When writing the results of the exercise right after being exposed to the lists, the results are not that much impressive: most of our students are able to record on their notebooks an average of 6–7 words from the 1st list and 7- 8 words from the 2nd (“storytold”) list. The surprise for the whole class comes when we ask them the next day to write again the 2 lists of words from memory. The 1st list memories go down to 3–4 words, while the 2nd exercise involving storytelling remains in the same average of 7–8 words, recalled almost perfectly.

Now, the real surprise for us was an empirical and incidental experiment. As a norm, we create a Whatsapp group with every cohort of students we manage, to share findings, value, information, and basically to keep in touch. In one of those groups, one of our students said that he was impressed of how he still remembered the full list of “storytold” words from the exercise, 2 years after the workshop! We dug a bit with other students just to find out that most of them still remembered almost the same amount of words from the 2nd list (7–8) while they couldn’t even remember 1 word of the random 1st list. We discovered they didn’t really remember any of the words, they remembered the stories they created for themselves.

We discovered they didn’t really remember any of the words, they remembered the stories they created for themselves.

STORYTELLING IN MARKETING

Storytelling has been used successfully by marketers through history. That is exactly what brands are about. What marketers call the “brand equity” is not more than the sum of stories, experiences, beliefs and emotions artificially associated to a name or symbol we relate to. Don’t believe us, but see for yourself these 2 examples:

 

ROMAIN JEROME has been creating luxury wrist-watches for decades. On average they sell their watches at us$ 5k — 6k. But they have created a special collection in which they added a rusty piece of metal, to sell it for us$ 60k per unit. Where did this rusty piece of metal came from to add so much value to a watch? Well, it is a tiny piece of the hull of the Titanic, and it’s worth it.

Going less superfluous, let’s dive into the world of TOMS Shoes. While every other espadrille manufacturer is fighting to sell their own products at us$ 1 per piece, with no real differentiation between brands or quality, TOMS has found a formula to sell them successfully at us$ 60 each. How did they achieve that price elasticity? They have positioned their mantra of ONE FOR ONE, that is, whenever you buy one pair of TOMS, they will give a pair of the same shoes to a poor kid in an undeveloped country with no access to shoes. So while every other company sells commoditized espadrilles, TOMS has transferred their value equation to another arena: they sell people the opportunity to feel a better person, and let everyone know else they are good persons (the so called eco-bragging).

NO STORY, NO GLORY!

Measured and proven now by Ivan Babic

Stories are fundamental on how we see, assess, relate, and value everything in our lives. Stories can give meaning to the most things, transform the ordinary into extraordinary. Through storytelling, a vulgar object becomes something we relate to, a venerable subject worthy to see, worthy to share with others and show off.

And in case you were wondering how the Significant Objects experiment went: the net results of the 1st batch of items, whose total cost was us$ 128.74, were sold in the incredible sum of us$ 3612.51, that is 28 times their original market value. And similar results have been achieved in further batches of the experiment.

That is, my friends, the net value of a story well told, objectively measured by the people of Significant Objects.