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In 2023, there is no shortage of marketing messages. Truth be told, there’s a torrential flood. But if you’re savvy enough to tailor your storytelling to unique cohorts, your content strategy can soar above the rest.
The psychology behind marketing matters, and companies must move from telling to storytelling to put muscle behind their message.
Memorable storytelling helps a brand access more key regions of the human brain than simply presenting distilled information about a product. For master marketers like Nike, Kia, Apple and Dove, infusing persuasive psychology into the mix elevates consumers’ feelings of fondness, familiarity, recall and intent to purchase.
That said, not all content packs the same punch.
While some stories are universal and transcend time, messages don’t always resonate across cultures or demographics. As marketers, it’s our charge to understand why. How deep we dive—and how much we allow psychological insights to help shape stories—determines whether our messages are remembered for a lifetime or discarded as background noise in an information-saturated world.
Marketing through the ages
Broadly speaking, age differences among generational cohorts and their associated stages of life will steer how marketing and storytelling are perceived.
For example, studies suggest that emotional intelligence—the ability to identify, understand and manage emotions—tends to increase with age. Trends show older adults are more likely to prioritize positive narrative elements as way to regulate and uplift their emotional state. In contrast, younger adults tend to prioritize informational stories, which satisfies their elevated desire for knowledge in a digital and data-driven culture. Younger consumers also tend to be more distracted by negative information in marketing messages.