Want Response? Tell A Story

November 9, 2007      Admin

How many times have you heard it?

The best way to get attention and communicate your message is to tell a story.

Imbed your brand, your key fact, your call-to-action in a story and you will be taking advantage of the emotional processing that governs and adds significance to all information processing that humans do.

As marketer Max Kalehoff puts it, We're all suckers for narratives.”

Citing recent research on emotional and physiological response to TV ads to ground his point, Kalehoff observes:

“While great brands are the result of many things — particularly all the factors that deliver great experience over and over and over again — it's the presence of compelling, authentic stories that determines high resonance in our minds … Our minds are hardwired to embrace narratives and distill meaning with force.”

While he's talking about building brands, without question the same is true of promoting your charity or cause.

He ascribes special importance to the “foundational stories” that keep brands (we'd say, organizations) alive even as they grow in scope, complexity and history. Being able to maintain the authenticity of your cause through its original stories is crucial as organizational circumstances and context evolve. As Kalehoff concludes: “In this age of growing transparency — where our mental BS radars remain on high alert and are only further sensitizing — narratives can't be artificially manufactured.”

How good is your nonprofit at capturing and telling its stories?

Roger & Tom