What do a Porsche Cayenne and a VW Toureg have in common? Well let’s see, they have the same chassis, similar shape, engine, many of the same components, they’re built from the same blue print in the same factory. Oh apparently there is a difference, the VW handles steep slopes better. I’m sorry I forgot there is one more difference, the Porsche is more than double the price. Why would anyone spend more than double the price on the same car? Why because we don’t’ buy a car we buy a story. When you drive a Porsche the story is: I am seriously rich and sexy. Even if you’re eighty year’s old, impotent and the bank owns the car. What’s the VW’s story:

I am solid and reliable? I like value for money? No wonder that story costs half the price. The VW owners do get something else for their buck: ‘I don’t need to drive a Porsche to compensate for something else I don’t have!’ We don’t buy what we need, we buy what we want and what we want is a particular kind of story.

Champagne and Cap Classique are both sparkling wines made in the same way. The one in France, the one in South Africa. My favorite bottle of cap Classique is called Pongratz, it costs R65 a bottle. My favorite bottle of champagne is Moet & Chandon. It costs R300. In a blind taste test I did with friends most people couldn’t tell the difference. In fact not realizing she was drinking the Cap Classique my girlfriend’s best friend remarked. ‘You can tell this is Champagne it’s so much better.’ The crazy thing is I can barely taste the difference, yet I still buy both. Why? Because I’m an idiot. When I see a bottle of champagne a story runs through my head, a story that goes back to my childhood when I discovered that this was the most expensive, luxurious drink in the world, made far, far away in the beautiful French countryside, so special that you didn’t call it wine, you called it: ‘champagne’. That’s a pretty good story, good stories are good marketing. See, because we don’t buy products we buy stories.

After I failed my own blind-taste test I thought that those cunning Champaign story-tellers had just fooled my perception of value. Recently I discovered that stories are more than perception, they’re reality. Antonio Rangel a researcher at the California Institute of Technology found that when volunteers were told that the wine they were drinking cost $5 a bottle the medial orbitofrontal cortice, the part of the brain that registers pleasant experiences, didn’t register much activity. Later they were given the exact same wine but told that it was a different wine from a $90 bottle. This time the pleasure centre of their brain lit up like a Christmas tree. The Champaign story doesn’t just con us into drinking more Champaign, it makes the wine taste better. Want to save yourself three hundred bucks? Serve cap Classique from a Champaigne bottle. You won’t be conning your guests, you’ll be increasing their pleasure.

Porsche and Champaigne are just one kind of story, increasingly our customers are looking for stories with a conscience. Harvard researchers placed two sets of identical tiles in a home furnishing store. The one tile carried a logo: ‘Fair and Square’. Attached was this message:

‘These towels have been made under fair labour conditions, in a safe and healthy working environment which is free of discrimination, and where management has committed to respecting the rights and dignity of workers.’

The other set had no such label. Not only did sales increase when they carried the ‘Fair and Square’ message they kept increasing as the price was raised. Same towel, different story.

What about a value-for-money story? Kulula.com sold that story packaged with fun and unpretentiousness. They tell that story so well that most people don’t realize that it’s often cheaper flying SAA than Kulula. Nice thing about Kulula is that they don’t give you a three course meal as they do on SAA, I mean hey you might not want that meal. If you do you can always buy an overpriced cheese role and a packet of chips. Hey, but on Kulula I still get value-for-money, I get a value-for-money story, and that’s worth its wait in gold. Stories are not reality, but when they diverge too far from reality and consumers feel lied to they’ll go else where.

Your offices, promotions, packaging and products all tell a story. You tell a story, how you dress, how you speak and of course what you say, you want to make sure you know how to control that story because that determines whether they buy. Above all make sure you live the story – that’s what keeps them buying.