There’s a psychology innate to your brain that interacts with and absorbs story. So, before we create a story for marketing or media or any content, really, it’s important to dissect the natural attraction the brain has with story.
Unlocking the power of story in marketing and media by tapping into Neuroscience allows you to craft magnetic marketing that automatically (mindlessly, actually! ha) sticks to the human brain.
To make your brand more memorable, storytelling’s use of structure and emotion helps shortcut communication and create a transformational effect. And, effectively using this brain-tapping shortcut means your content has a much better chance of staying in the viewer/listener’s memory.
In the latest episode of The Marketing Mirror, This is Your Brain on Story, we unravel the benefits of the psychology of the brain and how it reacts to story, explaining these three important psychological signals:
- Emotional Connectivity
- Mirroring Effect
- Pattern Recognition
Story content isn’t just about sharing information, but rather, it dances with the brain in a quiet, intimate transfer of intangible connectivity. With speed and instinct, our brains make sense of the world, process patterns, and form emotional memories from stories.
Writer, digital marketer, or business owner? Learn the essentials of designing compelling stories that spark connection, highlight transformation, and drive conversions, for better marketing.
Neil Patel shares excellent examples for creating a business media empire via new marketing that not only pairs businesses directly with customers, but also brings their audience an addictive series. Delivering high-value, entertaining, but powerful relationships through an ongoing original media drop, like weekly TV, is a winning digital and social media marketing strategy for brands right now.
You guessed it, it’s all based on telling a compelling, often fun, story!!
➡️ I love that Neil clarifies the role of organic social media marketing!
Unlimited Story Formats to Engage the Brain
If you want to be remembered, entice and engage the brain. The good news is there are unlimited ways to spark connection and ignite neuro-psychology to make your memorable mark on the mind. The formats for you to use are virtually limitless.
Match your brand to your target audience and the best (for you) media format to find your perfect social platforms. Then strategically produce your most creative and sticky work. Remember, there needs to be a method to your madness, so before you jump to unveiling willy-nilly content, be sure to revisit and review your key business objectives.
Your story must make sense for your business and your audience. Syncing your story to the brain gives you extra marketing power. It also helps you make more immersive and transformational content. When the brain grabs onto it, it becomes more memorable.
With that in mind, your creative outlet to produce impactful content widens to your choice of genre, varying by your business and audience needs. But with current digital capabilities coupled with AI, there are more opportunities for original content creation than ever before. Your ability to leverage creative storytelling is the critical differentiator between being seen and disappearing.
Patterns and Structures Oh My
By implementing known patterns and structures for your marketing and media content through story, you’ll trigger brain responses that make your business and brand sticky. It’s even a good idea to incorporate a story element into your core business messaging. Even a short tagline can imply a story. Here are two examples that quickly come to mind: “Just Do It” and “Think Different.”
In the case of both of these well-known brands, a whole backstory, a legacy even, comes to mind from just a couple of words. But there’s a lot of feeling behind these brands with extreme loyalty baked into them, underscoring the major impact of emotional tagging.
Remember, emotions often override logic, and a story narrative that makes an emotional connection hits on emotional circuits, changing brain chemistry (for example, releasing oxytocin) and engaging regions that process real-life feelings. Mirroring stems from the feeling of experiencing the story’s narrative as if you are in the scenario yourself, or automatically relating to a personal experience.
Crafting this “narrative transport” makes listeners feel inside the story, aligning their responses with the storyteller and increasing unconscious empathy and openness to the message. Brewing up empathy using story techniques based on neuroscience is a powerful memory enhancer to understand and use.
Here’s the brainiac, or uh, scientific explanation of how this works:
Side Note on Above Video 🎬
[SIDE NOTE: In a recently published video, I talk about PerplexityAI and the Comet Browser—a winning AI platform combo—as a go-to research assistant and project manager. Interestingly, because I used it for research for the video, I went to check something from the research for this post.
A suggested prompt by Perplexity asked if I wanted to create a video to illustrate unconscious brain reactions using the NEW “Computer” function. I thought, “Hey, why not?” and hit the prompt. It did take nearly an hour (the one I created for this topic took me nearly a month to create, produce, and edit!), and the result, as you see above, is pretty incredible. The process (it shows you as it’s producing the video) includes:
- Reviewing the data from the research as pertinent to the micro topic
- Reading a skills/media/production/video guide
- Confirming the video will be a rich media production, and the credit usage needs
- Applying a format plan/summary, an outline of the production, and a style
Next, it put the production plan into play by writing the narration script, applying the script to the planned-out visual scenes, and creating audio files of the script broken into scenes.
It selected the narrator and voice, too, btw.
We’re Not Done Yet!
