When our forefathers started making their homes – or rather their caves – their castles, it was not possible for them to improve their knowledge and competence in a hurry. Looking back on the last ten thousand years of human development in all due fairness, you notice that “homines sapienses” (incidentally, the meaning of the word is: knowing – so what does that tell you about scientists finding terms to specify something) have hardly changed at all. Fewer teeth due to us eating less raw meat are just about the only change. We are even more or less the same to look at. We are and will remain for a long time the same moving animal that wandered through the forests and steppes. And that is why we are only motivated by things that are deeply moving.
Modern communication gurus make us believe that we, the high-tech humans who process billions of pieces of information in the glittering chromium shell of the 21st century, are actually creating something new and capable of giving excellent answers to every new challenge in seconds. Fiddlesticks. Only the wise and courageous among us make use of the fact that communication still works along the lines of the old world of thinking and feeling. And in that world, the moving human animal is still “homo ambulans”, an object of address. If something does not move us, it will not end up triggering a response.
We are confronted with grey deserts of sentences, immobile search trees and never-ending boredom. As soon as, however, a wise brain makes the mobility motor turn, even critical spirits will follow immediately. In ancient Greece, the peripatetics walked around the place while philosophizing. Things that will not move something in the solar plexus or in the heart will never reach the brains.
Yet, moving by motion is still the exception. Even the super concerns and mega agencies still work with chisel and hammer. In the true sense of the word, they “hammer” bolted structures into their customers’ heads. Slowly, those communication agencies that use moving pictures get to the forefront. If you cannot present your product with a fitting video, you can no longer hope to reach the customer. Even in such grey and serious areas as investor relations or IT (sorry, my friends!), the decisive 90-seconds-clip is the determining success factor.
If you do not tell stories, you will never make history. And if you are boring until it hurts, you will remain lonely. Consequently, it sometimes comes as a surprise for managing directors if we come up with stories for their fact-overloaded product world. Our stories make them and the partners they communicate with smile while at the same time describing the added value in a suitable way. If Johnny or Jimmy walks through a world of Zeros and Ones, at the same time having adventures, this describes software development in a more impressive way than a flowing diagram or lots of technical terms.
If our polyurethane lather gets the perfect date for a popular figure, then its usefulness as the ideal electro-static and acoustic isolation material has been conveyed as well, even without the enterprise having to hammer it in (when will you finally understand?).
Like a fairy night in the chocolate factory, stories lead you towards deeply moving insights and behavioural impulses. Just like a good orator does not orate, but narrate; just like a good boss does not lead, but steer with stories; just like a good partner will win his partner by telling nice stories. Our brains think and store epically, i.e. with the help of stories. And if you deprive your brains of stories, then you need not be surprised: “Haven’t I told you a thousand times already?”, “Can’t you listen?”, “Why does nobody want to buy our product?”, “They are too stupid to understand!”. If the message does not reach the object, then it is not the recipient who is – pardon my English – the moron!
So move your blooming arse! Move the nation! And I do not only mean the communication professionals who should really get up from their mattresses. Politics, economy, and society: wake up!
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(Translated by EG)
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