Many business execs write off storytelling as the fluffy stuff – necessary window dressing with doubtful commercial benefit. After all, it’s only the hard things that count?
But the findings of a ‘significant object experiment’ show how dangerously wrong that mindset is. Turns out, a good story drives big revenue and margin gains for any business – even a junk business.
Journalists Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn suspected that they knew the commercial value of a good tale. But they wanted harder evidence to prove that storytelling was the powerful business tool they thought it was.
So, the two set up a now well-known behavioural science experiment to test the theory that a standout story not only sets an enterprise well apart in the customer’s mind but ramps up the bottom line hugely.
Walker and Glenn randomly sought and bought one hundred junk items to auction on eBay. They spent about $1 on each object – the kind of useless gimmicks peddled by any cheap novelty store – like snow globes, a paperweight, tin badges, key rings, birthday candles, even a home-made ceramic horse head.
Then they co-opted a hundred published authors to each write a story about one of the valueless objects – stories that were published alongside each object on the eBay auction.
The stories about each object were short. The ceramic horse head was responsible for two people meeting at university. A bear-shaped saltshaker influenced a poker game. And a pink plastic horse played a part in a human tragedy.
The auction results were astounding. The valueless objects, bought for a total of $129, fetched over $8,000 – an incredible 2799% gain on the initial investment. (The ceramic horse’s head, bought for just $0.99, sold for $62.95!)
The experiment successfully proved that the human mind engages and resonates significantly when a story with emotional context gets told. And that the human brain irrationally attaches disproportionate value to things when emotions get stirred. The story study also proved a high correlation between emotion and value – the more emotional the story, the higher the price paid.
Each story gave the customer a memorable and emotional frame of reference for objects that they otherwise had no connection to. The buyers related to the meaning that gave the object the value.
And isn’t that what every brand needs to do?
Get a standout brand story for your business.
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