The BBC’s Science of Memory study changes how we think about storytelling
Peter Pynta, the director of sales and marketing at Neuro-Insight, doesn’t hold back when talking about the importance of ensuring audiences remember branded content. Long-term memory, he argues, is a crucially important measure of success because it’s what’s actually resonating with consumers.
“Make no mistake,” he warns, “if your piece doesn’t get into someone’s memory, it’s got no hope of influencing future purchase behaviour.”
Pynta is talking at Mumbrella and the BBC’s sponsored Storytelling Summit in Sydney, in front of more than 100 of the city’s most senior marketers. The morning event is where the BBC has flown out its most senior content experts from London and New York, as well as its local talent, to unveil a piece of research examining the science beyond narrative-based advertising. Joining Pynta is Jamie Chambers, regional director ANZ of BBC Global News; Simon Frantz, managing editor of the features sites on BBC.com; Mark Jones, the digital director of BBC Global News; and Richard Pattinson, the senior vice president within BBC Global News, heading up its StoryWorks division.
Sessions included a presentation on content, engagement and distribution and another on immersive digital storytelling techniques. Pynta, however, is unveiling a new piece of research, a co-creation of the BBC and neuroscience agency Neuro-Insight that underpins the day’s discussion.
Science of memory
Entitled Science of Memory, it examines how content marketers can maximise their storytelling techniques to ensure key branded messages resonate with consumers and see a real return on investment with both impact and efficiency. Moreover, it drills down to look at specifics: for instance, what is the relationship between emotions, memories and brand outcomes and how can this be used to create branded content that really works?
It combines the BBC’s unique Science of Engagement tool that tracks the emotional impact of content with Neuro-Insight’s technology that tracks long-term memory encoding. Its aim was to take the art of storytelling and turn it into more of a science. It did so by showing six branded films, created by BBC StoryWorks, to more than 2000 respondents across New York, Melbourne, Singapore and Berlin. As the participants watched the films, researchers were able to track, second-by-second, the emotional state, degree of emotional intensity and level of long-term memory encoding.
They could drill down to understand what emotions the content was triggering, how intense these emotions were and also the level of memory encoding going on at the same time. “Branded content can actually shift purchase behaviour,” says Jamie Chambers, explaining why the BBC invested in this research. “We wanted to understand the role emotion and memory play in branded content, and how that changes globally.”
Making memories stick – fundamental and executional drivers
To understand this, it is important to first understand what the ‘memory drivers’ are. Jelena Li, head of BBC StoryWorks for ANZ, explains that these are cognitive measures that include attention, engagement, personal relevance, emotional valence and emotional intensity. When a brand is committed to memory, it internalises the emotion along with the memory and that emotion is then re-experienced when the brand is retrieved from memory. Jelena emphasises the importance of marketers activating these drivers in their content.
Fundamental drivers
There are two major types of driver to consider. The first is what’s known as a ‘fundamental driver’. These are specific factors that drive memory encoding throughout a piece of content and are related to the overall memory impact of content. In order to maximise this, creatives should consider both how the narrative develops and what the personal relevance is. Using a single-minded narrative – one that develops through the content – keeps things focused and helps viewers remember key moments. “What we found is 59% of the memory spikes tend to happen when the storyline unfolds,” says Pynta. “The brain is highly selective and really specialised. And what it loves to do is to latch on to a little packet of information.”
The second is personal relevance. Quite simply, if the content is something a viewer would seek out, then it will have more impact. It’s why choosing the right platform is so important. “If the message is relevant to me,” says Pynta, “then I’ll be more engaged. It’s where the art and the craftsmanship can be played to your advantage to use emotional triggers to eventually leverage branding.”
Executional drivers
The second type is known as an executional driver. This is where emotions play an even more essential role. It relates to an impact at a given moment in time and tends to drive peaks of memory when they do appear. Memory peaks are, in turn, associated with increased engagement. Happiness, sadness, curiosity, surprise and even fear can stimulate huge encoding of memory. What’s key to turning that into long-term memory is how intensely emotion is experienced. The more intense, the more likely it is to be remembered. “Even if it’s fear, bottle it,” says Pynta. “Don’t fear fear because it’s an emotion, too.”
Jelena highlights that creatives should actively edit or produce storytelling pieces to take advantage of this insight. She goes on to state that the key to making content memorable is delivering multiple emotional peaks and then, ensuring they come early on in the narrative. “[When creating branded content] don’t make the mistake of saving the big reveal until the end – get it in early on to create the best effect.”
Furthermore, canny creatives can take advantage of different techniques such as visual stimulus, aural change, camera angles and lighting and help make branded content more memorable. For instance, 76% of memory events were associated with strong visual change, 90% with a notable change in audio, while unique lighting – a burst of sunlight, say – can also prove to be highly effective.
Peter highlighted a case study from a recent BBC StoryWorks Australia branded content campaign promoting Mini Cooper. The key to the video’s success was on how subtly, but strategically, the branding was weaved into the story. The steering wheel, featuring the iconic logo, appeared at a targeted moment. Research suggests loud and overt attempts to shove in branding can cause the brain to tune out.
“Knowing we can craft these moments,” concludes Pynta, “means we can create a real opportunity. The good news is you can fine tune these moments in ways that often are very subtle but very powerful. And once that memory is in, it’s linked to context and emotions that provide meaning and richness.”
To find out how the BBC can help make your branded content more memorable and more effective, email Jamie.Chambers@bbc.com, Regional Director ANZ.