The Art of Storytelling

This week we had a guest lecture by David Henderson from DHD.

One of the first things David told us was that people fall in love with a brand because of their storytelling. This had me thinking about many brand that have recently made really good advertisements – one being the newest McDonald’s Christmas advert. The story was so encapsulating to me, that it stuck in my head for quite a while.

David then went on to show us a couple of videos, one bing a John Lewis advert, and the other being the Silent Valley. I really enjoyed these videos and I felt quite connected with the brands, even though I’ve never consumed any of their products.

This method of telling a story to advertise your brand is really effective, and I found it to be quite useful for helping me reconsider some elements of my prototype, in order to make the story more immersive for the user.

 

How Storytelling Affects the Brain

David spoke to us about how storytelling affects the brain, and I found this part of his lecture to be really interesting as I love psychology.

I decided to go and do a bit more research about how storytelling affects the brain because I thought it would be useful to have a fuller understanding of the topic.

I found this article written by Ted Bauer, and in it, he explains the neuroscience of storytelling, as well as tapping into the art of storytelling.

Humans live in, and through, stories

Bauer explains that listening to a good story releases dopamine in our brains – which I found to be really cool! He then wrote about how “Carmine Gallo, author of The Storyteller’s Secret, interviewed many business leaders about how storytelling can improve organisations.”

Bauer then listed off three techniques to use in storytelling:

  1. Pull people in
  2. Be visual
  3. Generate insights

 

Thoughts:

I really enjoyed today’s guest lecture, and I feel like I’ve learnt a lot from it. I think that being a good storyteller requires a lot of skill, because telling a good story is an art in itself.

I hope that someday soon, with my new knowledge and insight on board, I will be able to create a great narrative and story for my future brands and projects.