Why are we so scared of great storytelling

On my walk this morning I was listening to a TED talk by Karen Eber. She was discussing what happens to our brains when we hear a story compared to what occurs when we consider data. The short answer is everything happens as a response to a story, the entire brain is stimulated but in contrast data only seems to affect a small portion of the grey matter between our ears. So, it is no surprise that so many companies and brands are talking about the power of storytelling and seem determined to utilize it as they speak about themselves, educate consumers and try to sell their solutions. But are we as successful as we want to be? Does merely saying that something is storytelling make it such?

As many of us in the travel, tourism and hospitality space try to move forward and get back on our feet with consumers - after at least a year of travel bans and hesitation from all of our potential guests, the need to tell a great story and connect in a meaningful way has perhaps never been greater than it is now!

The analogies and examples that Karen uses seem a far cry from what I observe being used by marketing and sales organizations as they attempt to practice storytelling. Karen’s opening example sounds more like the opening sentences of Moby Dick, you are captivated immediately by the mundane and curious as to what happens next. remember how in Moby Dick, Melville invited us into the experience and life of Ishmael? In good storytelling you quickly develop a relationship with the story and the people in the story. I guess we could also say that not all of the supposed modern storytelling we see today is good, just as not every novel ever written is a page turner.

What spoils the story? I think it comes down to fear, the feeling that we must say this, or we cannot exclude that when talking about our brand. Once we start doing that however – including the data, the facts, the specs, the product details etcetera, our story quickly becomes a lecture, a speech, a demo. We do not engage with lectures and our brain does not light up like it would with a story.

Why does that happen? The fact that smaller startups and entrepreneurial companies seem to be better at this helps us answer the question. Having worked in a large global organization I would venture to say that this happens because too many people want to have a voice and have input in how a brand presents itself. What sometimes starts as a great storytelling piece is quickly diluted to an infomercial and then to a product guide. I remember trying to guide content for a particular audience, specific to my division and sometimes being stifled by others that had no knowledge of that audience but were still supposed to add their input and did so with zeal.

Why else does it happen? Another factor is the realization that we are often so proud, even too proud of what we believe to be most important, what we have built, what we have engineered, what we have designed or patented. We hate to think that what we sell, or offer could be interesting without the details. Some might even see storytelling as “fluff” that leaves out the important specifics and therefore will be seen construed as hiding something by any who encounter it.

Imagine if at the beginning of Moby Dick, Melville instead decided to provide the specifications of the vessel. The details around its location including the longitude and latitude, the air speed and direction of the winds and tides as well as a list of all the supplies that the ship contained. Not very engaging, not a page turner and very few would have ever read the story and it certainly would not have become a classic.

Good stories usually are written as narratives or by using the perspective of the first person, great stories often leverage both together. Storytelling is not built from group consensus and when the team approach is utilized to create stories the task gets really difficult if not impossible.