How to Use Neuromarketing to Tell Brand Stories That Stick

Most businesses now realise the importance of storytelling. It helps to build that elusive know, like and trust factor. The problem is, most businesses telling stories don’t know how to tell stories that stick. So their efforts result in marketing content that vanishes in the scroll. 

If that’s you, note the problem isn’t your content. It’s your memory architecture. Unless your story creates a neurochemical imprint, your audience forgets you in seconds.

Neuromarketing gives us the science to fix this. The DRAMATISE™ framework uses nine steps to engineer stories that stick. Each step taps into three of the brain’s chemicals:

• Cortisol to grab attention
• Oxytocin to build trust
• Dopamine to spark anticipation

Hollywood has used these principles successfully for decades. So can you. Let’s break down all 9 steps.

Step 1: Disrupt and Define

If you’ve been marketing for any length of time, you already know the importance of a hook. But what does a hook really do to the brain?

It’s more than a catchy phrase. A hook must create a pattern interrupt, a sharp violation of expectation that jolts the nervous system out of autopilot. Neuroscience shows that when the brain encounters something surprising, it triggers the release of cortisol, the stress hormone that heightens alertness and focus. In plain English: disruption tells the brain, this matters , don’t ignore it.

This is why predictable openings like “I help entrepreneurs scale” vanish instantly in your scroll. The brain has mapped that pattern previously. So, it gets filed under “not relevant” before your audience has even processed the words. Predictability kills attention.

Great brands know this. So do movie producers. Consider Jason Bourne’s pen fight scene: we expect a helpless amnesiac, but instead he takes out assassins with a pen. That surprise creates a cortisol spike that etches the scene into memory. Your marketing needs the same jolt.

The DRAMATISE™ framework builds on this principle. Stories that begin with disruption cut through noise by hacking the brain’s natural stress-response system. In a saturated market, disruption isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s survival.

Step 2: Relate and Resonate

Once you’ve grabbed attention, you have to earn trust. Neuroscience shows that people don’t just listen to stories, they simulate them. Mirror neurons in the brain fire when we observe someone else’s actions or emotions, making us feel like we’re living the experience ourselves.

But here’s the key: the simulation only works if the story shows vulnerability. Sharing a scar, a past challenge you’ve already healed from releases oxytocin, the trust chemical. Oxytocin is the same hormone released during bonding moments like a hug or when you make eye contact. It signals safety, empathy, and belonging.

This is why we connect with Tony Stark, not for his billionaire genius, but for his cave scene in Iron Man. Broken, vulnerable, forced to rebuild himself, that’s when we see he’s human just like the rest of us and so we connect. And that’s when the brain chemically tags the story as trustworthy.

Brands that lean only on polish miss this. Perfect highlight reels fail to resonate because they don’t activate empathy. And brands that hide behind logos experience the same response. Research confirms oxytocin increases generosity and trust toward storytellers, making audiences more receptive to their message. This is why so many brands leverage influencers. 

The DRAMATISE™ framework bakes this in. After disruption, you must relate. Show humanity. Share the moment that hurt, not just the glossy after. Because once oxytocin flows, your audience’s defenses drop… and their connection to your brand deepens. It doesn’t have to be your personal story per se, it can be a clients story. 

Step 3: Arouse Anticipation

Once trust is established, the next move is to spark desire. Neuroscience tells us that desire is not about pleasure itself, it’s about building up the anticipation. The brain’s dopamine system doesn’t just light up when we get a reward, it activates most intensely when we expect one but haven’t received it yet. This is known as prediction error, the gap between what we expect and what actually happens.

Storytellers have exploited this for centuries. Think of a cliffhanger in the season finale in or Marvel’s post-credit teasers. They don’t resolve the story fully, they crack it open with something unexpected, creating a hunger for resolution. That hunger is dopamine at work, sharpening focus and motivating us to stick around or come back for more. 

Apple’s 1984 ad pulled the same lever. Viewers saw a dystopian world dominated by conformity, then a lone heroine hurling a hammer through the screen. The promise? Something radically new was coming. But the payoff, what the Macintosh actually was, was withheld. That gap between tension and resolution created a surge of dopamine, making the ad unforgettable.

In marketing, most businesses kill anticipation too early. They explain, teach, or “solve” in the first 30 seconds, flattening dopamine’s arc. The DRAMATISE™ framework takes a different approach to this. After disruption and empathy, you build anticipation by opening curiosity loops, teasing what’s coming but holding back just enough detail to keep your audience leaning forward.

Neurologically, this sets the stage for memory encoding. The brain doesn’t just remember what resolved the tension, it remembers who made them feel it. That’s how anticipation turns into authority.

Step 4: Magnify the Moment 

When we tell and recall stories, there are certain things that make them memorable. For example, the brain doesn't remember, “I was struggling.” But it never forgets sensory experience, like “my back was sore from sitting in my black office chair until the late hours, and my eyes were tired while my belly groaned with hunger and the kids kept screaming in the next room, when’s dinner mum? That’s embodied cognition: sensory language grounds memories in your listener’s lived experience.

Explain this more? Sure. But the science sells it: fMRI studies show that hearing "leather smell" activates the olfactory cortex, whereas "nice smell" doesn’t spark a trace at all. That’s memory literally lighting up sensory brain regions. Stories rich in sensory detail are far more sticky than a dry factual summary.

This ties closely with the “purple elephant” cognitive twist: when you say “Don’t think about a pink elephant,” suddenly that elephant dominates your mind. The brain struggles to suppress vivid images, it’s wired for sensory richness. That is why sensory detail isn’t optional. It hijacks attention and memory.

