I often make a joke out of my college major.
I studied creative writing. I spent a lot of money to write bad poetry in Golden Gate Park, and it's understandably funny to people. But in my classes, we learned all about Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey and how to Save The Cat. I studied the structure of story, and wrote a thousand short stories and plays in an attempt to understand it.
I've spent my 10,000 hours with story theory. I've written for magazines, I've had plays produced, I've created web series'. As I grew older and entered into corporate content producing, the application of story felt perfectly natural to me. I was able to take the troves of data and UI interfaces from product teams, and weave a narrative out of it. It immediately got results.
We as humans are story machines. We've evolved to think in them. When we left the trees and entered into the plains, it was our ability to think in hypotheticals that made us thrive.1 Those hypotheticals quickly grew into over-exaggerated hunting stories and whispered gossip about who-did-what.2,3 It built community. And community is what humans do best.
So, ok, great. What does that mean for your white paper about how a new AI agent is able to run spreadsheets through a Compliance & Reporting Liaison, or about your new blood glucose monitor that is now 12% more accurate at low ranges? You need to inform your sales team about a technical product or new company policy, not tell a campfire story. I get it. It's why I laugh at my own major.
Story-based formats significantly improve a listener's ability to remember and apply complex concepts.
But hear me out, because the hard science says a campfire story may be more effective. There's a wealth of peer-reviewed studies that show storytelling is a superior method for knowledge retention compared to factual delivery.4,5 Research also indicates that story-based formats significantly improve a listener's ability to remember and apply complex concepts.5,6 And there's even neuroimaging data that shows brain activity will physically align with and anticipate patterns when being told a story.7
Stories act as a unique biological mechanism for aligning minds.
Pretty cool.
Look, don't get me wrong, we here at Finches love playing around with cameras and microphones and editing software. Toys are fun. And we're creative, so the end results always look good.
But our experience, our speciality, our first love, is storytelling. And storytelling is how the brain learns best.
So if you need your teams to understand a complex topic, work with us. We'll translate it for the human mind.