Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

August, Interpol arrested a 40-year-old Nigerian con artist, known only as “Mike,” who was the alleged mastermind of an email scam cartel that swindled over $60 million from victims around the world. Mike operated various email schemes including the infamous “Nigerian Prince” ruse, which elaborately establishes a heartbreaking and potentially profitable tale before asking for money.

 

The prince scams are a case study in the power of storytelling. Before asking for money, the con artists weave intricate tales that appeal to people’s emotions. While these scammers tend to prey on the gullible, like this 63-year-old Nebraskan woman who lost over $40,000, the more elaborate variations call on astronauts or London gallerists to target people who may be more sophisticated.

 

In fact, as Maria Konnikova told Contently in an interview about the dark side of storytelling, intelligent people are the most vulnerable to investment fraud. According to another new book, Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us, they’re also more likely to join cults.

 

Our predisposition to believing good stories comes down to human physiology and psychology. We’re wired for well-told narratives.

 

They can be so alluring, enticing, and transformative that they can cause even the smartest readers to change their minds, relinquish money, and see the world through someone else’s eyes.

 

Even though credibility counts for a lot, you ultimately must make an audience feel things to compel action. It’s a frustrating reality for scientists and statisticians, who often try to persuade people with authority and numbers. Statistics may seem irrefutable, but they can hurt a cause, priming people to think analytically, which increases skepticism and decreases the likelihood for action....

Create truly responsive stories, white-papers, blog posts, or reports with our unique format that automatically takes advantage of every device size. With full screen video and imagery, interactivity, and lots of great layouts and designs to choose from, you can replace those static PDFs and boring blog posts.

Every story had to have some moment that was there to amuse me — a funny moment, an emotional moment, some original observation I’d made on the scene that no other reporter had. It could just be a nice moment in the script. Every story had to have someone who was more than a talking head, spouting out their point of view on the issue of the day.

To make them more human, it sometimes only took a line of description, an original thought about who they were and why they believed what they believed, a surprising moment, a funny moment on tape.If you cannot find a deep interest in the story to begin with, that's a warning since. As Pixar Filmmaker Andrew Stanton advises in his TED Talk on The Clues to a Great Story:

And that's the first story lesson I ever learned. Use what you know. Draw from it. It doesn't always mean plot or fact. It means capturing a truth from your experiencing it, expressing values you personally feel deep down in your core....