Stories have been present since the beginning of human kind and continue to be part of our daily lives even if we are not consciously aware of them.
But first of all let’s review the basics, what is a story? According to Twitchell in the text An English Teacher Looks at Branding: “stories are fictions filled with character, plot, points of view, and an implied purpose called a meaning. Early stories announced this purpose with an attached moral, as with Aesop’s Fables or biblical parables. Often, however, the purpose of a story is to generate a feeling or emotional response in the listener.” (Twitchell, 2004)
Achieving this emotional connection with the listener (or potential customer) in the case of creatives can allow them to reach the engagement needed to get closer to whatever their goal may be.
A statement from Twitchell’s text that really stayed with me is: “stories often carry emotions as meaning. In a sense, we learn how to think and feel by hearing stories.” (Twitchell, 2004) Culturally stories play an important role in the shaping of a person you learn about your own past, your family’s past, even your country’s past through storytelling which helps build your own identity. Stories help you share about your past they help you get to know new people, they are present constantly in our day to day lives.
Since storytelling helps us connect on an emotional level with our listeners stories can be used to create engagement with other people, to get them invested in something that is important to us and allow us to share things with other people.
Brands use storytelling to sell their products through what we call branding: “Today, scientific research has laid the foundations for a sound empirical understanding of storytelling as a clear aid to memory, as a means of making sense of the world, as a way to make and strengthen emotional connections, and as way of recognizing and identifying with brands of any type. Whether you are dealing with product brands or company brands, storytelling is essential to successful branding, since your brand is the sum of all your corporate behaviors and communications that inform your customers’ experiences with your product or company.” (Herskovitz and Crystal, 2010) Through a compelling narrative and a great story structure brands are able to get their customers involved emotionally without them even noticing.
“This brand persona creates a long-lasting emotional bond with the audience because it is instantly recognizable and memorable, it is something that people can relate to, and it is consistent.” (Herskovitz and Crystal, 2010)
This is a proven practice that has been going on for many years, so much so, that scientists and psychologists have numerous studies around the inner workings of branding: “For branding, the significance of recent discoveries in neuroscience is that physiological findings are consistent with findings in business research and with ordinary experience. Whether we study physical structures, physiological processes, or behavioral outcomes, we can point to a sound empirical foundation for using a strong persona in brand storytelling.” (Herskovitz and Crystal, 2010)
Through my research I have found a lot of information around the use of storytelling around products, however I have not found much evidence of storytelling being consciously used within the creatives fields (with authors, filmmakers, designers, artists, etc.), it is a practice that could greatly benefit them to create the needed emotional connection with their chosen audiences and potential clients.
Bibliography:
Herskovitz, S. and Crystal, M., 2010. The essential brand persona: storytelling and branding. Journal of Business Strategy, 31(3), pp.21-28.
Twitchell, J., 2004. An English Teacher Looks at Branding: Figure 1. Journal of Consumer Research, 31(2), pp.484-489.