Tall Tales: The Impact and Role of Storytelling in Market Research

This paper looks at the psychological concepts that contribute to humans' preference for anecdotes and stories over statistics, and the implications this has for market research.

Tall Tales: The Impact and Role of Storytelling in Market Research

Adhil Patel TNS

Abstract:

There's been a spate of literature over the past few years, discussing cognitive biases (mental blindspots), and their effect on the way we see the world, as well as our subsequent behaviour. Many authors have pointed to our susceptability to stories rather than hard, quantitative, rational facts as a prime example of the danger that these pose.

In this paper, I grapple with the psychological concepts that contribute to humans’ preference for anecdotes over statistics, in an attempt to understand how we as...

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands