On October 14, 2014, actor, teacher, and author Matthew Taylor of Persuasion through Narrative shared his lessons on how to develop business through the art of storytelling.
This summary covers four areas: First, Taylor explored how storytelling and memory work. He then moved into the mechanics of “the story.” This background creates a compelling case for weaving storytelling into everyday business development and marketing activities (or as Taylor calls it, “thinking in story”). Finally, he provided several tips on how to do this in meaningful, memorable, concise ways.
1) Storytelling: The “Original Viral Marketing”
The first part of Taylor’s talk focused on the mechanics of storytelling and the human brain. To understand why stories work, consider the acronym CPR:
Connection: Stories undeniably connect us as human beings—we are hardwired to share and receive stories. Researchers at Princeton have recently pinpointed the areas of the brain that “light up,” or react, to a story at the moment a listener becomes engaged. The findings biologically support the power we believe to be present in good storytelling.
Persuasion: There is no greater tool than storytelling for persuading people to think a certain way or take action. I am paraphrasing, but Taylor quoted a British actor who says, roughly, “People are inhibited through knowing that no action, expression, or movement is without purpose.” We are driven by want, Taylor proposes, and storytelling uniquely satisfies our brains’ requirements for absorption in order to be meaningfully recalled.
Recall: When we hear something we like, one of the ways we remember it is through the retelling of the story. We are thus biologically compelled to share the story in order to remember it. In this way, storytelling is the original viral marketing, before social media gave us “going viral” as we know it today.
2) Memory: It’s All About the Dopamine Parkways, Baby!
According to Taylor, there are three distinct types of memory: sensory, working, and long-term. Understanding these distinctions and how they interact is critical to successfully delivering our marketing messages.
Sensory memory parallels the five senses—taste, touch, sight, sound, and smell—in how it triggers impulses in the brain. Unclear information fails to trigger such impulses and, as listeners, we discard it. (Are you reconsidering that extra-long introductory bio sentence your lawyer just revised with additional commas, semi colons, two dashes, and parentheses? Good. Taylor says you should be.) However, we seize upon clear, relevant information at the sensory level and welcome it into our working memory.
Working memory allows us to retain small pieces of information for short periods of time (20-30 seconds). Generally, humans hold seven pieces of information, give or take two, for such periods of time. These pieces of information in turn trigger our long-term memories, which we use to supplement working memory to add meaning to, or more aptly to take ownership of, an idea. This ownership creates engagement and excitement, which is exactly what storytellers need to gain access to their audience’s long-term memories (thus reaching the Recall stage of Taylor’s CPR acronym).
When attempting to lodge information in an audience’s working memory, size and organization matter. Taylor shared a number to illustrate: 920602473. (For those who attended, how did I do?!) As we interpret that, it is nine digits, or nine separate pieces of information. Alternatively, there is 920-60-2473. Thanks to the breaks, this is now three pieces of information rather than nine, which may make it easier for some audiences to recall as a whole. And—I pause here to add reflection—I believe the unique length of each grouping also enhances the ease of memorability of each piece. My two cents.
Long-term memory is the supercomputer in our brains, and researchers still do not know the capacity of these storage areas. Good triggers from our working memory create what are called dopamine reward parkways (yeah, a quick little high), which facilitate retrieval of information from our long-term memories and help us accept information and create our own associations. As you may guess, the ability of marketers to tap into this process has a great deal to do with our success.
3) The Story: Why You Should Hope to be Interrupted
In his New York Times bestselling book, Tell to Win, Hollywood producer Peter Guber said [I’m paraphrasing again], “Story is the vehicle that allows us to communicate facts in an emotional context.”
Ira Glass, the great American storyteller and radio host, contends that a story needs just two things to be amazing: details (or facts), and reflection (or emotion). For storytellers, this may be presented as a formula: Recollection + Reflection = Recall. In our world, recall is a prerequisite to success.
Too often, Taylor says, reflection is missing from business and marketing storytelling, leaving stories flat. Yet it is reflection, the introduction of emotion, that unlocks the persuasive power of a fact or idea. As marketers, one of our highest goals must be to elicit good storytelling fodder—details, images, reflections—from our lawyers and clients and include these in marketing stories.
By sharing what a thing means to us, we present it to readers as important and invite them to absorb it into their working memory and then unlock the long-term memories by which they will assign meaning and make the idea theirs. The resulting “ownership” of the idea creates connection, relationship, and persuasive power. It also creates enthusiasm, which may manifest in the swapping of stories and linking of one idea to the next and the next, or, in some less-restrained listeners, outright interruption, which you may take as an indicator of positively affective storytelling. (Assuming the interruption isn’t to say “Get the *&^%! out of my office!”)
4) Tools and Tips
Great, you are saying. But what does all this mean for my daily marketing to-do list? “Become fluent in thinking in story,” Taylor says. Stories need not be sagas to be effective, and anyone pitching busy general counsels or business decision makers knows that brevity is crucial. Here are tips to apply throughout your marketing routine.
- Most importantly, know what your story is about. This will strengthen and tighten the narrative and help you and your lawyers make decisions about what to include and what to omit.
- Make your story personal. Include how you felt. In the business world, think of this as raising the stakes of your story.
- Include details. “It’s not just a car,” Taylor writes, “it’s a 1998 red Dodge Dart with 270,000 miles on it!” Which one do you think audiences will remember, or even potentially glom onto and mine their long-term memory for their own oldie-but-goodie? Essentially, detail can create likability, or connection.
- Create vivid images. The brain does not discern between lived imagery or imagined imagery. Be vivid (“1998 red Dodge Dart with 270,000 miles”), and your audience can identify. Use names, places, and specifics.
In short, Taylor reminds us to use storytelling make our audiences care. By tailoring and delivering our ideas (our value) to prospective clients in ways that resonate, we help clients see our big ideas as being about them. That, Taylor avers, is a key to business success.