Why we love a good story?

Being in advertising, one thing I keep hearing about daily is, the art of story-telling. All that we plan and do in terms of insights, culture, data analysis, personality sketch, mood boards, etc... all lead to the output of telling a good story.

But, why do people love stories? Me thinks, it is much more than effective technique of communicating the content & the context; it is a question of fulfilling what we (or at least most of us) lack.

The lives we live are mostly predictable - school till 17, then college, then higher studies, job, marriage, etc, etc.. as the days goes by, it becomes more predictable and monotonous. Thus our lives starts to become a staid repetition, consisting of same characters and same situations. Our lives are bereft of a good story.

To satisfy this inherent want or need of good stories, is when we become receptive to good stories. Most stories that are successful (in popular terms) are those that do not reflect our lives, but those which reflects our dreams (maybe that’s why we dream too) - Heroes, Superheroes, thrillers, etc all these genres thrive because they satisfy that lacking in us.

Maybe, that’s why in advertising too, there is a huge gap between the conceptual customer and the actual customer...because, the brand story told was a good story told.

Cheers!


Santosh
Image source: www.brandpoint.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Best Indian websites - 2007

Image
Hi, This was an article that appeared in PC World India Nice stuff Santosh ------------------------------------ Technology will dominate the future and the web is clearly one of its greatest manifestations. Forget the dotcom bust that many sceptics will remind you of The Web is going to become our way of life in India . There are enough statistics to point to the rapid growth of the Internet in India – number of connections, e-mail accounts, transaction revenue – all very convincing. But who needs statistics? Just a quick look around will reveal how web is fast replacing traditional brick-n-mortar operations. Be it picking new stocks or new friends, finding a job or a bride, there’s a web way to things that is proving far more effective, and rewarding. Websites today are built with robust understanding of users and available technology. They purposefully pursue fulfilling the needs of their audience but are grounded in strong business reality. And hence, unlike the fairy-tail era gone
Read more

10 Reasons Marketing Strategy should include the Internet

It may seem surprising but many companies, big and small, have yet to develop a rational Internet marketing strategy. Considering the Internet has now been used effectively by marketers since 1994, any organization without a strategy to utilize the Internet for marketing is probably making a big mistake. For any organization that still does not have a meaningful Internet marketing effort we offer 10 Reasons why you should. 1. The Go-To Place for Information Possibly the most important reason why companies need to have an active Internet marketing strategy is because of the transformation that has occurred in how customers seek information. While customers still visit stores, talk to sales representatives, look through magazines, and talk to friends to gather product information, an ever-increasing number of customers turn to the Internet as their primary knowledge source. In particular, they use search engines as their principle portal of knowledge as search sites have become the leadi
Read more

Teach Marketing, Yoda Can

Image
About 8 years back, I wrote an analogical article about Kung Fu Panda and digital marketing (you can read it here ). That time my kid was 3 years. Now my kid is 11 years old. As all growing kids do, he too has out-grown the Kung Fu Panda-The Lion King phase. His current fascination is The Star Wars. I guess, by now, he must have finished watching at-least 3-4 times….The Star Wars Saga - the original, sequel, and prequel trilogies, animated series, The book of Boba Fett, The Mandalorian, and even the Thrawn trilogy books. The next on his wish list is to own an original lightsaber… Kids are demanding! Well, this article is not about my kid or his love for Star Wars. Working from home and watching these movies along with my kid, this is about my thoughts on what Star Wars can teach us about marketing, or more importantly what marketing tips Yoda can teach “Do or do not. There is no try.” We all know that planning is very important when it comes to any campaign/project. But every great pl
Read more