Breaking through the noise

I'm reading a book at the moment titled "The Elements of Persuasion." In it, the authors make a statement that I find both true and impactful in its simplicity, namely that "STORIES ARE FACTS WRAPPED IN EMOTIONS, and the key to remembering a fact is to anchor it in an emotion. That is why Jerome Bruner estimates that afact is twenty times more likely to be remembered if it is part of a story."

The typical middle-level corporate exec gets an average of 250 e-mails a day. People are literally bombarded with information. Given this overload, facts that are not connected to a story are likely to slip our mind.

This strikes me as one more compelling argument for liberally using stories to get key messages across in a memorable way in job interviews, sales pitches, and other conversations and presentations where one is seeking to persuade.