W. Davd Phillips

A picture is worth an emotional experience

I was reading a post from Fast Company Magazine today entitled Three Secrets to Make a Message Go Viral by Dan & Chip Heath, authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. The article opens with his familiar urban legend:

The police have issued this warning: “If you are driving after dark and see an oncoming car with no headlights on, DO NOT FLASH YOUR LIGHTS AT THEM!” Why? Because the no-headlights car is being driven by a gang member, and as part of an initiation rite, the first person who flashes him will be hunted down and killed. (But at least the gang member will turn his lights on afterward.)

You’ve almost certainly heard that famous urban legend, and most likely, you heard it from someone who swore that it was real. (It’s not. See snopes.com.) This idea is sticky — it’s memorable and may change the way you behave — but it’s also viral. People love to retell it.

The authors asks an important question: Why is the gang-initiation tale so irresistible to pass on? They then provide three ideas for the viral nature of this legend.

It’s emotional — in fact, if you believe it, it’s terrifying. The French psychologist Bernard Rimé has found that people almost compulsively share emotional experiences (both positive and negative), and the more intense the emotion, the more likely they are to talk about it.

There’s another emotional angle: When someone shares this legend with you, they feel like they’re doing a public service. They might believe they’re saving your life. And that’s the second trait of viral ideas. It’s often a small favor: “Hey, it’s Free Breakfast Day at Denny’s!” or “Dude, have you seen the video of that David kid who was drugged up after his dentist visit?” It feels good to save our friends money, or delight them with nitrous-oxide humor.

The third trait of a viral idea is the trigger. A trigger is an environmental reminder to talk about an idea. For instance, a golf tournament is an excuse to trot out your public-service info about the state of Tiger’s knee, and a cup of coffee reminds you to talk about Starbucks’s no-decaf-after-noon policy.

“If you want people to talk about your product or service,” the authors state, “you need to ratchet up one of these three traits.”

What then might make your preaching go viral? If these three ideas are the spark to the viral nature of a product or service, how does that translate to our preaching?

The obvious correlation is to the emotional nature of our preaching. We are primarily emotional people. Brain research over the past two decades has demonstrated that. We connect through emotional experiences, not through rational arguments. In fact, our rational arguments are nothing more than a rationalization of our emotions. We cannot make meaningful decisions or judgments without our emotions in play.

What, then, is the most natural way to connect to someone emotionally? Is it logical arguments with multiple points? No. It is through the use of stories. Pastors need to re-embrace the narrative and storytelling traits of Jesus.

Preaching Like Jesus

Preaching like Jesus means that we use stories. Stories work because they touch people on a number of levels.  They teach, inspire, correct and change people by touching the mind and the heart.  Stories stimulate a person’s senses and help people find themselves in the lives of others.  Stories also create a safe place for people, a place where no one can hurt a person. (1)

Stories are the foundation of the message.  Interaction is what attracts people to the message.  Interaction “is like a baited hook.  It attracts attention, engages, ‘hooks’ and draws people into the message that is being communicated…Great interaction is like ‘word salt’ because it flavors information and makes it taste more palatable and more memorable.” (2)  Jesus used questions and props to interact and teach.

Jesus also made use of multi-track communication. Communication is not simply a matter of the mind and the will, but “an intrinsic convergence of everything we are.  It is made up of what we do, what we say, what we sing, how we feel, what we desire, what we hope and what we dream”.(3)   There are five levels of multi-track communication: physical, emotional, intellectual, intuitive and spiritual.  Jesus used multi-track communication to “expand his communication impact and make it more memorable”. (4)

Jesus was also prepared. Master communicators understand that preparation is the key to successful communication.  But it is not simply the preparation of the message. It also includes the preparation of the person.  Communicating effectively requires preparation in many different areas, including physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.  Jesus prepared his whole life for three short years of ministry.  He also prepared others to lead at his departure.  It was his “preparation and discipline” that “established the platform from which he launched history’s most transformational marketing campaign.”(5)

