5 brainy benefits of novelty in marketing

By understanding and leveraging the power of novelty, you can elevate your brand’s storytelling, making narratives more memorable and impactful. It’s also something to keep top of mind when adding contributors to your team — you want skilled writers who excel at being original.

Let’s explore some of the reasons why novelty is essential for content marketers and how it can transform your narratives into unforgettable experiences.

Reason 1: Dopamine delights us

Novelty triggers the release of dopamine, the “happy hormone,” in our brains, creating excitement and anticipation. This neurotransmitter is crucial for pleasure, motivation, and reward. When your audience experiences something new, it stimulates their brain’s reward circuits, making them feel good and encouraging them to seek out more.

Incorporating novel elements into your storytelling harnesses this dopamine-driven response. Your audience will enjoy the story more, remember it better, and keep coming back for more. Novelty keeps your storytelling fresh and exciting, ensuring your audience remains hooked.

Reason 2: Novelty builds stronger brain bridges

Novel storytelling techniques actively engage the brain, prompting the formation and reinforcement of neural pathways. This process, known as neuroplasticity, is essential for learning and memory retention.

When exposed to novel storytelling elements, the brain processes this fresh information more deeply, creating stronger connections between neurons. Techniques like non-linear timelines or multiple perspectives require closer attention, enhancing cognitive engagement and memory retention.

By incorporating novelty, you not only make your narrative more compelling but also ensure your audience remembers and reflects on it long after they’ve finished reading or watching.

Reason 3: Unexpected elements are more memorable

Novelty makes stories more memorable. The brain is naturally drawn to new and unexpected elements, which trigger surprise and intrigue. These elements create mental “hooks” that make stories easier to remember.

Surprise and intrigue evoke strong emotional responses, enhancing memory formation. Emotions act as powerful memory enhancers, making stories that evoke shock, amazement, or delight more memorable.

Incorporating novel elements into storytelling not only captivates your audience but also makes your stories more memorable, ensuring your message stands out.

Reason 4: Mental agility moves your audience

Novelty in marketing storytelling enhances cognitive functions like problem-solving, decision-making, and creativity. Introducing new and unexpected elements engages your audience’s minds, fostering mental agility and making them more receptive to your message.

Novel scenarios require the brain to evaluate different possibilities, sharpening decision-making skills. Presenting unique ideas stimulates creativity, inspiring your audience to explore their own creative thinking.

By engaging cognitive functions through novelty, you make your audience more receptive to your message, leading to a more profound and lasting impact.

Reason 5: New ideas are the opposite of boring

The constant stream of content bombarding audiences can lead to boredom and disengagement. Novelty combats boredom by introducing fresh and engaging experiences that keep audiences coming back for more.

Boredom occurs when the brain is under-stimulated. Novelty actively engages the brain, capturing attention and piquing curiosity. This heightened alertness keeps audiences engaged and eager to see what happens next.

By consistently incorporating new and exciting elements into your messaging, you build anticipation and excitement, fostering loyalty and repeated engagement. Novelty ensures your storytelling remains dynamic and interesting, leading to a more engaged and loyal audience.

Incorporating novelty marketing into your content strategy

Incorporating novelty into your content strategy is integral for maintaining your audience’s interest and engagement. Here are some practical brainstorming techniques to help you infuse novelty into your storytelling.

Brainstorming techniques

• Take a new angle on familiar topics.
  • Reframe common subjects from a different perspective.
  • Introduce contrasting views to stimulate discussion.
  • Discuss current trends by comparing them to historical events or predicting their future impact.
• Experiment with different content formats.
  • Create short, engaging videos or animations.
  • Use infographics to present data visually.
  • Incorporate interactive elements like quizzes or polls.
  • Explore audio content through podcasts or live webinars.
  • Encourage user-generated content to provide fresh perspectives.
• Feature unexpected voices or perspectives.
  • Invite guest writers or experts to contribute.
  • Share stories and testimonials from customers.
  • Offer a behind-the-scenes look at your business.
  • Highlight diverse voices within your industry.

