Our (Obsessed) Addiction to Epic Stories
How Stories Transform People, Business and Culture
As a kid I remember impatiently enduring long lines with my cousin Eric on a balmy summer weekday night to watch the much anticipated premiere of Star Wars IV, A New Hope, in a San Diego theater. Expecting an epic beyond imagining, several hundred patrons clamored outside the theater entrance like junkies eagerly awaiting their next methadone dose at a sully ghetto clinic.
If lining up at the theater was like waiting for a fix that attracted every addict in the neighborhood, watching the actual film was like mainlining pure unadulterated heroin en masse.
Why do we love great stories so much?
The junkie metaphor actually resembles our mental and physical responses when we’re immersed in a great story.
When your brain experiences emotionally charged events, it releases dopamine into your system. Dopamine is a feel-good neurotransmitter unleashed by new and rewarding experiences like stories. And because dopamine greatly aids memory and information processing, your brain sends messages to multiple parts telling you to, “Remember that!,” making it easier and more enjoyable to retain specific events or facts with greater accuracy.
A chain reaction ensues. Flooding your brain with dopamine (including the mesolimbic, mesocortical, nigrostriatal pathways), stories heighten feelings of euphoria, empathy and love. A story then activates parts of the listeners’ brains that convert a story into their own ideas and experiences thanks to a process called neural coupling — a kind of empathy that syncs with the story or storyteller. Next, two more verbal and speech processing areas of the brain are activated (Broca’s and Wernicke’s area). Further, an exceptionally epic story can engage many additional brain locations, including the frontal cortex, motor cortex, and sensory cortex.
Sensory overdose!
Alrighty then. Let me ask you a question.
If stories are so important to moving us both emotionally and physically, to retaining ideas, to making sense of the world, to making decisions including choosing brands and products — then why don’t most companies tell a clear, compelling story that engages audiences?
The answer is, most companies just don’t know how.
For those who know how to create good stories, and infuse every action with those stories, come monumental rewards. Johnny Walker. Apple. Nike. Dodge. Disney. Harley-Davidson. Not just ads. Not painted-on stories. Not cryptic spec sheets. Not an incomprehensible list of features and benefits. Not confusing brand fantasies without substance.
Rather, it’s those true, authentic epics that drive every fiber of great companies’ communications and deeds. It’s those stories with human purpose, struggles and truths that we can relate to, share and want to be a part of. It’s what rakes in billions and billions of dollars for Hollywood movies. And yes, it’s what sells billions of dollars in products. Creating more billions in brand value. Every time. Over and over again. Repeatedly. Redundantly. We just can’t get enough of those great stories. Hollywood knows it. Apple knows it. Now you know it.
Russell Volckmann is a storyteller at Romantic Brand Bureau.
Romantic helps organizations create and tell their stories, so word can spread about what they do.
Originally published as “Stories, we love” on LinkedIn on Aug 5, 2015
