Spotlight: The 5,000-Year-Old Method of Making People Remember You

Speaker A: You are nothing but your memories. And 90% of all of your memories you actually consciously do not have access to.

Speaker B: I mean, now, anyone in business, anyone thinking about how do I get my messages into that 90%, like, what does that look like? And then how do you think about tracking that? Which I know is like your whole company, so we can dive into that too. But yeah, maybe the first one's like, what does that look like to get it implanted in that 90%.

Speaker A: Well, you can't control what gets implanted in the 90 versus 10. You can control what gets implanted in memory, period. Right? Which way the brain chooses to consciously or subconsciously store it, you can't really tell. But the human brain is a, uh, pattern seeking storytelling device. It does not know anything but a story. Everything has to be composed in that format for you to be able to absorb it. So every brand, think about it like you're on one side of, you know, uh, the, the ocean. And you need to get to the other side of the ocean, which is your destination of implanting yourself in someone's memories. Uh, the boat that takes you there is a story. And the stronger the boat, the more the chances you have to get to the other side. What makes the, the boat strong? The boat needs to understand the medium that it's traveling in. The medium that we're traveling in is the human medium. What makes the brain open the doorway to memory? Personal relevance. It has the highest correlation to memory encoding. It needs to actually appeal to a truth that I know, whether consciously or subconsciously. If it can, the symphony, um, becomes, if you can actually engage emotions along the way as well. Because it gives me more chances for me to then use this combination of personal relevance and emotional engagement to, to then be like, this is important. Let me store it into memory. Right? So, as in the arc of you telling the story, the brain thinks the story is valid. It's relevant to me. It has emotional engagement. Let me create memory. Now, your task is not to just be present somewhere in that story. To be present in that m. Moment of memory creation. And that is the true craft of storytelling. Right? I just, you know, I told you I just got married and I, uh, was in India, you know, an ancient civilization. And, uh, the rituals with which we got married, uh, are, um, you know, probably 5,000, 6,000 years old. Um, the stories that are told, um, are, you know, as old sometimes. And how is it that while writing was only invented in say, 800 BC plus, minus 100, 100 years, these are oral traditions and rituals that were transferred from generation to another, you know, then written down verbatim. And this is not like a thin book, right? These are the four gigantic Vedas and the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita and the Mahabharat and the Ramayana. How is it that till today, like last, uh, year or the year before, I was invited to ring the bell at Nasdaq for Diwali. How is it. How is it that a few thousand years later, that story is still resonating and, uh, you know, with the world in a way that. That happens. That happens because the story had a remarkable structure. There was a multi generational saga talking about human emotions, greed, um, you know, alignment with Dharma, uh, being torn by what pulls you versus what you have to do to live in this society. For the greatest warrior in the world to land up in the battlefield only to be scared and wonder, why am I even fighting this battle only for, you know, God himself or the oneness itself to show up and be like, well, let me tell you what life is about. At that moment of peak memory creation where the answer is about to come, the revelation actually happens, right? The Bible does a similarly phenomenal job. Uh, and any other remarkable. I, uh, mean, not to relegate any of these things to just being stories. Any remarkable story does that. It knows the arc that it's on when memories are being created and what needs to be revealed in what moment to continue engagement and continue for you to fall back on that story over and over again. And that is the craft of storytelling, marketing, memory creation, and branding, for that matter. If they failed, if they told a remarkable story and created memories in various moments, but the key fact or what they wanted out of people, um, came at a different moment and was not memorable. It would just be an interesting story but not repeated over time or followed. Um, and that's, you know, the answer is in ancient wisdom, uh, like many other things, uh, we've done it, We've known how it's done. Uh, we just do not put in enough effort to actually find out, um, what is truly people's truth that will allow us entryway into the doorway of memory that creates all.