Practical tips for implementing novelty in marketing

• Schedule regular brainstorming sessions.
• Solicit feedback from your audience.
• Plan a diverse content calendar.
• Stay updated on industry trends and popular culture.

By weaving novelty into your content strategy, you can create a dynamic and engaging storytelling experience that captivates your audience. Experiment with different angles, formats, and voices to keep your content fresh and your audience hooked. Novelty not only combats boredom but also enhances the impact and memorability of your stories.

The dangers of going too far with novelty

While novelty is a powerful tool in storytelling, it is important to use it judiciously. Going too far with novelty can have unintended consequences that may harm your overall message and audience engagement. Overloading your content with too many new or unexpected elements can lead to confusion and overwhelm your audience, making it difficult for them to follow the story or grasp the core message.

Excessive novelty can undermine the consistency of your brand identity. If the novel elements are not aligned with your brand’s values and voice, they can create a disjointed experience that may confuse your audience about what your brand stands for. This inconsistency can erode trust and diminish the impact of your messaging. If they come to expect a continuous stream of surprises, the impact of each new element diminishes over time. This can lead to a situation where novelty loses its effectiveness as a tool for engagement and retention.

So, while novelty is essential for keeping your storytelling fresh and engaging, don’t forget to always align it with your brand identity. Moderation and strategic integration of novel elements will ensure that your stories remain impactful and your audience remains connected and loyal to your brand.

Improve your storytelling and marketing by keeping content novel and fresh

Novelty is a powerful tool in storytelling that significantly enhances audience engagement and retention. By incorporating novel elements, you leverage several key benefits, making your storytelling more effective and memorable.

As a content creator, embracing novelty and experimenting with new ideas is essential for keeping your audience engaged. Don’t be afraid to take risks and try different approaches. Whether through unique plot twists, innovative formats, or diverse voices, novelty can transform your content and make it stand out.

The key to successful storytelling lies in your ability to surprise, delight, and engage your audience. By weaving novelty into your content strategy, you enhance your content’s quality and build a loyal, captivated audience. Explore the endless possibilities that novelty offers—your audience will thank you for it.

Ask the Content Strategist: FAQs about novelty in marketing

How can content creators measure the impact of novelty in their storytelling?

Content creators can measure the impact of novelty by tracking engagement metrics such as time spent on page, social shares, and audience feedback through surveys and comments.

What are some examples of successful brands or campaigns that have effectively used novelty in marketing?

Nike’s “Dream Crazy” campaign and Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” are examples of successful use of novelty in storytelling, as they introduced unique, unexpected elements that captivated audiences.

What tools or platforms can help content creators generate and implement novel ideas?

New generative AI tools like Google Gemini and ChatGPT are great for brainstorming ideas. When the time comes for creating content, you can turn to platforms like Canva for creative design and Contently for content planning and collaboration to generate and implement novel ideas.

The Content Strategist has all the resources you need to ensure your content remains novel and engaging. Subscribe today to get the latest insights delivered directly to your inbox!

The post 5 Brainy Reasons Novelty in Marketing Helps Your Message Land appeared first on Contently.

That’s a question many people in America are asking right now. We’ve seen calls for an end to discrimination and police brutality everywhere from small town protests to massive marches here in New York to black squares in our social media feeds. We’ve seen people across age brackets, racial identities, and religions ask: How can I get others in my network to understand and care?

For years, I’ve reported on what neuroscience can teach us about messages that break through and inspire action. There are a few proven tips that can help anyone craft a message of change.

Lead with a story

As a species, we’re programmed for stories. Stories are how we pass on knowledge and build connections. Stories—not statistics—are usually what compel us to care about a cause and take action.

