Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Storytelling is a universal human trait. It emerges spontaneously in childhood, and exists in all cultures thus far studied. It’s also ancient: Some specific stories have roots that stretch back for around 6,000 years. As I’ve written before, these tales aren’t quite as old as time, but perhaps as old as wheels and writing. Because of its antiquity and ubiquity, some scholars have portrayed storytelling as an important human adaptation—and that’s certainly how Migliano sees it. Among the Agta, her team found evidence that stories—and the very act of storytelling—arose partly as a way of cementing social bonds, and instilling an ethic of cooperation.

At first, Migliano wasn’t actually interested in storytelling. She wanted to know what qualities the Agta most value in their peers, given that they are nomadic and their camps continuously shift. So, her students asked 300 Agta to name the five people they’d most want to live with. They also asked the volunteers to nominate the strongest people they knew; the best hunters, fishers, and foragers; the ones whose opinions are most respected; and the ones with most medical knowledge. And finally, almost as an afterthought, they asked the volunteers to name the best storytellers. That, they assumed, was something relatively unimportant, and would make for an interesting contrast against the other more esteemed skills.

For those who are technically challenged like myself, navigating Google Analytics beyond the standard data can be an exercise in futility or frustration. Take your pick. Adam Singer at Google makes it easy to capture your blog’s most popular posts of the year with a custom report you can find in a December post. When I initially came across Adam’s report, I thought, “What’s the big deal? I can do this by simply setting the timeframe from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2012 and pulling up the most viewed content.” Then I realized you need a little “magic” to strip out the posts published prior to 2012 to generate the following Top 10 list from last year....

August, Interpol arrested a 40-year-old Nigerian con artist, known only as “Mike,” who was the alleged mastermind of an email scam cartel that swindled over $60 million from victims around the world. Mike operated various email schemes including the infamous “Nigerian Prince” ruse, which elaborately establishes a heartbreaking and potentially profitable tale before asking for money.

The prince scams are a case study in the power of storytelling. Before asking for money, the con artists weave intricate tales that appeal to people’s emotions. While these scammers tend to prey on the gullible, like this 63-year-old Nebraskan woman who lost over $40,000, the more elaborate variations call on astronauts or London gallerists to target people who may be more sophisticated.

In fact, as Maria Konnikova told Contently in an interview about the dark side of storytelling, intelligent people are the most vulnerable to investment fraud. According to another new book, Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us, they’re also more likely to join cults.

Our predisposition to believing good stories comes down to human physiology and psychology. We’re wired for well-told narratives.

They can be so alluring, enticing, and transformative that they can cause even the smartest readers to change their minds, relinquish money, and see the world through someone else’s eyes.

Even though credibility counts for a lot, you ultimately must make an audience feel things to compel action. It’s a frustrating reality for scientists and statisticians, who often try to persuade people with authority and numbers. Statistics may seem irrefutable, but they can hurt a cause, priming people to think analytically, which increases skepticism and decreases the likelihood for action....

Learn How To Use Visual Storytelling For Your Brand or Content Marketing Strategy, by Following These 10 Simple Rules

Every story had to have some moment that was there to amuse me — a funny moment, an emotional moment, some original observation I’d made on the scene that no other reporter had. It could just be a nice moment in the script. Every story had to have someone who was more than a talking head, spouting out their point of view on the issue of the day.

To make them more human, it sometimes only took a line of description, an original thought about who they were and why they believed what they believed, a surprising moment, a funny moment on tape.If you cannot find a deep interest in the story to begin with, that's a warning since. As Pixar Filmmaker Andrew Stanton advises in his TED Talk on The Clues to a Great Story:

And that's the first story lesson I ever learned. Use what you know. Draw from it. It doesn't always mean plot or fact. It means capturing a truth from your experiencing it, expressing values you personally feel deep down in your core....

The largest semiconductor in the world runs a story depicting tattoos with “Intel” as part of the deisgn.

Caterpillar produces a video about the role of their tractors in uniting the country of Madagascar.

Visual storytelling can be an effective means to show a company’s humanity to the outside world....

[Lou Hoffman talks about the impact of visual storytelling for business ~ Jeff]