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Guber argues that humans simply aren’t moved to action by “data dumps,” dense PowerPoint slides, or spreadsheets packed with figures. People are moved by emotion. The best way to emotionally connect other people to our agenda begins with “Once upon a time…”

Is “telling to win” just the latest fashion in a business world that is continually swept with new fads and new gurus pitching the newest can’t-miss secret to success? Or does it represent a real and deep insight into communications strategy?

I think it’s a real insight. I’m a literary scholar who uses science to try to understand the vast, witchy power of story in human life. Guber and his allies have arrived through experience at the same conclusions science has reached through experiment.

Encouragingly in the face of so much negative political messaging, positive information found online seemed to be surprisingly persuasive.

An impressive 54% reported finding something positive about the candidate that influenced them to actually vote for the politician. A slightly smaller number of respondents to the study (51%) found information that influenced them into not voting for the candidate in question.

Seeing positive results is thus at least, if not slightly more, important as burying negative information about a politician or launching full-scale attacks on an opponent.

Since a user’s first awareness of a product depends on an external trigger, such as a call-to-action in an email, a link on a social media site, paid advertising, or a word-of-mouth recommendation, the message must be consistent. “People need to talk about your product the same way, each and every time,” Elman says.

To be most effective, the articulation of what the product is for should connect to when the product should be used. In other words, inception is about attaching your product to a moment in the user’s life.

The best triggers are those that attach to frequent behaviors. Attaching a new action to a current behavior is much easier than attempting to create a new set of actions from thin air. Habits are like the layers of a pearl. The grain of sand at the center is the pre-existing behavior, which provides the base for new routines to attach to.

Ever heard of the Temporo-Parietal Junction? No, it's not a train station, nor is it a 60's-style rock group. The TPJ, as it's also known, is the area of the brain that gets activated when we're thinking about how to share something and who to share it with. If you want to make something go viral on Facebook or Twitter, in other words, the TPJ is where you want to hit — because it lights up like a Christmas tree before we even know we're going to share something. The more activated it is, the more persuasive the share. And it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what we think is cool ourselves.

You might expect people to be most enthusiastic and opinionated about ideas that they themselves are excited about, but this research suggests that's not the whole story. "Thinking about what appeals to others may be even more important."

you know that feeling you get when you see something on Facebook that you have to share with a specific friend? That moment when you get an image of how they're going to react when they see that news story or this kitten? That, apparently, is your TPJ working overtime.