The Power of Disruptive Digital Narrative
The desire to fill in the blanks of the stories that surround us is an innate and powerful evolutionary learning mechanism. As human beings, we strive to understand the world through story, constantly “filling in the blanks” left by incomplete information. The brain has a remarkable ability to assemble disparate parts into a cohesive whole if there are indications that they belong together.
Master storytellers have long sought to take advantage of this innate human capacity in service of increasing the impact of their tales through the technique of “disruptive narrative”: presenting story elements in a non-linear fashion and enlisting viewers’ brains to put them together in the correct order.
Storytelling is effective because, rather than just presenting a list of facts — which engages only the language centers in our brains — stories trigger parts of our brains that allow us to share in the experience, to empathize. By making us feel like we are partly experiencing the story ourselves, it helps us to retain the moral or message.
Telling stories using disruptive narrative can increase this empathetic response exponentially — engaging our brains in an even more active manner — and therefore communicating an advertising message more powerfully.
Learn more about how digital has unleashed the power of disruptive narrative by reading Peter’s full article here.
