Human beings have always loved stories.
First it was cavemen sitting around the campfire watching a reenactment of the latest cavemen fight. Now it’s modern man sitting around a flat-screen TV watching Brad Pitt and Edward Norton beat each other up in Fight Club …
Technology aside, the love of a good story lives on.
In the book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath discuss how marketers can tap into this innate love of stories and characters. They give the example of Jared, the guy who lost over 200 pounds by eating Subway sandwiches every day. Despite initial skepticism from Subway suits, Jared’s story became a fixture on Subway commercials.
Subway’s sales went from flat growth to 18 percent the first year and 16 percent the following year.
Even Oprah came calling.
Why? Because, as Chip Heath and Dan Heath point out, stories like Jared’s are inspirational and “put knowledge into a framework that is more lifelike, more true to our day-to-day existence … being the audience for a story isn’t so passive, after all. Inside we’re ready to act.”
Consumers take action: that’s a story any marketer likes to hear.