From storytelling to storyhearing

Leigh Caldwell

Irrational Agency, a behavioural insight agency, highlighted the value in listening to and analysing consumer stories to gain unique insights.

Insights professionals have been taught in recent years to be great storytellers, but storytelling is a one-way activity. We must also learn how to hear consumer stories. Stories are fundamental to human society, and they offer a natural way for respondents to share, as well as for researchers to find when insights are not available through other research methods. This paper shows why stories reveal important truths for marketers, and outlines a method for gathering, interpreting and analysing consumer stories to produce new understanding. A case study shows how the topic of value was explored through 12,000 consumer stories, as...

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