---
title: "Why in the Digital Age, a Good Story Beats a Good Ad?"
description: "During the 2020 China FMCG Conference, the author argued that in the digital age, brands must create waves, be recommended, and continuously create value for users to rebuild connections. This model, based on user lifecycle management, contrasts with the funnel model of traffic thinking, aiming instead to accumulate loyal fans through sustained engagement and value delivery. The article focuses on the second half of 'creating waves'—the power of good stories—exploring the psychology of curiosity, the formula for compelling narratives, and how brands can craft stories that resonate, reverse expectations, and leave audiences wanting more."
author: "赵波"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2020-10-17"
language: "en"
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---

# Why in the Digital Age, a Good Story Beats a Good Ad?

> During the 2020 China FMCG Conference, the author argued that in the digital age, brands must create waves, be recommended, and continuously create value for users to rebuild connections. This model, based on user lifecycle management, contrasts with the funnel model of traffic thinking, aiming instead to accumulate loyal fans through sustained engagement and value delivery. The article focuses on the second half of 'creating waves'—the power of good stories—exploring the psychology of curiosity, the formula for compelling narratives, and how brands can craft stories that resonate, reverse expectations, and leave audiences wanting more.

During the 2020 China FMCG Conference, I mentioned a viewpoint: in the digital age, for brands to rebuild new connections with users, they must be able to create waves, be recommended, and continuously create value for users.
In fact, the internal logic of these three words is essentially user lifecycle management. Starting from attracting users' attention, continuously providing long-term, lifelong value to users, thereby achieving continuous interaction, continuous purchase, and continuous forwarding by users.
But it should be noted that this new connection model is not the inverted pyramid model of traffic thinking. Traffic thinking is a funnel, which is to obtain as much traffic as possible, through a certain probability of conversion, and finally produce transactions. This brings certain problems: traffic becomes more and more expensive, and business is unsustainable.
This model is a positive pyramid. It does not seek to acquire a large number of users in a short period of time, but through continuous operation of users, through creative communication + high-quality products + continuous provision of value, accumulate as many users as possible, and finally form a huge group of loyal fans, continuously purchase, continuously promote, and finally form a stable business closed loop.
**Today we focus on the first topic: the second half of "creating waves"—good stories.**
In the previous article, we used several cases to describe the first key element of communication: obtaining users' attention by creating spectacles. But those were just cases. Today, we will explore from a deeper level: why do people like to watch? How to make users remember us while watching.
**-01-**
**The underlying logic of creating spectacles**
The core of a spectacle is to use people's curiosity to gain attention, then provide social currency for people to forward, thereby achieving dissemination. Here we need to explore several mechanisms of behavioral psychology.
Creating a spectacle is to use human curiosity. So what is curiosity?
Let's first talk about a scenario: If you are Neo in the movie "The Matrix," when Morpheus hands you two pills, one is the status quo as dull as dead water, the other is the real world full of difficulties, what would you choose?
Undoubtedly, most people will choose the same as Neo. The reason for this choice is that humans have a special ability: curiosity.
Curiosity is like appetite and sexual desire, it is a basic human desire. The part of the human brain responsible for curiosity is the nucleus accumbens, which is responsible for the reward mechanism, and this area is also highly related to food and sex. All primates have very strong curiosity.
A group of scientists once conducted an experiment. Researchers designed tasks that participants needed to complete, referring to the slot machine model. In this task, participants had to repeatedly choose between multiple images or other options. Different choices had different probabilities of receiving rewards (usually money). Over time, participants gradually knew which options were most likely to get rewards, and they would always choose these options.
But when a new option appeared that participants had not seen before, they often chose that new option, giving up the possible rewards they had before, hoping that the new option could bring them more rewards.
Research on the brain shows that this "novelty reward," which is the extra weight we give to new choices, at least partly comes from the euphoria it provides us.
For example, a 2007 study found that, like Pavlov's dogs salivating when hearing a bell, when we expect new discoveries, even if expectations are disappointed, the brain's reward area is activated, just like when we feel love or eat candy. Researchers concluded that these findings suggest the possibility that novelty itself is treated as a reward by the brain.
**For those who create spectacles, using people's curiosity is the prerequisite for gaining user attention and dissemination today. How do we mobilize users' curiosity?**
Biologists believe that curiosity is the reward mechanism that evolution has developed for learning.
The essence of curiosity is to enable humans to build knowledge and adapt to the current environment.
So, what people around you are discussing, what they are watching, what external survival pressures are, what difficulties they encounter, are all important factors that promote our curiosity.
