Good Storytelling is Successful Neuroscience
“You may not realize it, butt when you’re designing event marketing campaigns, you’re acting like a scientist—a neuroscientist to be precise.”
This statement by a group called Unbridled goes on to say, “Every decision you make to appeal to your audience’s emotions by understanding who they are and where they come from shows you understand your audience’s brain.” Nice concept.
But sadly, most of us—marketers, advertisers, executives, speakers, humans in general—demonstrate very little understanding of our audience's brain. Not only do we not know who our listener is or where they're coming from, we don't really care. We have a story to tell, and dammit, we're gonna tell that story the way we want to tell it no matter who's standing or sitting in front of us! We profer our own neuro motivators based on what's most important to us, and subjugate the science of what's actually important to others. Or to our teams. Or to whoever’s deciding whether or not to buy our product or message.
Neuroscience / Neuromarketing
Neuroscience studies the nervous system, how it evolves and performs, the ways it drives us, controlling our thoughts and movements. Neuromarketing, a term created 20 years ago at Rotterdam University, studies techniques for stimulating our audience’s inspirations, preferences, and decision making.
If I want to get you to do something, change something, or invest in something, I first need to market that idea to you in a way that activates your unique neurological pathways in hopes of connecting them to my goal.
Imagine you're a team leader and your ELT has just told you to get your department moving in a different direction. You set up a meeting with your people to break the news, knowing it's going to be hard to accept. They're comfortable where they are, doing what they do, earning their paycheck, working at the level they feel is appropriate. Your job is to get them to work different, harder, longer hours, further out of their comfort zones, maybe even do things they disagree with, all in service of leadership they may not trust or respect. You better have a damned good neuro story so they don't shoot the messenger.
3 Story Options
The neuro depends on how you incorporate strong #CorporateStorytelling. Forget the science, that's too difficult and time-consuming; you need to get your team on board and doing what needs to be done now, without excuses, or jobs could be lost, divisions disbanded, contracts unsigned. The neuro storytelling approach you choose can do one of three things:
1. Be purely informational. Here's what leadership wants us to do, here are your new assignments, I don't like it either, sorry guys, good luck.
2. Stoke their fear. Here's our new directive, and if we don't or can't get it done our business unit will be made redundant. Either we deliver or we can expect layoffs. Make it happen, or there's the door.
3. Create neuro positivity. This isn't what we hoped for, but we can make this work to our advantage. I know you, your skills, and your situation, and it's my job to maximize all three in this transition. Let me market this new direction to our benefit so we can prove we're the ones who got the job done.
If you consider yourself a leader, or hold the title of an executive, your only path to success is option 3. Story is everything.
Neuro Positivity
I recently trained a team of subject matter experts on how to deliver factory tours for partners and potential customers. It was clear these folks had zero interest in that assignment. They were chemists and engineers, tours were a distraction from their real jobs, an extra burden they didn't want, respect, or appreciate. But they had no choice. The only path forward was neuro positivity.
Our training program played to their personal motivations, leveraged their natural skills, and turned the negative ELT demand to positive payoffs and personal values of delivering a better tour.
We find lots of neuro marketing strategies for engaging our audience: Eye tracking to see where and how a viewer's eye focuses on one part of an advertisement over another. Sensory stimulation to target individual sets of sense memories that create connection to a brand or product. FOMO to build exclusivity and make us worry that “If I don't take advantage of this opportunity then someone else will.” And engagement measurement to follow where listeners drift in and out of a branding message. All tell their own great corporate story.
Change the Paradigm
Last week, my wife and I drove our youngest to college, hugged her as many times as we could, then drove away. Like countless parents before us and countless to come. The neuro marketing we chose to tell ourselves on the long drive back to Chicago offered us the same three options:
1. Be purely informational. We raised her, she graduated high school, she's off to university, deal with it.
2. Stoke fear. Worry she may not be happy, make friends, or get so overwhelmed she fails or drops out. Focus on how lonely we'll be without her, or how our relationship will fare now that we're empty nesters. Wonder what we did wrong as parents or the ways we failed to prepare her.
3. Create neuro positivity. Our daughter is so excited, amazing experiences await, and she’s about to try her first this that and the other thing.. She'll create new relationships, a fantastic career, maybe find her first love. How fun it will be to get her back at the holidays. And what a great job we did as parents to prepare her for this journey – exactly the way it's supposed to be.
Driving away wasn't easy. Tears were shed. But the personal neuro marketing worked, tapping into the best connection, emotion, and motivation story.
Bottom Line
Think about how well you know your audience’s brain. What drives them and how can you tap into their wants and needs with your storytelling? The neurologic connections you choose to share determine the level of understanding and connection to your teams, your leaders, and your customers.
How can you best serve the neuro marketing needs and expectations of others with your story? Your brand success may depend on your answer.