We’re not done yet! Next, my AI ‘computer’ went to Nano Banana and began selecting, organizing, and creating text prompts for each graphic necessary to complete each scene. It broke down the timeline, aligning the voiceover to scenes to timed visuals within each. Pretty amazing. It compiled a ‘clip plan’ showing the audio, visuals, and timeframe in a sweet little graph.
It then created each keyframe clip for however many were planned per scene, making sections with suggestions for each with Nano Banana-created visual designs. From these keyframes, it went to the creation of video clips, again for each section. It thought it would use VEO, then VEO 3.1 Lite for that, but decided Sora was a better way to go and began making the video clips for each of the scenes from there. Whew.
I think it ended up with 13 clips for scenes, including the Intro and Outro. It stitched the video clips and added the voiceover narration, doing some tweaking along the way. Finally, my trusty Perplexity ‘computer’ friend, uh, I mean function, did a Spot Check to verify quality and proceed to the final output.
Just typing this out for you seems like a LOT! But, my pal Perplexity AI had to deliver the icing on the cake, the curlyQ on top…besides the one-minute and forty-five seconds video you just watched, it also delivered this final synopsis:
What’s in the video?
Intro — A glowing translucent brain floats in dark space, establishing the theme that your unconscious mind is always active.
Scene 1: Subconscious Decisions (7 Seconds Early) — A cyan signal ignites deep in the frontal lobe and cascades outward through neural pathways, visualizing how brain activity predicting a choice appears long before conscious awareness catches up.
Scene 2: Emotion Shuts Down Cognition — The amygdala fires in hot red-orange, flooding the brain with stress hormones. The prefrontal cortex visibly dims as emotion overpowers rational thought.
Scene 3: Story Activates Theory of Mind — Two brains connect through golden light streams representing narrative communication. The theory of mind network (mPFC, TPJ, PCC) lights up in a triangular golden pattern, showing how stories make us simulate others’ experiences.
Outro — All three brains appear side by side — cyan, red, and gold — before fading into darkness with the line: “Your unconscious brain is always running the show.”
The video uses a consistent deep navy/teal palette with bioluminescent color-coding (cyan for decisions, red-magenta for emotion, golden for empathy) and crossfade transitions between each section.
Well, that’s all! Thank you, Perplexity and the Comet browser, for making my creator life easier by the day (or as fast as I learn all the cool things!)
Psst. I saved the whole ‘computer’ function solution I just described with all the parts into a Spaces spot on Perplexity with the click of a button. Very cool.]
Speaking of Structure and Why Your Brain Loves Story
On the other side of the pattern puzzle is the story itself, how it’s told, and what the purpose and meaning are for why you’re sharing it. But be sure to align with the brain’s primal instinct; know that using story structure amplifies your message.
I know it seems nuts, but I do this myself. Stories have a beginning, middle, and end as a general good rule. I don’t know about you, but I start telling a story and the next thing you know, I’m spiraling off into one rabbit hole after another. Thinking about the most basic structure and honoring at least a minimal functional framework is a simple rule to keep in mind. Yep, I’m calling this barebones structure a rule. Make a note! Lol
Expanding on this barebones structure, a character typically goes through a story framework, a series of steps or situations that carry him from beginning to end. There are many. And from one framework, an amazing variety of stories come to life.
Here’s a basic framework for a starting model:
As I mentioned, there are many story frameworks to help you craft a story structure that’s immediately coherent to the human brain. We’ll be diving into some of them over time.
The takeaway, however, is this: a compelling story, whether fictional or nonfictional, is a shaped journey.
A story can be a minuscule moment or an epic event. But in every case, a vivid story respects the psychological and neuroscience components of the human brain while guiding attention, emotion, and understanding through powerful story structure, frameworks, and patterns.
What’s your take? I’d love to know, so comment below. Thanks so much!
All are excellent points here.
I think that stories access the part of our brain that remembers childhood.
Whether we’re being tucked in with a tale or our kindergarten teacher is telling a story, we gravitate towards content that entertains us and educates us.
When you get into the science of it, this goes down to a whole new level. That’s when we start doing things unconsciously which can be a good thing if beneficial.
Ryan:
Another story grabber throughout my lifetime is music. So many songs bring back memories, and of course, that means stories that are triggered from just the sound of that familiar tune.
Though I do worry a little about the brain jumping ahead with unconscious bias, so I try to remember a “think fast, think slow” mindset to not jump to wrong (or misguided) conclusions.
The brain is definitely fascinating.
Thanks for popping in, Ryan!
Music is another REALLY good one. I hear a song and typically time travel back to the moment I first heard it. Or perhaps I go back to the decade. I associate specific songs with movies that I love, too. Ahhhh the connections.
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