RONY

1
Heres How to Combine Storytelling and Data to
Produce Persuasive Content

• Can you recall Don Draper using statistics in a
  quote? Neither can I.
• Drapers pitches were successful because they
  focused on stories. (Remember the famous Kodak
  Carousel pitch?) He was on to something Research
  highlights stories as key to capturing an
  audience's attention.
• Jennifer Aaker, a social psychologist and
  professor at Stanfords Graduate School of
  Business, cites a study in which students were
  asked to present a one-minute persuasive pitch to
  their class members. Each pitch included an
  average of 2.5 statistics. Only one of those
  pitches included a story. Ten minutes later, the
  researcher asked the students to pull out a sheet
  of paper and write down every idea they
  remembered. Only 5 of the students remembered a
  statistic 63 of the students remembered the
  story.
• For most people, numbers arent memorable.
  Stories are.
• Numerous studies have shown that stories arent
  only more effective in making a message
  memorable, theyre also more emotionally
  persuasive. Pair this with research that shows we
  make decisions primarily with emotion (using
  logic to justify them later), and you have the
  power of story in a nutshell.
• Your brain on stories
• When we hear a story, not only are the language
  parts of the brain activated, but also every
  other part of the brain we would use if we were
  living the story. Mentally, we become the
  protagonist. In our minds, the story is real and
  its happening to us, not to somebody else.
• Warm chocolate oozed out of the center of the
  cake, swirling with mocha eddies of ice cream.
• Oh, sorry are you feeling hungry now?
• There are 63 grams of fat in Chilis Chocolate
  Molten Lava Cake.
• How eager are you to forget that statistic?
• If the story is about food, your sensory cortex
  lights up. If the story is about motion, you
  motor cortex lights up, as if you were the one
  shoveling cake into your mouth or driving a race
  car.
• An even more remarkable study from
  Princeton shows that when you tell a story, your
  brain and your listeners' brains actually sync
  up. This implies that you can plant ideas and
  emotions into your audiences brain through
  story.
• Don't ditch the data
• Theres a case to be made for ditching data
  altogether in favor of story.
• If youve read about the identifiable victim
  effect demonstrated by Carnegie Mellon
  researchers presenting study participants with
  the story of a starving child versus statistics
  about child starvation in Africa you know why.
  In the experiment, participants who received the
  Save the Children pamphlet featuring the story of
  a starving child named Rokia donated double the
  money of those who saw a pamphlet with statistics
  only.
• But, in another experiment (part of the same
  study), they handed participants a Save the
  Children pamphlet that included both the
  story and the statistics.
• That may seem like damning evidence as far as
  data is concerned.