My son just turned eight so we were planning our first trip to Disney
World last July. We needed a digital camera to capture the experience
so bought this one because my friend recommended it. The zoom was
great. We could easily get sharp pictures of Cinderella’s Castle even
from far away.
We’re so used to telling stories that we do it even when a simple rating or
opinion would have sufficed.
—————
Just like the Trojan Horse itself, stories are more than they seem. Sure,
the outward shell of a story—we could call this the surface plot—grabs
your attention and engages your interest. But peel back that exterior, and
you’ll usually find something hidden inside. Underneath the star-crossed
lovers and thundering heroes there is usually something else being
conveyed.
Stories carry things. A lesson or moral. Information or a take-home
message. Take the famous story “The Three Little Pigs.” Three brothers
leave home to head into the world to seek their fortune. The first little pig
quickly builds his house out of straw. The second pig uses sticks. Both
throw their houses together as quickly as possible so they can hang out and
play the rest of the day. The third pig, however, is more disciplined. He
takes the time and effort to carefully build his house out of bricks, even
while his brothers have fun around him.
One night, a big bad wolf comes along looking for something to eat. He
goes to the first pig’s house and says those words so beloved by small
children: “Little pig, little pig, let me in.” But when the pig says no, the
wolf blows the pig’s house down. He does the same to the house of sticks.
But when the wolf tries the same thing at the third pig’s house, it doesn’t
work. He huffs and he puffs but the wolf can’t destroy the third pig’s house
because it’s made of bricks.
And that’s the moral of the story. Effort pays off. Take the time to do
something right. You might not have as much fun right away, but you’ll find
that it’s worth it in the end.
Lessons or morals are also embedded in thousands of other fairy tales,
fables, and urban legends. “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” warns about the
dangers of lying. “Cinderella” shows that being good to others pays off.
Shakespeare’s plays carry valuable lessons about character and
relationships, power and madness, love and war. These are complex
lessons, but they are instructive nevertheless.
—————
The ordinary stories we tell one another every day also carry information.
Take the story of the coat my cousin bought from Lands’ End. He’d
moved from California to the East Coast a couple of years ago, and in
preparation for his first real winter he went to a fancy department store and
bought a nice topcoat. The coat was one of those three-quarter-length wool
varieties that men often wear over suits. It fitted well, the color was perfect,
and my cousin felt like a dapper English gentleman.
There was only one problem. It wasn’t warm enough. It was great when
the temperature outside was in the fifties and even the forties, but once the
temperature got down to the thirties the cold seeped right through the coat
into my cousin’s bones.
After one winter of looking great but freezing every day on his way to
work, he decided it was time to get a real winter coat. He even decided to
go whole hog and get one of those goose-down numbers that make you look
as if you’re wearing a sleeping bag—the kind of coat that is ubiquitous in
the East and Midwest but never seen in California. So he went online, found
a great deal at Lands’ End, and bought a down commuter coat rated to
minus thirty degrees Fahrenheit. Warm enough to withstand even the
coldest East Coast winter.
My cousin really liked the coat, and indeed it was super warm. But
halfway through the season he broke the zipper. Ripped it right off the
lining. He was devastated. He had just bought the coat a few months before
and it was broken already. How much would it cost to have it fixed? And
how long would he have to wait to get it back from being repaired?
It was mid-January, not a very ideal time to be walking around without a
winter coat.
So he called Lands’ End. How much will it cost to repair, he asked, and
how long will it take to be fixed?
My cousin braced for the icy reply he was used to getting from customer
service people. It always seems to be the customer’s problem. So sorry to
hear the product broke or the service isn’t working, customer service people
usually say, but unfortunately it’s not our fault. It’s outside the warranty or
you tried to do something beyond the normal use. But we’d be happy to
repair it for twice the cost of the product or send someone out to check on
it. Just as long as you can stay home from work for the three-hour window
during which we may or may not show up. Oh, and by the way, the script
the brand consultants wrote reminds us to tell you that we really appreciate
your business.
But to his surprise, the Lands’ End customer service person said
something entirely different. “Repair?” she asked. “We’ll just send you a
new one in the mail.” “How much will that cost?” my cousin asked
nervously. “It’s free,” she replied, “and we’ll send it out two-day mail so
you don’t have to wait. It’s too cold this winter to go out with a broken
coat.”
A free replacement sent right away if a product breaks? Wow! That’s
almost unheard of in this day and age of “the customer is always wrong.”
Remarkable customer service. Customer service the way it is supposed to
be. My cousin was so impressed he just had to tell me what happened.
My cousin’s experience makes for a nice story, but when you look closer
there is also a huge amount of useful information hidden in the narrative:
(1) Topcoats look great but aren’t really warm enough for a bitter East
Coast winter. (2) Down coats make you look like a mummy, but they’re
worth getting if you want to stay warm. (3) Lands’ End makes a really
warm winter coat. (4) It also has outstanding customer service. (5) If
something goes wrong, Lands’ End will fix it. These are just a handful of
the nuggets of knowledge woven into a deceptively simple story.