Speaker B: Um, for today's buyers, that next purchase is never more than a tap away. A moment of curiosity at lunch, a nudge at midnight, an impulse on the train ride home. Attentive helps brands show up in all of those moments with the right message on the right channel at exactly the right time. And when every message feels that relevant, it doesn't just Feel better, it performs better. That's what marketing made personal feels like. That's attentive. To learn more, visit attentive.com action. I'm wondering if this is so obvious of looking like people are passing along stories. It sticks in memory and we're able to keep them going. What is the hold up here and why aren't more people following this framework first?

Speaker A: To your point, culture, which is also an overused word, completely under defined. If you were to actually ask every single person who comes onto your podcast starting today, what is culture? I'd love to hear those answers, because people use this word a lot, but they don't understand what it is. Culture is built on mythology, stories, songs, rituals, collectively over time. And it evolves over time, and then it becomes. Because it defines our experiences in life, it then becomes our window into how we perceive things. Uh, the cultural difference, um, is two people having heard different stories and different myths. Um, you know, I love telling the story of when Alexander, in his last conquest, got to India, and he is adorned in this fantastic attire. He's on this horse, um, and, uh, he sees what he describes as the gymnosophist, the naked wise man in Greek, who's sitting under the tree, uh, looking up into the sky. And so Alexander and this massive army stops, and Alexander says, oi. So this guy opens his eyes, uh, or, you know, looks at this guy. He's like, yeah, what's up? I mean, these were not exactly their

Speaker B: words, but I'm, yo, what up, dude?

Speaker A: Yeah, um, and, uh, and Alexander goes like, what the hell are you doing? And the Jimny sophist goes, well, I'm the naked wise man, and I'm observing nothingness. What the hell are you doing? He was like, well, I'm Alexander the Great, and I'm trying to conquer the world. And they both laughed at each other because they both thought that the other party could have not been more stupid. Uh, and the reason why they thought the other party could not be more stupid is because Alexander's myths were about greatness. You know, in Greek mythology, if you were great, you got to Elysium. Uh, you know, you celebrated people like Achilles, despite their heel. Like, if you set your foot in any battle, you won. Um, and, you know, you look down on dudes like Sisyphus, who's trying to do the same thing over and over again and with no real result, only for the rock to roll back every day. That's the Greek myth. You achieve greatness in this lifetime. Korea, because there is one. But that's not the myth the gymnosophist heard. The gymnosurfist came from a culture where life is infinite, uh, um, and you don't really seek greatness in that way. Um, because he'd heard stories of King Bharat who had wanted to climb the highest mountain peak in the world and hoist his flag there, only to get there and find out that there were a hundred other flags from a different time to realize the pointlessness of material conquest. So in Vedic mythology, there's also a river that you cross after you die, but you don't cross it once. You keep going back and forth till you get the freaking point of life. And so two different myths, two different end results on what you end up doing. That is the myth or the story that changes your behavior. And if that thousand of year old ago myth can change those behaviors, imagine what myths in everyday culture does to us when America comes out. And like we are Americans, we do things this way. What that does to a population, how they change behavior, how they are likely to perceive, what they're likely to buy. That unless you understand that you're not even close to being a marketer. You can master the tools. You can hire a media agency that'll get very sophisticated in targeting. You can use AI, you know, creative generation to tell stories. But to be effective, you know, when you've looked someone in the eye and seen a change in them, to feel like you got me, you look through my soul and there's an unheard truth within me that you discovered. And by the way, it doesn't need to be some crazy shit, right? Think about this. MasterCard. One of my favorite examples to use, realize that the core human truths was that money is not everything. And yet MasterCard is a company that essentially makes money because of transactions. Those could not be farther apart. One needs you to get more transactions. But the truth you've just found out is that money is not everything. How do you bring the two together? How do I get people I know people only listen to me if I speak their truth. But my truth sits in the opposite corner. Comes the most iconic campaign of all time. You know, me going down on a sunny day in Soho, uh, buying a coffee, $5. Meeting someone interesting. Striking up a conversation that lends into lunch another $45. Creating a friendship for a lifetime. Priceless. There are some things money can't buy. But for everything else, there's MasterCard. It maintains the truth of the human on the other side, while you integrating yourself in the role that you Want to play in that truth. Um, and that is marketing.