That’s because when we hear a compelling story, our brain synthesizes oxytocin—a neurochemical that makes us feel a greater degree of empathy and human connection. In one study, Dr. Paul Zak, a leading neuroscience researcher, found that people who had high oxytocin levels as the result of watching a PSA with a strong narrative chose to donate 261 percent more money than those with baseline oxytocin levels.

When we hear stories of injustice, we’re much more likely to feel a sense of connection and understanding, which can fuel us to help others. If we want to change minds and spread understanding, it’s important to amplify not only the story of George Floyd, but of Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Botham Jean, Michael Brown, and the thousands of others who have been killed by the police.

The below video, for instance, does an admirable job of that, telling the story of Breonna Taylor—who was shot in her own home by police—for those who don’t know about it already.

On a recent Women for Biden call, I spoke about Breonna Taylor.

Breonna should be alive today. And her story happens every day across this country—Black women and girls are brutalized at alarming rates.

This is an epidemic and we must call it out. pic.twitter.com/pKpZSpX0k0

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) June 5, 2020

Optimize for memory encoding

Neuro-Insight, a leading neuromarketing firm, has been tracking consumers’ brains while they watch advertising and other video content, using an advanced technology called Steady State Topography.

The firm developed a brain activity metric called memory encoding that corresponds to both long-term memory and decision-making. When activity in the brain that corresponds with memory encoding is high, we’re more likely to remember a message and take action.

Neuro-Insight has found that one of the most effective advertising strategies is to optimize for “branding moments.” These are the moments on screen you really want people to remember, like the website of the NAACP or a call-to-action.

This past winter, Contently cofounder Shane Snow and I tested political ads by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden using Neuro-Insight’s technology to find out which messaging tactics work best. Elizabeth Warren’s advertising, for instance, did an excellent job of optimizing for peak branding moments. She drew viewers in with a compelling story of her life growing up poor in Oklahoma. At key points in the narrative, on-screen messages she wanted people to remember flashed on screen, like her catchphrase “I’ve got a plan for that.”

As organizers, non-profits, and policy groups create more content to inspire change, this simple tactic can make content more impactful and memorable. Take, this Black Lives Matter video that overlays the photos of victims of police violence with their tragic last words.

It’s extremely moving and prompts us to heed the call-to-action: to keep saying their names.

please keep saying their names:
Christian Taylor, Kimani Gray, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, Tamir Rice, George Floyd, Eric Garner, Kenneth Chamberlain, Lavon King, Kendrac McDade, Breonna Taylor…and now James Scurlock joins them#BlackLivesMatter #VoteOutHate pic.twitter.com/ypGMmMldDf

— LG (@EnigmaticGaga) June 1, 2020

Show real people

In a study of in-feed social video content, Neuro-Insight found that the presence of people in the ad increased emotional intensity by 133 percent.

In our study of political ads, we found that images of real people involved in the political process performed much better than stock footage of people. Researchers believe we’ve evolved to adopt the emotions of others, a phenomenon called emotional contagion. This helps us empathize with others, and can make us feel like we’re all a part of a team. In this case, that is Team Humanity.

Right now, spreading that Team Humanity bond is one of the best things we can do.

The post How to Spread Change and Inspire Action, According to Neuroscience appeared first on Contently.

I’d imagine my ascent as a rockstar after starting a speakeasy club in my basement. Or my Super Bowl-winning touchdown as an undersized rookie running back on the New York Giants. (Even as a 10 year-old, I suspected I’d always be short). The clock ticking down, the defenders rushing after me, the ball grazing the left corner pylon as a sea of blue chanted my name.

Like billions of others, I lived in a world of story.

As Jonathan Gottschall writes in The Storytelling Animal, human beings are built for stories. We spend our lives telling ourselves tales. As children, we live more of our life in Neverland than reality. Even when we go to sleep at night, the mind stays awake, lighting itself up with stories.

