“The point of a story can penetrate far deeper than the point of any bullet.”  - Laurence Nault

Getting to the point

There are seven basic plots in storytelling as we have seen over the last few weeks. These plots form the backbone of myths, fairy tales, novels and movies, and also of advertising, brand stories and how we can all communicate in business, including market researchers telling the story of their data. Here are seven reasons why stories will help you communicate ideas more effectively, helping you to build your story and helping your audience to remember the point of it all. Read more »

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.”  - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Connecting the dots

Are you drowning in the sea of data yet? As the world becomes more and more complex, with more and more information to understand and less and less time to do this, the importance of integrative thinking becomes more and more important. In The Opposable Mind, Roger Martin presents a number of convincing business case studies, including A.G. Lafley at P&G, Jack Welch at GE, Michael Lee-Chin at AIC and Martha Graham (who revolutionised modern dance) of integrative thinking.  The common thread in these examples and others is that all of them demonstrate the ability to see problems from a range of perspectives, think in terms of total systems and not component parts, and simplify complex ideas into straight forward (and often disruptive) solutions to problems. Read more »

Over seven (and more) coming articles we will explore the basic plots outlined in Christopher Booker’s classic book.  The first of these is “Overcoming the monster”.

Dragons and ogres

Every culture has it’s stories of overcoming the monster, such as the English myth of George and the Dragon (perhaps the dragon is usually more fearsome than the one in the picture above). In The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker discusses many examples of this plot including the original story of all which is the Epic of Gilgamesh. Overcoming the monster is the basic plot for Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Jack and the Beanstalk and other childhood fairy tales, Greek legends such as many episodes from Homer’s poems and of course Perseus and Theseus, as well as Beowulf (based on an old English poem), Dracula and The War of the Worlds as well as the films High Noon, Jurassic Park, The Magnificent Seven and The Three Musketeers (to name a few). Read more »

The evolution of emotions

Although some key emotions can be clearly seen on our faces (read more here), our emotional lives are complex and intricately bound into the behavioural strategies we have evolved over thousands (perhaps millions) of years to improve our chances of survival and success. Each emotion tells a story about our immediate goals, our perception of the context we find ourselves in, and our interpretation of the events in our lives. Read more »

“Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.”  - Chinese proverb

Connecting the dots

The tremendous advances in brain science (along with changes in the media landscape) mean we need to rethink how we engage customers, taking on board some of the lessons of neuroscience and behavioural economics, and sometimes going back to ancient wisdoms which preceded the rise of rational approaches to consumer behaviour, especially in the West.  The truth is that most of our decision making is unconscious, emotional and highly context dependent (especially social context). Read more »

Questions, questions

After watching the world go by for a while, you may still have some unanswered questions which means it may be time to start a conversation with your customers.  Although more than 90% of communication is non-verbal, there is a huge amount to be learnt from listening to consumers (and asking the occasional question), especially when this is done in the right way. Read more »

Pulling the trigger

Have you ever had the experience that something was on the ‘tip of your tongue’ but you couldn’t quite remember?  That’s likely because you know the information exists, but you can’t quite find the right connection to trigger its recall.  That’s why such memories sometimes come back later when triggered by a more relevant (but often random) stimulus. Read more »

Home Economicus or Homo Sapiens?

We have seen that the majority of human behaviour is controlled outside consciousness.  This is in contrast to the classical models of economics which assume a model of man as Homo Economicus who is entirely rational, always knows what (s)he wants and is capable of calculating the precise consequences of any action.  We all know that this is nonsense, and recent economic events have once again highlighted the inadequacy of such models both for economics and further afield. Read more »

We are all ‘live wires’

How does the brain make connections?  Brain scans show areas of our brain ‘lighting up’ when we make decisions (although beware that more activity doesn’t make the decision more important).  But what is really going on?  There is a huge amount of activity (electrical and chemical) going on within our brains.   Read more »

The growing brain

As we have learnt, the brain didn’t spring into being but emerged over time.  The most obvious evidence for the evolution of the brain is its structure. Firstly, our brain is quite large, but not as large as some other animals.  However, relative to our body mass, the brain outweighs all our fellow creatures! Interestingly, one of the common threads between those animals with relatively larger brain sizes is that they are all very social animals. Read more »