**List some article titles that use people's curiosity to trick clicks:**
 Image: from the public account "Super Intelligent Agent"
So, unfamiliar, fresh, familiar + unexpected, and topics, stories, cases related to one's own interests can arouse users' curiosity and attention.
**Unfamiliar and fresh = heard but not seen, scarce, mysterious,** such as the case mentioned earlier: ZiHaiGuo doing live streaming in a remote county in Guizhou.
**Familiar + unexpected = you originally knew, but contrary to normal logic,** such as Liushen floral water flavored RIO, Ma Yinglong's eye cream, etc.
**Interest-related = consistent/conflicting with your own interests or values,** such as the Huawei incident, the Wei Zexi incident, etc.
The above content only lists how to use curiosity to make people pay attention to things.
**A complete spectacle is achieved through curiosity * social currency, because just gaining attention is not enough; we must make users forward a lot to gain enough voice on internet media and produce dissemination effects.**
**But what we pursue is that users, after purchasing, have a good experience and then recommend and forward, rather than simply forwarding, or forwarding and then experiencing. Although both may achieve the same effect, the internal logic is fundamentally different.**
**From a psychological perspective, FMCG products are typical low-involvement purchases. Purchase behavior can be roughly divided into two types: impulse buying and immediate buying.**
Whether impulsive or immediate, long-term education is needed to make the brand impression enter the consumer's cognitive habit range. When purchasing, the cognitive cost of purchase can be greatly reduced. But in today's fragmented media caused by mobile internet, merely gaining user attention and interest is not enough; massive information can make users forget us instantly. So we must make users generate memory and transaction behavior. This is the entire cycle of creating waves.
**-02-**
**Brands must tell good stories**
So how to make users go from perception, attention, to interest, further to action and purchase, is the key point we need to discuss in depth.
The purpose of communication is not for communication itself, but to make users feel something through spectacles. Only when they are touched can they generate memory and subsequent purchases.
How to make users remember? The best form is to tell stories. As mentioned earlier, the purpose of curiosity is to build knowledge, so that we can adapt to the current environment and survive. Therefore, we are curious about knowledge.
However, the most critical point is that we cannot learn knowledge by memorizing knowledge; we can only build knowledge by summarizing examples. Therefore, what we are more curious about is examples. And examples in life are stories.
This explains why we love stories so much, why most speeches start with a story, and why the strategists of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods used stories to persuade monarchs.
**A brand is an imagined community built between the enterprise and users, and the form that carries this community is a good story.**
Robert McKee, in his book "Story Economics," mentioned a formula for telling good stories: "Conflict subverts life."
McKee believes that a marketing story must first be a good story, and a good story must satisfy these six words. If these six words are not satisfied, what will the story become? Let's look at the following paragraph:
My wife and I were sitting on the train, eating hot pot and singing songs, very happy, then we looked at the scenery outside the window, and then we drank red wine together.
This story is finished. Do you think it's bland, right? This can only be called narration, not a story. Narration is a bland, boring, and repetitive description of events. It passes through the mind like plain water and has no impact on consumers. But if we process the above according to the formula of conflict subverting life, it becomes like this:
My wife and I were sitting on the train, eating hot pot and singing songs, when suddenly we were robbed by bandits.
Yes, this is a story fragment from the movie "Let the Bullets Fly." Only with subversion and conflict in life can it be considered a story. McKee believes that the best definition of a story should be: a series of dynamic progressive events driven by conflict, causing significant changes in the lives of characters.
Let's look at another video: Taiwan's Taishin Bank classic micro-film "Extraordinary Ordinary People":
Five elderly people over 80 years old gathered at the memorial service of an old friend, looking at photos of them at the beach when they were young, evoking their dream of riding motorcycles around the island.
Of the seven people in the photo, two have passed away. Among the remaining, one is hard of hearing, one has cancer, three have heart disease, and all have degenerative arthritis... But even so, they are determined to ride motorcycles for a round-island trip.
During the long 6-month preparation, they pulled out IV drips, threw away crutches, discarded pills, actively exercised, obtained motorcycle licenses... Finally, they put on cool riding gear, brought photos of their deceased friends, and resolutely mounted motorcycles, embarking on the journey around the island...
Finally, the five elderly people came to the beach where they took photos when young, holding the portraits of their deceased friends, facing the sea, just like when they were young. Still these seven people, still this sea, without any sadness of things changing, only the pride of dreams fulfilled.
