The Power of Stories

Stories are powerful. They allow us to experience and feel, to empathise and engage with the subject. Emotions create connections. A story gives your brand context, differentiation, value and meaning.

 

Context paints a picture. It provides facts, conveys feeling, provides interpretations and understanding. This establishes how people perceive your brand.

Differentiation is the defining factor. How is your brand different from other brands? Difference gives people a reason to choose your brand.

Value is priceless – but we’re not talking about money, we’re talking about feelings. If your brand is perceived as having more value than other brands, then the battle is already won.

Without meaning we have nothing. If your brand tells a story (not it costs less or offers more), people will emotionally engage with your brand. No decision is logical, emotions rule.

According to an article in Psychology Today about a storytelling experiment, when someone tells a story, the experience is transferred directly to the listener’s brain.

The listeners feel what you feel. They empathise. What’s more, when communicating most effectively, you can get a group of people’s brains to synchronise their activity. As you relate someone’s desires through a story, they become the desires of the audience. When trouble develops, they gasp in unison, and when desires are fulfilled they smile together.

For as long as you’ve got your audience’s attention, they are in your mind. When you hear a good story, you develop empathy with the teller because you experience the events for yourself. This makes sense. Stories should be powerful.

With a good story behind your brand, you capture the audience’s attention and hold it in your hand. Read about the power of stories in a great article from Aeon Magazine.

“Across time and culture, stories have been agents of personal transformation—in part because they change our brains.”

Proving the Power of Stories

 

Stories are hundreds of thousands of years old. This Aboriginal rock art from Emily Gap outside Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, tells the story of the caterpillar and how it formed the East MacDonnell Ranges. In a sense, the Aboriginal people “branded” the rocks with their stories just like we brand our websites today.

The Australian Aboriginal people painted symbols from stories on cave walls as a means of helping the storyteller remember the story. The story was then told using a combination of oral narrative, music, rock art and dance, which bring understanding and meaning of human existence through remembrance and enactment of stories. – Wikipedia