Yep. Everything is storytelling.

No, really. Check it out.

Over on Psychology Today, Dr. Pamela Rutledge wrote, “Our brains still respond to content by looking for the story to make sense out of the experience. No matter what the technology, the meaning starts in the brain.” Yes, that was way back in 2011, but I’m pretty sure the human brain hasn’t fundamentally changed in the last three years.

Need a little more proof? I admire your empirical nature, friend. So go do a Google search for “pretending you’re being interviewed” — and check out the 25 million plus results. (Looks like you aren’t the only one who preps for Letterman when you’re stuck in traffic.) Or check out this introduction to the way the human brain uses narrative to shape memory by Dr. Jeffrey M. Zacks. If you’ve got the time, you can even look into Dr. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences as outlined in his book Frames of Mind. He has some awesomepants thoughts on verbal/linguistic intelligence as being innate to the human brain.

What I’m saying is, you don’t have to take my word for it. Stories are how we make sense of the world, how we organize our experiences and entertain ourselves. And that has profound implications for marketing.

So here’s the TL;DR version. Ready? Your brand is a character, and your marketing is the story you tell about that character.

Over the next several posts, I’ll be examining character types, what sorts of characters might be useful for which businesses, and how to use both ancient and modern storytelling techniques to craft marketing that is interesting, honest, and suck-free.

Stick around, mm? Unless you want your social media marketing to be tone deaf..?