Speaker B: Well, what parts are hard? Because I've heard brands saying, okay, let's structure a Hero's Journey. I mean, at this point we've produced like 3,000 episodes at my company. And so we have thought about that since day one. So I'm like. But I also think you can get caught up in that Hero's journey trying to fit all the pieces and especially if you're trying to make an ad like you lost real quick.

Speaker A: Yeah. Which is why my recommendation is not look at Hero's Journey or anything. Point is, get to the essence of it. Um, Hero's Journey, the reason why it appeared in the world is not because, um, you know, someone from Greece came to India, someone from India went to Korea. Some of that may be true, uh, that all of these myths are connected because there was some common root to them. That may be one explanation. But the other explanation is that everywhere you went, there were certain human truths that were undeniable. And what stood out to people was the undeniable, unsaid human truths that resonated deeply, that became the stories of that land or region. And what we need to do is the work to understand culture and people and stories and the unsaid truth. That is the work. The, the work is not replicating, uh, you know, a template from the past which is, which is exactly where we fail. Companies don't do it because it's hard to be able to constantly invest in finding out what is the cultural truth, um, in an honest and rigorous way manner and stay true to the idea of that story leading to change. Because very quickly, uh, if that doesn't work for six months, the question is, I'm not getting any return on the dollar. And unless you come with a leader who has the belief that that is the only way to sustain this, that me changing that behavior is actually going to be, make, generate some short term revenue and satisfy the questions I'm getting otherwise, but actually is not in the favor of, of the long term gain of this brand.

Speaker B: Okay, I want to back up a little bit. Creating the arc of a story, especially for a brand or a company. The first thing is maybe to identify the unsaid truth, the truth that resonates with the group you're going after. What questions do you ask? Let's just say your clients, what do you ask them to start unraveling to get to these truths? That to me it feels like that's like a, the first hard point to tackle. But like, how do you Go about that.

Speaker A: Beautiful. So a story is different from the truth. Right. First, the. The idea is to identify the core truth. So if you've looked at a segment of women who are not different from any women in the past in terms of wanting to feel beautiful, but actually do not like the idea of cameras, makeup, you know, paintbrushing, um, being the way that they want to be perceived, then you have to actually figure out what is the truth of that audience. So we would bring that group of people in, show them a variety of things, a variety of things that could be possible. And this is an imagination game. Stick electrodes on their heads and figure out where personal relevance, emotion, and most importantly, memory lights up. And you basically realize that actually beauty is an identity play, even though it is in the eye of the beholder. The beholder can be changed a certain way. M. For me to feel a certain way, uh, I don't even need to cater to a beholder who doesn't, uh, appreciate the beauty. I want to see beauty. So if that is now the truth you've identified, then the storytelling frameworks in the world, I mean, we have one, but the world has many others. So first is the category story. Like, what is the category that you want to play in? Do you want to say that I help you achieve more things? I help you solve a basic need? I help you become a version of yourself that doesn't happen in the future. There's only six or seven kind of category stories. Then there is the role that you want to play. Are you the hero of the story? Are you the enabler? Uh, are you an observer? And commenting on how life is, you could pick these roles, and then there's creative distinctiveness that could come in hundreds of forms. So first is the identification of what is the core truth? Okay, women who see beauty a certain way, and this is their truth. Then if we are the brand, let's pick where we sit. Are we solving a basic need? Are we helping achieve more stuff? The role that we want to play, how do we want to be seen? Uh, and then let's figure out creative distinctiveness, and then we tell the story. Those are choices that are made later about how you want to tell the story. But the core truth of the story, they identified earlier, and they may not have done it in that process. It may have been some genius where this was inherent in their way of storytelling. But the way to do this is identify core truth. Look at the storytelling framework. Pick how you know the role that you want to play and the category you want to play in and then tell the story on top of that. So that's how I guide people through that work.