Why do academic communications suck?
You know what I’m talking about. You’ve experienced death by Powerpoint. Been driven to distraction by long, wordy reports. Been bombarded by stats your brain just...can’t...take..in.
So why use the same techniques to tell our own stories? There’s a problem with that, isn’t there? We know it doesn’t work. It bores our audience to death. But we don’t know how to do better.
As academics, we often get our skin in the game because we want to have impact. We see a way to change the world, make a real difference, improve lives. That’s what drives us.
But we get bogged down in trying to explain it all. We get focused on words in reports, words in publications, and words in Power Point presentations. We get overloaded with jargon and impressively tangled sentences.
We forget our audience. They’re over there DYING of tedium and overwhelm.
We’ve been so caught up in wrestling with traditional research comms, we've actually forgotten the important people who are at the heart of impact. The people whose behaviour we want to change.
We need to change our approach to actually engage our audience.
That means we have to understand how the brain works with words. We’ve been focusing on the rational side of our decision making, which has a very, very tenuous link with action and changing behaviour. We’re used to using words - a lot of them - to make the rational argument clear. But often, the sheer quantity of words makes it harder to understand. We get bogged down, and so our audience gets bogged down too. They switch off, just like we do when we’re faced with that long report.
What we actually need to think about is how to engage our audiences emotionally, because we feel before we think.
So what's the solution? How can we fire up our audience emotionally AND communicate crucial information?
Two things: storytelling and visuals.
When we tell stories, our audience perks up. Humans have been telling stories to make sense of their experiences since… well, since there were humans. Our brains are hard-wired to connect with - and remember - stories.
Stories kindle emotion. Emotion inspires action. Action drives change and gives our work impact. (Find out more about how brains respond to stories here.)
When we tell stories visually our audience processes information up to 60,000 times more quickly than text alone. They find it clarifying, attractive, and they remember it longer. (More about the way brains respond to visual information here.)
Visual storytelling is the secret sauce that makes presentations dynamic and takes your audience from lethargy to action.
It helps you reach into the brains of the people who need your research. Once you do that, you can inspire action, drive change, and have real impact. Which is what it’s all about.
Want to find out more? Tell your stories visually? Check out our blog posts on creating powerful infographics, a compelling one-page research website, and reaching the people you need to reach through a research shop window.
You can learn more about pitching your research through storytelling and effective visuals using our Pitch Perfect training.
And you can find out more about upcoming e-courses by subscribing to our newsletter.
Still want more of that secret sauce? We’re here to help. Contact Nifty Fox and talk to us about animations, live scribing, video, trainings, and more.