Storytelling is a favourite buzzword of late in the world of marketing. Narrative arcs have entered all corners of the business world, from insight presentations and advertising, through to social media campaigns and customer relationship management (CRM).

Evidence of its value has been presented in a paper by a group of researchers who used encephalography (EEG) to explore people’s responses to narrative videos. Looking specifically at energy efficiency social marketing, the team employed EEG to assess the role of attention, working memory, emotion and imagination in narrative transportation, and how these stages are ordered, temporally. 

Dr Tom van Laer, senior lecturer in marketing at Cass Business School – and one of the study’s authors – explains why they concentrated on these four areas. 

“Narrative transportation is defined as the extent to which a consumer empathises with the story’s characters [emotion] and the plot activates his or her imagination, which leads them to experience suspended reality [working memory] during story reception. The more receivers pay attention to a story, the more narrative transportation increases,” he says.

The study involved participants being shown four different narrative videos about energy efficiency, targeted at people aged over 60 in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Research had found that this group was particularly concerned about domestic energy use. 

The work focused on Energy+Illawarra, a community-oriented, interdisciplinary, strategic social-intervention programme. Engineers, geographers and marketers work together to improve energy efficiency in the homes of low-income, older people in Illawarra, a region of NSW. 

“We already knew that transporting stories can put you in another person’s shoes, in a figurative sense,” explains Van Laer. “The developed films suggest watching an engaging story can also transport you into the ‘body’ of an object.”

With EEG, the team could gauge people’s neural responses to the stories. “We wanted to measure how stories activate and excite the neural pathways in our brains that form the basis for our actions,” adds Van Laer.

The EEG analysis focused on two segments: the start of each narrative video, when the story becomes apparent (the four topics for this study were energy use practices involving fridges, lighting, laundry and star ratings of domestic appliances); and the story segment of each video. This was to identify whether different processes occur at the start of a story than in the later stages.

“The results showed heightened activity in areas of the brain associated with empathising with the story characters, as well as imagination of, attention for, and memorising of the plot. These mental processes are involved in spurring our brains into action,” says Van Laer. 

“Brain response was especially strong for the fridge-freezer film. This household appliance has been associated with the visceral nervous system and deep inward feelings, because it stores a basic need – food,” he adds.

So, is the length of the video – and hence story – a factor? “We don’t know. Previous research shows that lengthy texts are more persuasive; however, stories can be very short. The increasingly popular flash fiction reinforces the notion of very short stories – such as the alleged six-word novel For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn. 

“The research questions are numerous: how short can a story be and still truly be a story? Can consumers become and remain transported when reading these very short stories? If so, what is the effect of length on narrative persuasion?” Van Laer asks.

Overall, the research found that – to have a lasting influence on people – content needed to: gain attention by working memory and invoking an emotional response; follow a beginning, middle and end structure; let the person identify with the subject and make them care about the subject.

Greater narrative transportation can lead to positive attitudes and behaviours. So how can this research apply to brand marketers?

“To be deemed transporting, stories must be perceived as produced by storytellers who are motivated by their inherent value, without an overtly persuasive aim,” says Van Laer. “When, instead, story receivers realise a profit motive behind a story, narrative transportation may be inhibited. 

“As a result, story receivers may be inclined to generate critical thoughts in response to stories that ooze with commercial interest. If storytellers’ dominant aim is to persuade, this aim needs to remain hidden for narrative transportation to occur. The problem we see with a lot of advertising today is that the creators and marketers are identifying with their peers and not their audience. They’re creating content in a bubble, thinking about what they want to see and not what stories their ideal customers want to engage with. We’ve seen this happen when ads go viral for the wrong reason.” 

Ross Gordon, Joseph Ciorciari and Tom van Laer, ‘Using EEG to examine the role of attention, working memory, emotion and imagination in narrative transportation’, in European Journal of Marketing.