Storytelling To A Goldfish
In 2015 the Internet blew up with the humans have less attention than a goldfish stat. Twitter advertising got a bump as marketers sought human goldfish living in the self-imposed 140-character limit world. PowerPoint slide decks with obligatory goldfish bowls and memes proliferated. It’s rumored the National Basketball Association hotly debated the need shorten games because, ya’ know, we can only pay attention for 8 seconds.
The problem with all this? Fake news. For real. Microsoft is often credited with the factoid and yet its research report about Canadian web habits had this in the foreword, “Think digital is killing attention spans? Think again…Rest assured, digital won’t be the cause of our (at least attentional) downfall.”
Ironically, the statistic and myth came from people who didn’t pay attention to the study. But this myth won’t die a proper death having recently came across a fundraising blog dropping the stat as reason to follow his copywriting advice.
I’ll return to that advice in a moment but first, what’s the real deal with human attention? To summarize:
- Statistics showing people bounce around social apps or the web like water spiders on a hot summer day has nothing to do with dwindling attention.
- Humans have great capacity for sustained attention.
- Some attention is grabbed, some intentionally given.
- Your fundraising job is grabbing attention
- Inattention to your copy isn’t a deficit, it’s a choice.
- The failure is on the writer/creator, not the reader.
- Even if successful in grabbing attention, it might be selective or divided and sustained or not.
- Context matters. Content matters.
- Attention matters because getting stored in memory matters.
- A great way to get attention that sticks (memory) is stories.
The best story is one the reader relates to, hence our obsession on tailoring stories to Identity and Personality as cornerstones of creating stories that attract. There are several other key elements to good storytelling but suffice to say, it’s one of the best hooks we’ve got to grab selective attention.
That brings me to the copywriting advice from our unnamed blog. I’ve edited for brevity:
- The top has short blurb about Need or what the donor’s gift will do to help
- The first three-ish paragraphs summarize the letter, sharing need, what gift will accomplish, and making urgent ask
- The middle goes more in-depth, shares details, perhaps shares a story [emphasis added] that illustrates the need for the donor to take action
- The last couple of paragraphs tend to repeat what was said in the first three
I believe this outline is common. The story is buried if present at all. We’ve done head-to-head testing that abides by a very different “formula”, not least of which, leading with story tailored to the person. It wins handily.
Eight seconds is a myth. Goldfish also get a bad rap; they can remember things for months.
The copywriting rationale of getting to the point immediately might be correct. But what is the point? Telling me the need and making the urgent ask? Repeating yourself over and over? You might get exactly what you sought to avoid, eight seconds of my attention.
Kevin
4 responses to “Storytelling To A Goldfish”
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Yeah, I fell for this. Still: this urban fundraising myth serves a purpose I think … generally speaking sort of unscientifically at the end of the day when you’ve got to hustle sales language out the door.
Comparing the goldfish attention span to the human attention span is a grabber when you’re teaching the basics of persuasion comms … especially the bit about how hard it is to get your point across.
Then you link the goldfish to the 2002 Kahneman Nobel-prize in economics: framing and all that jazz.
I’m delighted and enlightened to hear that goldfish can remember things for months. What did I have for lunch yesterday? The goldfish was there. Apparently I was not.
Hi Tom, I’m afraid to do a search within the DonorVoice archives going back 10 years for “goldfish” as I expect we fell for it too. And fish or no fish, very much agreed on the need to grab attention and that it needs to happen quickly, which means in the beginning of the video, ad, email, letter. The larger question is on what works best to grab that attention. We’d argue, a story well told vs. stating need/urgency and making the ask, which is how I interpret the blog advice I stumbled across and what I’ve anecdotally observed as a common outline.
We don’t have reams and reams of head-to-head testing on this very thing but have tested a few times our outline for copy vs. this alternative and story first wins. And our version of story implicitly and indirectly always shows vs. tells need but as important, the charity/donor intervention and the positive, agentic and functional improvement in welfare of the beneficiary (impact). So, in that way, I suppose not all stories are told the same.
Ha! I also recently came upon a blog that debunked this myth (so it wasn’t a fundraising blog). And I have an article, still in draft form, making many of these same points. My favorite statement of yours is: “The failure is on the writer/creator, not the reader.”
Clearly, we all need to be more thoughtful. First, with how we’re hooking readers. Otherwise they’ll never open our message. Period. Second, with the content. Stories, yes! But stories that resonate with the reader. That connect to their identity, hopes, values and dreams. Third, we’ve got to present more solutions. Folks don’t respond well to constant whining and complaining. They want to join the rising tide, not throw their precious resources onto a sinking ship. So let’s do more of that, while showing them how they can be a part of solving a problem that keeps them up at night.
And, I too fell for it. After all, my attention span has been getting shorter and shorter. Of course I thought it was becaus I’m a Pisces. 😉
Hi Claire, great minds and all. Yes, the story shouldn’t be a version of give me $10 or the baby seal gets it. People want a story that mirrors their own and some of the more generous donors have stories that follow a redemptive arc – struggle, intervention, positive change. Plus, people don’t give because you made them feel sad or angry, they give becaue they decide that it’s a (or the best) way to alleviate that negative emotion stirred by the crappy situation. And it’s much easier for people to make that critical judgement if we paint the full picture for them.