The same is true for most stories people tell us. How we avoided the
traffic jam or how the dry cleaner was able to take our oil-splattered white
shirt and make it look like new. These stories contain helpful information: a
good route to take if the highway is blocked; a great dry cleaner if you need
to get out tough stains.
Stories, then, can act as vessels, carriers that help transmit information to
others.
LEARNING THROUGH STORIES
Stories are an important source of cultural learning that help us make sense
of the world. At a high level, this learning can be about the rules and
standards of a group or society. How should a good employee behave?
What does it mean to be a moral person? Or on a more basic level: who’s a
good mechanic who won’t overcharge?
Beyond stories, think about other ways that people could acquire this
information. Trial and error might work, but it would be extremely costly
and time-consuming. Imagine if finding an honest mechanic required taking
your car to two dozen different places around town and getting work done
at each one. It would be exhausting (and expensive).
Alternatively, people could try direct observation, but that’s also tough.
You’d have to cozy up to the mechanics in all the different shops and
convince them to let you watch what they did and tell you how much they
charged. Guess how well that would work.
Finally, people could get their information from advertisements. But ads
aren’t always trustworthy, and people are generally skeptical of persuasion
attempts. Most ads for mechanics will say they have great prices and do
good work, but without really checking, it’s hard to know for sure.
Stories solve this problem. They provide a quick and easy way for people
to acquire lots of knowledge in a vivid and engaging fashion. One good
story about a mechanic who fixed the problem without charging is worth
dozens of observations and years of trial and error. Stories save time and
hassle and give people the information they need in a way that’s easy to
remember.
You can think of stories as providing proof by analogy. There is no way
to be sure that if I buy something from Lands’ End, I’ll get the same
wonderful customer service my cousin received. But the mere fact that it
happened to someone who is like me makes me feel that there is a pretty
good chance it will happen to me too.
People are also less likely to argue against stories than against advertising
claims. Lands’ End representatives could tell us that they have great
customer service, but as we discussed earlier, the fact that they are trying to
sell something makes it difficult to believe them. It’s harder to argue with
personal stories.
First, it’s hard to disagree with a specific thing that happened to a specific
person. What is someone going to tell my cousin, “No, I think you’re lying,
there’s no way Lands’ End would be that nice”? Hardly.
Second, we’re so caught up in the drama of what happened to so-and-so
that we don’t have the cognitive resources to disagree. We’re so engaged in
following the narrative that we don’t have the energy to question what is
being said. So in the end, we’re much more likely to be persuaded.
—————
People don’t like to seem like walking advertisements. The Subway
sandwich chain offers seven subs with less than six grams of fat. But no one
is going to walk up to a friend and just spit out that information. Not only
would it be weird, it would be out of context. Sure, this information is
practically valuable if someone is trying to lose weight, but unless weight
loss is the topic of conversation, or the situation triggers people to think
about ways to lose weight, they’re not going to bring it up. So the fact that
Subway has a bunch of low-fat options may not be brought up that often.
Contrast that with the Jared story. Jared Fogle lost 245 pounds eating
Subway sandwiches. Bad eating habits and lack of exercise led Jared to
balloon to 425 pounds in college. He was so heavy that he picked his
courses based on whether the classroom had large-enough seats for him to
be comfortable rather than whether he liked the material.
But after his roommate pointed out that his health was getting worse,
Jared decided to take action. So he started a “Subway diet”: almost every
day he ate a foot-long veggie sub for lunch and a six-inch turkey sub for
dinner. After three months of this self-imposed regimen he had lost almost
100 pounds.
But he didn’t stop there. Jared kept up his diet. Soon his pants size had
dropped from an enormous sixty inches to a normal thirty-four-inch waist.
He lost all that weight and had Subway to thank.
The Jared story is so entertaining that people bring it up even when
they’re not talking about weight loss. The amount of weight he lost is
impressive, but even more astonishing is the fact that he lost it eating
Subway sandwiches. A guy loses 245 pounds eating fast food? The
summary alone is enough to draw people in.
The story gets shared for many of the reasons we talked about in prior
chapters. It’s remarkable (Social Currency), evokes surprise and amazement
(Emotion), and provides useful information about healthy fast food
(Practical Value).
People don’t talk about Jared because they want to help Subway, but
Subway still benefits because it is part of the narrative. Listeners learn
about Jared, but they also learn about Subway along the way. They learn
that (1) while Subway might seem like fast food, it actually offers a number
of healthy options. (2) So healthy that someone could lose weight by eating
them. (3) A lot of weight. Further, (4) someone could eat mostly Subway
sandwiches for three months and still come back for more. So the food must
be pretty tasty. Listeners learn all this about Subway, even though people
tell the story because of Jared.
And that is the magic of stories. Information travels under the guise of
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