I scrutinize a great book a date back called Made to Stick by Dan and Articulation Heath. In the book the authors talked about a check of different approaches to hoist chips for children; sick, underprivileged, starving children. The investigation used three different approaches.
The charity created one message requesting donations and talked about the literally millions of children who starve to death. The charity used numbers and statistics that were sickening in their magnitude.
In wider prayer the charity simply talked about one real little daughter. Her head was Rokia. The charity showed an actual picture of Rokia and explained her personal plight. The charity appealed for a write-off so they could feed Rokia and help maintain her healthy and clothed.
In the poll epic of the request for donations, the charity told Rokia ' s story and added the statistical information with well put together graphs and visuals showing the plight of millions.
Question: Which one do you think worked best and which worked the least best?
Answer: All of the requests resulted in a number of donations. The one that worked least well was the one that had both statistics and the individual story. The one that worked next best was the one with the statistics, numbers and graphs. The one that worked the very best was the story of the plight of one young girl named Rokia.
Why? We all know the power of the specific story. Aesop ' s Fables, Parables, Nursery Rhymes, all work because the story teaches. Stories grab us in ways that nothing else can because we were trained from an early age to pay attention to information wrapped in a story. Song lyrics, good song lyrics, are a short story. Many psychologists say that the story is a way for our wonderfully complex brains to retain information and retrieve it effectively. For hundreds of thousands of years our ancestors used stories to teach and persuade.
And, most importantly, stories appeal to our emotions. Emotions are necessary to our ability to make decisions. Most research done about decision making now shows that decisions are made based on emotions.
The statistics and numbers worked because we sometimes override our emotions and make decisions in ways that we think are rational.
Why didn ' t the combination of the two work better? Apparently, the part of the brain that responds to the appeal of the story is interfered with when we focus on numbers. When people are confused, suffering from interference, they don ' t make even simple decisions, like sending a small check to keep one little girl from starving.
Activity Triggers / Action Items:
1. Use short, true, specific, stories to persuade. Start collecting these stories on X date at X time.
2. Pare the stories down to their bare minimum while still maintaining enough specifics to appeal emotionally. Edit your stories on this X date at X time.
3. Always check your attempts at persuasion to make sure you are not using number based evidence and story based evidence together, canceling each other out.
