Storytelling: The Most Powerful Weapon - Ma3an art production 🎬

Sep 13, 2023

Hamad Al Blooshi

Storytelling: The Most Powerful Weapon

I remember those moments when I used to ask my mother in my childish voice while she was walking, “Tell me the stories of the prophets!” My mother would agree, and I would dance out of joy when she starts recounting them. She would speak of some events and I’d begin to imagine them happening in front of me. These stories made me attached to the prophets despite never meeting them or knowing anything about them before. Along with food, shelter, and companionship, stories were what I needed most.

To understand the power of stories, journalist Rob Walker bought two hundred cheap products. These products included plastic banana pieces, an old wooden hammer, and other products that had no essential value. Walker invited two hundred writers to this project. Their task was simple, just write a story about each piece. One of the pieces was a plastic horse head that Rob bought for $0.99. How much do you expect its selling price to be after adding a wonderful story?

The piece sold for $62.95. That is more than sixty times its real price! Not only has the price of this piece doubled. Focker bought all the pieces for $197 and sold them for nearly $8,000. One can’t help but wonder, what has changed in those pieces?

Nothing has changed about the pieces, but our feelings and perception about them became different. The story plays with our emotions. It makes us not think logically as we usually do when buying or doing things under the influence of emotions.

Storytelling is not just a marketing strategy, it is much more than that. By telling a compelling story, you can start a revolution, and by telling a compelling story, you can end it. By telling a compelling story, you can usher in an economic boom and lead to a global depression.

We get emotionally invested in stories. When we are desperate for something to be true, we believe any story that proves our thoughts are true and reduces our frustration.

A father who does not have the financial ability to treat his child will believe in the effectiveness of folk remedies and the sayings of herbalists. Although in reality it is ineffective and may increase his child's pain instead of alleviating it. You may judge the father that his thinking is abnormal. But when we are desperate we will believe anything.

To be a good storyteller is to have the ability to manipulate the emotions of others. People are not attracted to your cause, your ideas, or your accomplishments. But the story that convinces them. In our minds we live that one story that we tell ourselves all the time. It defines who we are.