The fifth characteristic of Jesus’ communication is love. Love is the heart and soul of communication.  It is communication’s core.  “Master Communicators help us discover love because they help us discover ourselves.  They hold up a mirror of truth to our lives and help us to see the truth of our hearts.” (6)   Because Jesus was love, he taught, spoke, modeled and lived love and that made his communication life-giving. (7)

The final technique or characteristic of Jesus’ communication, according to Scarborough, is execution. She states, “[e]xecution is critical.  It requires energy, precision, commitment, and accurate focus.  Jesus reached his goals because he executed and hit the target whenever he communicated.  His examples were clear, his questions concise, and his responses precise.  He never let others pull him off track with their personal agendas and schedules.” (8)

Preaching like Jesus integrates stories which produce emotions that cause our communication to go viral. But the key to stories is our ability to create visual imagery. We need to create verbal, visual imagery with our preaching. This sparks the emotions, which can enable our preaching to go viral.

Why is imagery so important?

Meaning is a function of comprehension and comprehension is a function of the visual. By far, the most dominant learning mode is visual experience. (9) Researcher Stephen Pinker has determined that four different formats are used by the brain in representing thought. These formats are: a) the visual image as a two dimensional picture-like mosaic; b) a phonological [sound] representation; c) grammatical representations of different parts of speech arranged in hierarchical trees; and d) “mentalese, the language of thought to which our conceptual knowledge is couched.” (10) Pinker goes on to state that “[m]ental imagery is the engine that drives our thinking about objects in space…Images drive the emotions as well as the intellect.” (11) Cognitive psychologist Howard Garner suggests that the reason images are primary, especially in the creative mind, is that they allow a person to understand one idea through another idea. (12) It is also the format for all consciousness and all meaning and the basic communication medium for the brain. “When what we read, what we hear, and what we see reach the level of ideas, they all appear in a different format: the format of neural imagery.”(12)

As such, reason is not particularly effective in addressing learning or behavior. “In the process of our becoming, visual communication plays a crucial role, one that is particularly vulnerable to emotional learning and to manipulation by political, economic and other vested interests.” (13) Damasio remarks that “[v]irtually every image, actually perceived or recalled is accompanied by some reaction from the apparatus of emotion” and because “the engines of reason still require emotion…the controlling power of reason is often modest.” (14) The brain forms attitudes and ideas neurologically through pattern formation and repetition. These patterns create the templates used to map and anticipate reality. Because neurons that fire together get wired together, the templates are particularly resistant to reason. (15)

Let’s Review

Emotional engagement is the key to viral marketing. Emotions are best engaged through the use of stories. They are are also best communicated through the use of images. The study of signs and images as the means of meaning and communication is called Semiotics. Semiotics is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood. (17)

So maybe to make our preaching move through our community of faith and their social networks, we need to become expert semioticians. It is how Jesus communicated (The kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed…). He used verbal imagery to move people’s emotions and minds into life change.

This will scare many strong, conservative, anti-postmodern thinkers because postmodernity relishes the realm of semiotics. Maybe it is time we embraced postmodernity rather than reject it without an understanding of what it is or its effectiveness in communicating the Gospel.

Notes:

(1) Lynn Wilford Scarborough, Talk Like Jesus (Beverly Hills, CA: Phoenix Books, 2007), 74-75.
(2) Ibid, 95.
(3) Ibid, 119.
(4) Ibid, 117.
(5) Ibid, 139.
(6) Ibid, 164.
(7) Ibid, 163.
(8) Ibid, 185.

(9) Ken Smith, Handbook of Visual Communication Research: Theory, Methods, and Media, Lea’s Communication Series (Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum, 2005), 46.
(10) Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: Norton, 1997), 89-90.
(11) Ibid, 284-285.
(12) Smith, 53.
(13) Ibid.
(14) Ibid, 60-61.
(15) Antonio R. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, 1st ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 58.
(16) Smith, 61.

(17) Wikipedia contributors, “Semiotics,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Semiotics&oldid=285248604 (accessed April 22, 2009).