page 16 - AeM_April_2019

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Storytelling -

the latest trend for thousands of years

Storytelling is often sold as the latest marketing trend, responsible for quick impressions, spontaneous
but we know that storytelling is neither a trend nor a feelings, we intuitively assess situations. It helps us to
novelty. Nevertheless, many advertising agencies are survive. System 2 goes a step further since longer-term
still mainly design-oriented and only slowly becoming problem solutions take place there, but System 1
aware of the power of good stories. Thanks to digital dominates simply because it is faster. That is, we judge
marketing, this power can also be measured accurately a surprising situation with System 1 (fast, intuitive, on a
and quickly, proving that communication without a story gut level) and our system 2 then sometimes explains
cannot compete with story communication in terms of this judgment rationally.
conversion rates.
A good story primarily addresses System 1. It loves the
Advertising and marketing are reverting to storytelling , catchy, well-presented, but also sensibly ordered story:
since it is confirmed that our brain is increasingly a good story touches us emotionally but is also
blending out blabla, simply because what does not help rationally linked. Emotion and causality belong
us content-wise and does not help us in life, gets no together.
place in our brains.
Since stories not only stimulate our brain and make us
That's why it's imperative for companies to tell stories, work creatively, but also influence our behavior,
with authenticity being the magic word of the moment. storytelling is one of the most effective marketing tools.
Real people tell real stories, which increases credibility,
identification and sympathy. Storymarketing: making information stick
Brain research confirms storytelling success We all know that people remember good stories for a
lifetime – like the fairy tales of our childhood – but they
Brain researchers realized that listening to stories means even get more widespread and thousand-fold shared
our whole brain is active, even those regions that only today,
work when we experience events ourselves. In a good
story, we are actually "in the middle of it all". People But let’s be clear here, this doesn’t justify in any way to
seek what they see, hear, experience, a common thread, put fake news into the world to be heard and read.
a connection. That means, our brain diligently constructs Telling the facts well is what matters most: to phrase
its own stories and puts individual parts together. It them in appropriate words and to see the story framing
seeks, so to speak, the meaningful whole.
these facts. Today’s marketing managers have no
choice but to work out what good journalists have
The Israeli-American psychologist Daniel Kahneman has
divided our brains into two systems. System 1 is mastered long ago.
16 April 2019 - Personalized & Customer-Centric Content Marketing