We all have storytelling superpowers inside us, but as the pressures of life builds—tests, grades, jobs, mortgages, performance reviews—we lose sight of this instinctual skill. This is why business presentations bore us to sleep and marketing fails to break through.

Many of us have learned to suppress our storytelling instincts, thinking of it as a squishy skill that has no real place in the business world. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In my role at Contently and my research with neuroscientists, I’ve found that storytelling is almost always the variable that separates great brands and great leaders from the pack. As Shane Snow and I wrote in The Storytelling Edge, storytelling isn’t some magical skill only gifted to the poets and JK Rowling and that guy from product with a theatre background who tells the craziest stories at happy hour. It’s something we all can tap into.

Over the next four weeks, I’m going to go in-depth on the four elements of great storytelling: relatability, novelty, fluency, and tension.

First up, relatability.

The Power of Relatability

Think of your favorite movie. Chances are, one of the main characters reminds you of yourself.

We’re instinctively drawn to characters and worlds that we can relate to. This is why we love teen movies when we’re in high school. It’s why my mom’s favorite movie of the last 20 years is Something’s Gotta Give. If we can see ourselves in a character, we’re much more likely to pay attention. Basically, we’re a planet of narcissists.

This dynamic is extremely powerful in digital media. BuzzFeed became one of the fastest growing media companies in history by capitalizing on our love of relatability.

In its early days, BuzzFeed flooded the web with stories like 21 Things That Could Only Happen At Stanford, filled with inside jokes. At first, this post seems like it would have a narrow audience, which wouldn’t make much sense for a viral media company. But BuzzFeed knows that Stanford students and alums can’t help but click on a relatable post like that. Once they do, they can’t help but share it with their social network full of other Stanford students and alums. Before long, that the network effect reaches hundreds of thousands of people.

Naming your audience in a headline is an easy way to send a clear ‘relatability signal,” and even the most niche B2B companies can get in on the fun. Texas Instruments, for example, got thousands of shares on a post titled “Seven Things Only An Analog Engineer Can Understand,” which is incredible for such niche content. (I barely understand it, but you can tell in the comments that engineers really related to it.)

If you want more inspiration, look to GE. The company was losing the engineer recruiting war to Silicon Valley tech startups when it launched “What’s the Matter With Owen?” a self-deprecating video series in 2015. In the clips, a young engineer struggles to explain to his friends and family that he’s going to GE to work on innovation initiatives, not the railroad.

Engineers related to it. Not only did engineering applications to GE shoot up by 800 percent, but Owen also became a minor celebrity along the way.

“People inside the company are just in love with the campaign,” GE CMO Linda Boff told me. “We have brought the actor who plays Owen to some of our internal events, and really you’d think we were bringing the Beatles back together. People are so excited that here’s a story about the company, but it’s really a story about them. They’re our Owens.”

I’ve even seen this firsthand in neuroscience research on political campaign ads. Recently, I tested ads from the main democratic primary candidates. When ads showed footage of real people, respondents related to them much better than ads with stock footage. Memory encoding an emotional engagement shot up, which is what politicians ultimately want.

Any time you green light a story for your company’s blog or tell a story in a meeting, ask yourself: Can my audience see themselves in this story? Can they relate to it? If you’re not sure how to relate to your audience, conduct empathy interviews (guide here) until you fully understand their challenges and aspirations.

Every story you tell—from a case study to a thought leadership post to an explainer video—should make your audience feel seen. Do that, and you’ll become a better marketer. You’ll become a better leader. And you’ll begin to let the storytelling light back into your life.

The post Relatability: The First Step to Great Storytelling appeared first on Contently.

I was running an upstart news site, and a company asked us to write a series of articles to promote the launch of their new platform for crowd-sourced inventions. We were broke—like “eating at the $5 Chinese buffet once every two days” broke—so we said yes.

