Something that works

Why We Respond to Stories

Marianne Gadeberg

Do you know the feeling of “but that’s what I’ve been saying all along, why did it take you guys so long to get it”?

I bet Jeremy Hsu, who wrote an article for the Scientific American on “Why We Love a Good Yarn” in 2008, feels that way. Judging from recent business book titles – such as Tell to Win and The Dragonfly Effect – my google alerts on “storytelling”, and Twitter’s #storytelling hash tag, you could almost get the impression that the power of storytelling is a brand-new, recently discovered miracle. Though really, it has been around for a while.

While I may have to let up on the storytelling-obsessed posts soon, I think it’s worth spending a few minutes on Hsu’s article. He, unlike most others, dives a little deeper into why it is that we all respond so positively to stories.

He argues that storytelling is a universal human trait that has always served as a way to practice, form, and strengthen social relationships between people. We, as human beings, have learned how to interact with each other, how to show empathy and interpret emotions, through stories. In fact, Hsu says, scientists are beginning to agree that

“Stories have such a powerful and universal appeal that the neurological roots of both telling tales and enjoying them are probably tied to crucial parts of our social cognition.”

However, Hsu doesn’t get much further into the details of these cognitive aspects of storytelling. If you want to continue to explore the subject I recommend turning to Austrian-born Monika Fludernik, who is a professor of English literature and culture at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg, Germany. Her research is academic (and perhaps only for nerds). In 1996, she wrote Towards a Natural Narratology wherein she precisely approaches narratology, storytelling, as cognition. She reasons that stories are meaningful because listeners will connect the stories they hear to life experiences:

“Unlike the traditional models of narratology, narrativity […] is here constituted by what I call experientiality, namely the quasi-mimetic evocation of ‘real life experience’.” (Fludernik, 1996).

In essence, Fludernik supports the view that Hsu is highlighting: Storytelling is tightly connected to human cognition and the way in which we think about the world.

The practically applicable conclusion from Hsu’s writing is, of course, this:

“[S]tories have a unique power to persuade and motivate, because they appeal to our emotions and capacity for empathy.”

It is no coincidence that marketers, advertisers, managers, and so many others have success with using storytelling in their communication – even if they are just beginning to discover this. It will continue to be true that we as people are preconditioned to respond to storytelling, to feel persuaded, motivated, and to change.

Chatroulette Love Song: Viral Video — uR doin it Rite

Marianne Gadeberg

Rune Iversen is a Danish guy who recently wrote a thesis on viral videos. After submitting his work, he decided to test if he could produce a successful viral video himself, using the principles he outlined in his thesis. He started working with a friend, Jeppe Vejs, and together they wrote the Chatroulette Love Song.

Indeed they were successful in producing a viral video. In just these past two days, the video was viewed almost 800,000 times on Youtube.

In an interview, Rune says that it took two and half months of preparations before shooting the video. It’s filmed in just one shot, and the set-up is completely genuine: The girl randomly came up on Chatroulette, and off they went.

The secret to making a successful viral video? “Make something that gives people a story that they feel. Make people happy, make sure your content is good,” Rune says.

It’s great to see people use the power of story in such a successful way. I’m pretty sure that marketers around the world will be going bananas for these guys’ talent.

Tell Stories and Raise Funds — storytelling applied for non-profits

Marianne Gadeberg

It is the sense of connection between you and a certain cause that makes you donate to that cause. At least that’s a long-standing premise of non-profit fundraising.

Seeyourimpact.org, a young Seattle-based non-profit, is using a very personal and tangible form of storytelling to establish the connection between donors and benefactors; effectively making more funding available for life-saving programs.

FastCompany featured their site this week and explained how it works:

Aminata with her new bike -- read the story on SeeYourImpact.

“The model is simple–a donor logs onto the SeeYourImpact website, chooses what type of gift to send–be it a water pump, malaria bed net, wheelchair, or bicycle–and within two weeks the donor receives a brief write-up and photograph capturing the moment the recipient received the gift. And it’s the simplicity, the reward, and the cost–gifts on average range from $10 to $30–that is helping word spread about the non-profit.”

SeeYourImpact has a number of personal stories from past beneficiaries available on their site. Strictly speaking, the write-ups are rather little personal updates rather than actual stories. Still, it seems obvious that hearing from the one person you had an impact on, and seeing their photo, helps establish the personal connection that is crucial for charity giving.

