What moves people?

Stories Move People

As business owners, non-profit leaders and marketers, we’re no longer merely selling products or services, or gathering donations, we are building a community around our brand.

People gather around ideas they believe in. And to believe in them, they must be able to trust them. When people trust an idea or a message, when they believe in something, they are loyal to it, share it, and invite others to join them.

This is the goal of every modern marketer. And, as business owners, non-profit leaders – as people in the business of spreading ideas – we are all marketers.

So the first question we must ask ourselves isn’t how to get our idea to spread – it’s how can we do or say something worth believing in? What kinds of messages are people likely to invest in? What kinds of messages are people most likely to trust?

What moves people?

Watch:

Scientists have found cave drawings in Siberia that are 30 thousand years old. Well over half the earth was covered in ice at the time and whoever this was that made the cave drawing, you can imagine their existence is pretty desperate in terms of finding food, shelter, raising a family, and yet they still took time to tell their story through this cave drawing on a cave wall. So, it’s been with us since the beginning.

Uri Hasson, who’s a neuroscientist at Princeton did a study where he measured a group of people’s brain response, electrical response in their brain when they watched two videos. The first video was a modern televised music concert in New York City and the second video was an old Alfred Hitchcock film called, ‘Bang, You’re Dead’ and he measured a five percent electrical response in the brain to the televised concert. He measured a 65 percent electrical response in the brain to the Hitchcock film and the difference between those two, the only difference was that the Hitchcock film told a story.

Stories electrify the brain. Stories move people and that’s how people make decisions to join a cause, or purchase a product or service; if they’re moved with their heart. And so, as marketers, that’s why we think of ourselves as storytellers.