We decided to get weird. Instead of writing boilerplate blog posts about tips for inventors, we came up with the most ridiculous invention ideas possible and created gonzo stories about our experience pitching them. I suggested an edible frisbee for inebriated college students. Spoiler alert: The inventor community hated our invention ideas. But they loved our stories.

As I prepare for Content Marketing World 2018, I can’t help but reflect on how much has changed since then. Over the past decade, it’s become not only a booming, respected industry but also the core of all marketing functions. Gartner has even predicted that in a few years, content marketing won’t be a term anymore because all marketing will be driven by content.

Naturally, the conversation about content marketing has evolved rapidly as well. We just don’t talk about creating content anymore—we talk about personalization, artificial intelligence, automation, voice search, and every other big opportunity. Largely, this is a good thing. As marketers, we need to get better at serving the right content to the right people. But I’m also worried. Because when we talk about tactics like personalization, we often make a huge assumption that the content we’re personalizing is actually good.

Why content marketing works

Content marketing works because our brains are programmed for stories. When we hear a great story, the neural activity in our brain increases five-fold. Since neurons that “wire together, fire together,” as neuroscientists like to say, we retain much more information when we get them through stories.

The key here is that our brains only respond to really great stories. They don’t care about mediocre ones. The best personalization, sales enablement, or email automation strategy won’t save your business if the content isn’t really good in the first place—because people just won’t care.

When you look at all the truly successful content marketing programs—GE, Red Bull, Dollar Shave Club, Dove, Hubspot, GE, Adidas, Marriott, Chase, Nike, Monster—they all have one thing in common: a commitment to telling great stories. They give their content teams the freedom to take risks, and they hire brilliant creative people who will create content capable of competing with everything else screaming for their audience’s attention. Only a small percentage of companies have gotten to this level.

“Great content” may sound subjective, but it’s not. Over the past decade, neuroscientists have made incredible strides in understanding and measuring how different stories affect our brains. They’ve almost managed to pinpoint the elements of storytelling that have the biggest impact.

Studies show that if your content isn’t great—or at least very good—nothing else you do really matters. That’s why I wrote a book on the art and science of storytelling, and why (shameless plug) I’m excited to reveal some of the latest groundbreaking research on the neuroscience of storytelling at Content Marketing World this week. As part of my presentation, there’s also going to be a live experiment using a newly-invented neurosensor that could change how we measure content success.

If you’re like 95 percent of the brands out there, your content could be a lot better. So whether you’re writing about personal finance or edible frisbees, I hope you take the leap with me.

If you’re at CMW, come to Atrium Ballroom A at 1:30 on Thursday, September 6, to see my session: Stories for the Win: The Hidden Neuroscience of Content Marketing, and Why Great Stories Make Our Brains Want to Buy.

The post Why Content Marketing Works: The One Skill You Need to Master appeared first on Contently.

Once you sign up for a few brand newsletters, you get pounded with the same generic how-to articles. How to Use Social Media to Boost Your Small Business. How to Make Your Team More Productive. How to Save Money for Your Kid’s Future. And, most ironically, How to Deal With Email Overload.

The onslaught of the status quo drives us crazy because, deep down, we all know this strategy doesn’t work. The best stories take risks. They suck us in, keep us on the edge of our seats, and illuminate the city of our minds. Need more proof? There’s actually a science to it.

Recently, I sat down with The Big Think to talk about the lessons Contently co-founder Shane Snow and I cover in our new book, The Storytelling Edge: How to Transform Your Business, Stop Screaming into the Void, and Make People Love You. It turns out there are four pillars underlying all great stories: relatability, novelty, tension, and fluency. You can use these pillars to study everything from Star Wars to Ernest Hemingway to Stephen King.

Check out the short video below to learn more about these four pillars and how they can make you a better storyteller.

You can pre-order the book here. And if you’d like to subscribe to our free email course on becoming a better storyteller, sign up here!

The post 4 Elements of Great Storytelling, Backed by Neuroscience appeared first on Contently.