Goetsch, the organization’s Communications Director, mentions exactly this connection as what is missing in modern philanthropy:

“Non-profits have found that breaking development down into tangible concepts engages people. But they haven’t harnessed the power of connecting every donor to their specific impact. The feedback on impact, the personal connection–these are missing in philanthropy today.”

The other advantage of these little impact stories is that they are pieces of powerful, compelling content, which can be easily shared online. Furthermore, if we imagine that more energy was put into refining each story, personal stories like these could also go viral and create enormous attention for a cause online.

However, I won’t fail to mention that while this model seems ingenious, especially because SeeYourImpact promises that 100% of your donation will go to the people in need and none to cover the organization’s overhead cost, there’s a potential ethical concern here. Are these stories too personal? Is the connection between donor and beneficiary too immediate?

There is a fine line there, between the end justifying the means and preserving the integrity and privacy of the people in need. I was happy to see that SeeYourImpact has given thought to this and prohibits contact between donor and beneficiary without the organization’s involvement, and that they reserve the right to change the names of children under the age of 18.

Once precautions like these are in place, using personal impact stories in fundraising will be a very powerful way to connect with donors.

Every impact-creating organization will have compelling stories to tell; it’s only a matter of beginning to tell them.

Facebook Campaigns that Work

Marianne Gadeberg

This weekend, Peter Yarad shared a few insights on what works and what doesn’t work on Facebook.

His most helpful point, I think, is that when you’re designing content for your brand’s Facebook page, it’s beneficial to think about what drives engagement on a regular, personal Facebook page:

“A brand on Facebook should be like a casual friend or neighbor and not try to suck people into heavy levels of interaction. What do you do with a friend? Comment on their photos, like their status, vote on their outfit. These types of interactions take seconds, not minutes, and definitely not hours.”

Additional advice includes making sure your content is “lightweight”. If you’re using like blocks or other obstacles, they must lead to very lucrative deals. It is also important to realize that building a solid audience group on Facebook (and anywhere, really) takes consistent engagement and that it will need time to grow.

Finally, the especially good news: Facebook is built for lightweight engagement type activities, and therefore you can use standard and free, though still custom branded, apps for your brand’s campaign.

Yarad also lists what doesn’t work, including:

  • Treating a Facebook tab like a web page
  • Offering sweepstakes
  • Launching photo and video contests
  • Using Like blocks
  • Asking for extended permissions

Read more on ReadWriteWeb.

Seven Deadly Sins of Business Storytelling

Marianne Gadeberg

OpenForum just posted another excerpt from Aaker and Smith’s The Dragonfly Effect.

They highlight, and rightly so, that while business storytelling often has a different purpose than a story told at a dinner party (or a story in Hollywood movie, or in a children’s book, or in a ballet, or…) the same storytelling principles apply in a business context.

The key is, really, that if you can crack the code and understand how these principles work, you’ll have a very effective marketing tool.

The seven sins (I slightly omitted OpenForum’s version):

  1. Telling a story chronologically: There needs to be more of a tension in a good story, rather than “first this happened, then this, then this, then this…”.
  2. Only telling: Show your audience and make the story come alive to your audience.
  3. Jargon: Refrain from using words only you understand.
  4. Pulse-free stories: Personalize the story, and tell stories about people.
  5. Fabrication: Don’t make something up; you’ll lose credibility.
  6. Bulletproof: Include conflict and vulnerability in your story, and you’ll gain authenticity.
  7. Proprietary: Don’t put ownership on corporate stories. Let them live and get shared.

I especially appreciate Aaker and Smith’s encouragement to follow the example of Apple, Nike, and Ebay and create corporate story banks, where stories that support the organization’s work can be stored and shared.

While Apple, Nike and Ebay may be frontrunners in the field, I personally just spent the better part of a year gathering and sharing personal stories for a social enterprise that works in Cambodia and Laos. Some of these stories can be seen on the DDD blog, for example here and here.

Big, commercial corporations can of course have good stories to tell, but in my experience the potential for good stories rise significantly when dealing with an impact generating organization. Sharing the personal stories of beneficiaries is a great way to connect to donors, funders and partners, and they leave a long-lasting impression.