What do the changes of 2020–new technologies, a pandemic, social conflict, and new data restrictions on the horizon–signal for the next few years? When it comes to building and communicating a brand, change is the only constant, but 2020 was a doozy. It’s important to continually think about the impact of what’s happening today on the drivers of consumer behavior. What changes apply pressure that shifts what people value, believe, and expect? What kinds of stories do people need and want to hear? Especially now?
One great thing about media psychology: tools change very quickly but the core drivers of human behavior people don’t. Behavior isn’t a simple process. It is the result of a continuous interaction between what we see and do, how we think and feel, and the social, cultural, and structural influences in the environment. Behavior a manifestation of how the internal workings of human psychology adapt and navigate the challenges of today’s world. Brand psychology is about picking apart the threads of that complexity to understand how consumers think to be able to connect, create meaning and offer value. Sometimes value is utilitarian; sometimes people need reassurance, inspiration and hope.
Psychology is critical to understanding how brands are formed and maintained. A brand is a social contract. It is an encapsulation of beliefs, images, emotions, and promises that are delivered to an audience, often without saying a word. Brand psychology goes far beyond figuring out how to sell products or services. It is the fundamental approach to understanding how meaning is created in our minds and the ways in which information delivery drives persuasion. Understanding brands is about understanding “meaning units.” It doesn’t matter if it’s soft drinks, big ideas, political candidates, countries, movies or social causes. All are essentially ‘brands’ and all need stories to communicate their purpose and meaning. If the brand doesn’t supply one, we the audience will.
Stories are not superficial entertainment. Stories are fundamental to how people think. Narrative–the linear path of a story– is seen as a theory of mind because stories are how we organize our experience, memories and knowledge. They are how we give events temporal context, meaning, and increase relevance and recall. Stories are everywhere and in every culture, from myths, legends and folktales to dance, opera, paintings, novels and personal anecdotes.
Storytelling a social activity because it creates a relationship between the storyteller and the audience. Stories are also a physical experience; they engage us cognitively; they activate emotions and trigger the accompanying somatic responses. Neuroscience shows that our brains respond to stories, secreting neurotransmitters as we do to physical “real life” experiences. We have greater recall for information delivered in stories, remembering 80% of what we learn in stories, compared to 20% from facts and numbers. We make meaning out of the world around us and explain it in narratives. How many times have you heard the expression, “what’s your story?” We use the stories of others to make meaning of our own lives. We integrate stories and characters to better understand ourselves and others, to clarify purpose, to experience empathy and inspiration.
Brands—and I mean the term broadly as an idea, concept, goal or product–have always told stories to engage and persuade. Sometimes stories emerge from explicit, fully built storyworlds. As consumers, we are enchanted by the brilliant world building of entertainment brands such as Star Wars, Marvel, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Some worlds leave more up to us to fill in the blanks. Airbnb is an example of a company that recognizes the role of storytelling in human experience. Their ads are stories that invite identification, empathy, and aspiration. They activate basic needs of agency, efficacy, and social connectedness that, according to self-determination theory, are central to our wellbeing. The ads invite–even entice– you to step into the shoes of a traveler going effortlessly into new places, connecting meaningfully with locals and experiencing the warmth of inclusion among new friends. They are a caretaker enabling our hidden explorers.
Some effective storyworlds rely on the consumer to fill in all the blanks based on their own needs and mental models. Corona beer ads are a good example. They show us a beer bottle next to a lounge chair against the backdrop of a white sandy beach. The beer has a juicy lime balanced atop a bottle wet with condensation that only a cold beer on a hot day can create. We see the condensation glisten as we watch and hear the rhythm of the waves. This simple story invites us to consider the challenge of our daily life and the goal of experiencing such a blissful retreat and, possibly, the urgency of drinking the beer before it gets too warm. We fill in all that meaning without any words at all from Corona.
Brand stories are the primary means of getting our attention, engaging our curiosity and persuading us to the brand’s value. An effective brand story demonstrates the brand’s core values and invites the consumer into a relationship to create salience and meaning. A clear brand story creates a picture in our mind about what the brand offers and how it fits into our life. Because stories trigger emotion, stories link brands with instinctive, primal reactions that establish expectations and prime future perceptions and purchase decisions.
In this context, brand storytelling plays a pivotal role in crafting these compelling narratives. By weaving a coherent and engaging story, brands can forge deeper connections with their audience, making their message more memorable and impactful. Brand storytelling not only enhances the emotional appeal of a brand but also helps in differentiating it from competitors, creating a strong and lasting impression that resonates with consumers on a personal level.
A strong brand story is essential to the success of every business, nonprofit organization, entrepreneur, educator, and foundation. How to communicate the brand story, however, is an increasing challenge in an environment that is no longer controlled by a small number of one-to-many mass media channels. The audience was never passive as was implied in early communication theories. Producers mistook relative silence of one-way communication for submission. Communications now happens across media and devices, peer-to-peer. The audience is not only able to voice their needs, goals, and preferences, but they can amplify them through networked behaviors. Low barriers to entry in cost, skills, and technology mean it’s easy to create content, ideas, and opinions as well as to share across the Internet. From emails and tweets to creating video channels and podcast series, people produce, distribute and consume continually and publicly.
This is a massive shift both structurally and psychologically. It has disrupted many business models and permanently altered our assumptions. Netflix and Hulu’s streaming services have taken advantage of new technologies to challenge traditional entertainment models. Amazon Prime has forever destroyed consumer patience with shipping times. Smartphones have made 24/7, mobile access the new bogey. We all have new expectations about what is acceptable for connection, trust, access, speed and participation. These same shifts have made a transmedia approach to branding a necessity. Every touchpoint, every platform, every interaction becomes a part of the brand story.
The last year has changed how we view and access the world. It has not changed what we need from it. Technology changes rapidly, but evolution moves at a much slower pace. Even as society evolves, people are still driven by the same core needs to make meaning through connection, to exercise agency, to grow and change. These fundamentals provide the analytical framework for evaluating and anticipating media and technology acceptance, use, success and change. They are what need to inspire our stories.
Dr. Pamela Rutledge is available to reporters for comments on the psychological and social impact of media and technology on individuals, society, organizations and brands.