Once upon a time…
“Once upon a time…”
Ah! The three magical words which, upon utterance, arouse interest, unparalleled excitement and instill hope instantly in the intended audience. These words bring in a promise to transport the reader/listener to a land he has never seen before, to make him live characters from all walks of life and to open him up to a plethora of possibilities. A wise man (read Tyrion Lannister) had once said, “There’s nothing more powerful in the world than a good story.” Call it magic, call it true, a good story does cast a spell on its audience. It’s fascinating to witness a multitude getting charmed by a work of coherent writing infused with a gripping plot, laced with vivid description and knotted with twists.
So what exactly happens to the human brain when it is exposed to a story?
The brain reacts to characters in a story in a manner akin to the way it reacts when we experience a real-life interaction. The experience of going through the struggle that the characters are facing, impacts the memory of the readers profoundly. The intended audience remembers better, because to a certain extent it has lived the events detailed in the story owing to the emotions invoked in the readers/listeners when they were exposed to it.
Every emotion that the human body experiences is triggered by a biochemical reaction. Reading or listening to a good story induces similar reactions in the brain. This precisely explains why we consume stories better than mere factual points of information.
Dopamine is a substance that invokes emotions in humans. Stories excite neurons that make dopamine. This affects emotions, movements and sensations of pleasure and pain. As a chemical messenger, dopamine carries signals between brain cells.
Stories also stimulate the creation of oxytocin, a hormone that enhances feelings of trust, empathy and generosity. Oxytocin sends a signal that we should care about someone. The greater the amount of oxytocin released, the more connected and empathetic people feel towards the characters in a good story.
Furthermore, stories elicit emotions which in turn can influence sales of a product. A customer’s emotional response to an advertisement is capable of manipulating his supposed intent to buy a product. To leverage the said impact of stories on customer choices, digital storytelling is gaining momentum with each passing day and is introducing disruptive thinking to alter the conventional methods of marketing. Audio renditions of stories, in fact, fare better than their written counterparts owing to the deeper impression that they create on the minds of their target audience.
Recall how, as a child, you yearned to be told a story by your grandmother. Recall how your face lit up as she started her narration. Knowingly or unknowingly, it was her rhythmic delivery which held your attention all the while. The modulations in her voice coupled with her expressive gestures made her story a treat to hear. Probably, these attributes were more appealing than the content of the story itself. It is this very facet of human behavior that digital storytelling in marketing capitalizes on.
The human brain likes to be teased. It likes to be challenged, to be excited and, ultimately, to emerge victorious in the struggle. It looks for some food for thought at all times to keep itself from becoming the Devil’s workshop. Reading or listening to a story offers this opportunity to it. Seeing through this psychology allows insightful marketers to leverage a common childhood fascination to compound sales and reach out to a broader customer base to meet their demands through their products. A symbiosis in the true sense of the word, isn’t it?
