Dame Darcy Bussell

Our brains are hardwired to respond to stories.

There is evidence that character-driven stories stimulate the synthesis in our bodies of oxytocin – the neurochemical that, among other things, enhances social bonding and our ability to understand the emotions of others.³⁰

Once we have been ‘drawn into’ a story, we identify with the main characters; we share their anxieties and feel their pain. When, as in all good stories, there is a satisfying resolution of our hero’s or heroine’s predicament, we feel satisfaction; we feel good.

Paul J Zak is a neuroeconomist who was among the first to explore the link between oxytocin and trusting behaviour between strangers. His laboratory discovered that a good way to ‘hack into’ the oxytocin system and promote cooperative behaviour between people was to tell stories.

What follows is an extract from Zak’s Harvard Business Review article, ‘Why Your Brain Loves Good Storytelling’.

In subsequent studies we have been able to deepen our understand-

ing of why stories motivate voluntary cooperation. […]

We discovered that, in order to motivate a desire to help others, a story must first sustain attention – a scarce resource in the brain – by developing tension during the narrative. If the story is able to create that tension then it is likely that attentive viewers/listeners will come to share the emotions of the characters in it, and after it ends, likely to continue mimicking the feelings and behaviors of

those characters. […]

These findings on the neurobiology of storytelling are relevant to business settings. For example, my experiments show that character-driven stories with emotional content result in a better understanding of the key points a speaker wishes to make and enable better recall of these points weeks later. In terms of making impact, this blows the standard PowerPoint presentation to bits. I advise businesspeople to begin every presentation with a compelling, human-scale story. Why should customers or a person on the street care about the project you are proposing? How does it change the world or improve lives? How will people feel when it is complete? These are the components that make information persuasive

and memorable.³¹

Paul J Zak, ‘Why Your Brain Loves Good Storytelling’

The most successful companies don’t simply deliver goods and services; they put on a performance. And that performance – like every great performance – has a purpose and tells a story.

The British-American author, business consultant and motivational speaker Simon Sinek described this perfectly in his book, Start With Why. You may have seen Sinek’s famous Ted Talk on the same subject.

Sinek says that he set out to explain how great leaders inspire us to follow a cause and bring about change, and some organizations seem able to deliver a constant stream of innovative products and services that continue to delight their customers and create enduring loyalty.

The answer, says Sinek, is ‘The Golden Circle’. He imagines three concentric circles, with ‘What?’ in the outermost ring, ‘How’ in the middle ring and ‘Why’ at the centre. We all know What we do, says Sinek, and some of can describe How we do it, but inspirational leaders and great organizations know Why they do what they do.

It all starts with Why. […]

Every single company and organization on the planet knows WHAT they do. […] Everyone is easily able to describe the products or services a company sells or the job function they have within that system. […]

Some companies and people know HOW they do WHAT they do. Whether you call them “a differentiating value proposition”, “Proprietary process” or “unique selling proposition”. HOW’s are often given to explain how something is different or better. […]

Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. When I say WHY, I don’t mean to make money – that’s a result. By WHY I mean what is your purpose, cause or belief? WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every

morning? And WHY should anyone care?

Sinek looks at the way most organizations approach their marketing and at how Apple Inc. is an example of a company that ’Starts with Why’.

A marketing message from Apple, if they were like everyone else,

might sound like this:

We make great computers. They’re beautifully designed, simple to

use and user-friendly. Wanna buy one?

It’s not a very compelling sales pitch, but that’s how most companies sell to us. […] First they start with WHAT they do – “Here’s our new car.” Then they tell us how they do it or how they are better – “It’s got leather seats, great gas mileage, and great financing.” And then they make a call to action and expect a behaviour. […]

Let’s look at that Apple example again and rewrite the example in the order Apple actually communicates. This time the example starts

with WHY.

Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently.

The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly.

And we happen to make great computers. Wanna buy one?

It’s a completely different message. […] [It] starts with WHY, a purpose, cause or belief that has nothing to do with WHAT they do. WHAT they do – the products they make […] no longer serves as the reason to buy, they serve as the tangible proof of their cause. […]

People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.³²

Simon Sinek, Start With Why

Organizations that want to deliver a real performance – that want to delight their audience – need to understand their purpose. They need to understand their ‘why’ as well as their ‘what’ and ‘how’.

An organization’s ‘purpose’ doesn’t have to be earth shattering. If you genuinely are helping to save the planet, tell us about it and we will love you for it. But there are many less dramatic, less significant purposes that are still meaningful, engaging and rewarding.

The online file transfer service, WeTransfer, offers a good example.

Damien Bradfield began his career in advertising, working for major agencies such as Abbot Mead Vickers and J Walter Thompson on a range of blue-chip accounts. In 2010, he set up a design and innovation studio, Present Plus, with a Dutch lifestyle blogger and entrepreneur known as Nalden, who was also one of the co-founders of the cloud-based file transfer platform WeTransfer. In 2016, WeTransfer acquired Present Plus to draw on the studio’s designdriven approach.

Bradfield, currently president and chief marketing officer of WeTransfer, talked to Sunday Times journalist Danny Fortson about how WeTransfer had always been designed with the creative community – ‘ourselves’ – in mind.

Our thing was always that basically we wanted to make it super easy for everyone to send anything. Hence there was no sign-up; we have a lean data policy. We don’t have banner ads or anything. We

just have these beautiful images in the background.

And our goal was really to make life super simple and, to be quite frank, to set up the business around ourselves. If you’re a creative, you’ll know how difficult it is to get in the flow and actually make something. The last thing you want is some sort of distraction; something pulling you out and taking you somewhere else.

The rest of the internet is based around you have to set up an account and then you have to create a password, then you forget your bloody password and all those steps that basically are

a distraction.³³

As Bradfield noted, WeTransfer’s website has never carried any of the typical banner ads that clutter every other commercial website, offering instead a single ‘wallpaper’ background image that gives advertisers a blank canvas and allows them to create bold, billboard-style advertisements.

The site has 43-44 million users per month, transferring a collective one billion files between them. The company estimates that up to 75% of its users come from the creative community; it makes about half of its money from advertising and half from subscriptions to a premium-level service that allows larger file transfers and provides other benefits.

WeTransfer donates 30% of its advertising space to artists or ‘creatives’ of all kinds: click on one of the striking background images and you may find yourself seeing information about an art exhibition in Germany, the portfolio of a graphic designer in South Africa or a showcase of photographic talent from under-represented groups in the USA. The site’s ‘WePresent’ platform offers long-form articles about artists. It recently featured the Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto – who composed the film scores for The Revenant and Call Me By My Name – talking about his life and music. Also in recent rotation was an interview with the creator of the comic strip Hilda, soon to appear in an animated version on Netflix, by one of Hilda’s biggest fans: Bradfield’s ten-year-old daughter, Sophia.

WePresent currently has around two million visits per month. In its understated way, it has become a significant publishing platform for the arts.

You could say that WeTransfer’s purpose is to transfer computer files with a minimum of fuss. Or you could say, as Bradfield does, that WeTransfer’s purpose is to provide “a product for people that are aesthetically driven”… and that it sets out to delight this audience and to give something back to the creative community it serves.