In the story, the protagonist's balanced life is broken. He tries again and again to regain balance, and finally achieves the goal, and the significance of this goal will definitely exceed the meaning of his original life. This is McKee's basic definition of a good story: conflict subverts life. With this core, we find the foundation of a good story.
**But just a good story is not enough; we also need to upgrade it into a marketing story that can make money.** Specifically how to upgrade, McKee gives many techniques in the book, which can be summarized into three essentials: resonance, reversal, and leaving a lingering aftertaste.
Resonance means **making the viewer transfer the emotions of the characters in the story to themselves. It is necessary to make the target consumer realize that they have something in common with the protagonist.** Ideally, let consumers feel that the character in the story is the same kind of person as me, so what he needs must also be what I need.
In this regard, cosmetics advertising is relatively mature. Almost all protagonists in cosmetics ads are already beautiful when they appear. Even without cosmetics, they are beautiful enough, and after using cosmetics, they become exaggeratedly beautiful, as if PS-ed.
The reason for this character setting is that most female consumers think they look good, just lack a suitable cosmetic. Shape the character according to how consumers imagine themselves, not according to how they actually are.
**The second is reversal.** McKee believes that in story marketing, even the most positive story needs to start from a negative setting. For example, in sports drink ads, we often see the opening is a tired, listless person, but after drinking the beverage, he becomes energetic and adventurous. This transformation is a process of converting negative energy into positive energy, and the key to the transformation is the product you are selling.
The essence of negative energy guidance is to grasp the pain points of consumer needs, and then cut into the story from this pain point.
**The third is leaving a lingering aftertaste.** We always think that the ending of a story must be satisfying, otherwise it becomes a pit. But McKee tells us that a successful marketing story needs to dig a pit. Consumers will not be satisfied at the end of the story. Only after they finish watching the story and personally purchase the product will they be satisfied.
**This is the highest level of marketing stories: set a semi-open ending for the story.** That is, you clearly know the ending will be like this, but the ad doesn't show it. The ending must be experienced by the audience themselves.
There is a typical case: "Once Remy Martin is opened, good things naturally come." The protagonist of the ad is an elite man. As he opens the bottle, a graceful lady walks over and smiles ambiguously. Although we all know that a romantic encounter will follow, the ad stops right there.
At this time, many consumers feel that the story is not finished, and more importantly, they all want to experience the ending of this story themselves. So, everyone buys the wine, looking forward to the moment of opening when good things come naturally. This is the third essential of marketing stories: leaving a lingering aftertaste, that is, leaving a semi-open ending for the story, pushing viewers to buy the product and personally draw the conclusion for the story.
**-03-**
**What counts as a good story**
Finally, let's talk about how to evaluate whether this is a good story?
Coca-Cola's ads have always been considered by the public as **concise, comprehensive, popular, easy to understand, warm, loving, harmonious, and great love...** creative ads.
Ashley, Coca-Cola's global digital marketing manager, said that Coca-Cola handles any content with steps like a journalist's self-review before submission. She proposed several aspects for reference:
**1. Why should readers watch?** After watching, will they have an urge to share with family and friends?
**2. Is the material fresh enough, is there a sense of surprise?** Now many articles can guess the ending just by looking at the beginning. Weird and eye-catching ones are often more popular.
**3. Appeal to universal emotions (universal appeal).** Coca-Cola, which has always emphasized "happiness," tries to flip the perspective on happiness, jumping out of the personal and family level, extending to the larger aspects of society and country.
For example, in India and Pakistan, which had no contact for 60 years, they launched the "Small World Machine-Bring India & Pakistan Together" plan, allowing people from both places to complete actions like high-fives, dancing, or drawing a peace symbol together through real-time video, getting to know each other again in a happy atmosphere and regaining friendship. As one participant said, "Actually, we are not that different!" Ashley said that general content on Coca-Cola's new official website "JOURNEY" averages about 1,000 likes or shares, but this content reached 8,000, setting a record.
**4. Face the power of data analysis.** Coca-Cola uses Google Analytics and Gigya to monitor in real-time visits, most viewed articles, dwell time, bounce rate, reader geographic location, Facebook likes and shares. This also gives Coca-Cola some unexpected surprises and feedback.
Since humans entered the era of civilization, whether religion, ethnicity, or company, they are essentially imagined communities, and these are all connected through stories, mobilizing cooperation among strangers.
**Therefore, a good brand must be a brand that can tell good stories. Only good stories can not only connect more people but also let more people spread and gossip for you.**
In the next article, we will explore how to use humans' ability to gossip to let users solve your communication dilemma.


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