Mental health researcher Dr. Dan Siegel calls storytelling “integration.” When we weave emotion, logic, and sensation, we make the brain whole. Stories engage both hemispheres, the left for sequence, cause-and-effect, and facts; the right for imagery, intuition, and emotion. FMRI scans confirm that story-based narratives light up both sides, forging emotional bonds and memory architecture. 

For example, in Top Gun: Maverick, the roar of the jet hitting Mach 10, yet the peace at the height and speed Maverick experiences, the lights in the cockpit, the blur of the horizon… you don’t just see it. You feel it. That’s sensory storytelling in action, forging a neural imprint. One of my clients even described her “before” scene with such smell-rich detail “the musty, patchouli-infused office covered in 80’s wallpaper, and chipped Birkenstocks of her ex-boss toes behind the desk, that I could see and smell the scene myself”. Your audience can too. That’s because sensory immersion works.

The DRAMATISE™ framework makes “magnify the moment” explicit. After you've grabbed attention and earned trust and aroused anticipation, you ground emotion in sensory immersion. That’s how stories don't just land, they linger.

Step 5: Amplify Tension

If there’s no tension, there’s no attention. Neuroscience shows that the human brain is wired to prioritise threats and uncertainty over comfort and safety. This is because cortisol spikes during stress, sharpening awareness and memory encoding.

In storytelling, tension comes from highlighting what's at stake. Essentially, calling out happens if the character fails, or if the situation doesn’t change. Without stakes, the brain tunes out. With stakes, cortisol floods the system, making the story sticky and unforgettable.

Hollywood leverages this well. In the film Speed, the bus can’t drop below 50 mph or it explodes. That rule creates a constant tension loop. Every scene reactivates cortisol because the stakes remain high. The science? Cortisol makes us alert, engaged, and emotionally invested in outcomes.

But tension alone isn’t enough. Research shows that cortisol has the greatest impact when paired with oxytocin. First you make your audience care (Step 2: Relate and Resonate), then you raise the stakes. Empathy without tension feels flat. Tension without empathy feels manipulative. But together, they create the perfect cocktail for narrative immersion.

Brands often miss this. They either overplay tension (doomscroll-style fearmongering) or underplay it (endless highlight reels with no conflict). The result is either mistrust or indifference. The DRAMATISE™ framework balances the two, ensuring your audience feels the risk of inaction without losing the safety of connection.

Neurologically, amplified tension tells your audience: this matters and you can’t look away.

Step 6: Trigger Surprise

Surprise is the brain’s memory glue. When something unexpected happens, it triggers what neuroscientists call a prediction error,  the gap between what the brain expected and what actually occurs, similar to the disrupt and define. This gap floods the system with dopamine, a neurotransmitter that reinforces learning and encodes memory.

This same principle explains why jokes land. The punchline works because it breaks the logical pattern the brain predicted. Surprise forces a re-evaluation, and the “aha!” moment creates a dopamine rush.

Brands can trigger the same effect. When a business flips an industry myth or delivers an unexpected truth, it hooks attention more powerfully than another “me too” claim. For example, instead of saying “Stories sell,” a sharper line is: “Stories don’t sell. Neurologically engineered stories do.” That line surprises, reframes the narrative, and sticks.

Research published in Nature Neuroscience confirms this: unexpected rewards (or outcomes) trigger greater dopamine release than predictable ones, leading to stronger memory consolidation and behavioral reinforcement.

The DRAMATISE™ framework bakes this in. After raising stakes with tension, you keep your audience hooked by breaking patterns and revealing truths they didn’t see coming. Neurologically, surprise ensures your story isn’t just heard, it’s embedded.

Step 7: Illuminate the Path

Once you’ve disrupted, connected, built anticipation, immersed your audience, raised the stakes, and surprised them, their brains are primed for clarity. At this point, the nervous system doesn’t just crave inspiration. It craves direction.

Psychologist Jerome Bruner’s narrative paradigm research shows that humans understand reality through story structure. We don’t just want a big idea, we want to know the steps to apply it. Neuroscientist Dan Siegel describes when emotions and logic come together, the brain makes sense of the world and feels safe moving forward.

This is why characters like Morpheus in The Matrix are so memorable. He doesn’t only wake Neo up, he gives him a choice: the red pill or the blue pill. He illuminates a path. Without that, the story would collapse into confusion.

For brands, the same rule applies. Once you’ve disrupted and connected, you must guide. Frameworks, roadmaps, or step-by-step processes give your audience a way forward. The DRAMATISE™ framework does this by placing “Illuminate” here, because once you’ve emotionally charged the brain, you need to give it a rational structure to act on.

When you clarify the path, you move from inspiration to influence.

Step 8: Show the Success

Promises don’t persuade. Proof does.

Neuroscience shows that our brains anchor belief through vicarious experience, we need to see others succeed to believe the same is possible for us. This is why movies rarely stop at the “plan.” We need the hero to prove it works. Top Gun: Maverick does this powerfully when Maverick flies the simulated mission himself, showing that the “impossible” flight path is possible. Only then do the others believe.

In branding, proof comes from case studies, client results, or lived demonstrations. Oxytocin makes your audience trust you. Dopamine builds anticipation. But proof consolidates it into belief. Research from the Edelman Trust Barometer confirms this: peer proof and real outcomes are more persuasive than marketing claims alone.

The DRAMATISE™ framework makes “Show the Success” explicit. Without proof, your story remains a theory. With it, you create what neuroscientists call episodic memory encoding, the brain locks onto transformation as if it lived it itself.

This is why client testimonials, “before and after” journeys, and lived demonstrations aren’t optional extras. They are neuromarketing essentials.

Step 9: Embed the Memory

Stories don’t end when you stop talking. They end when they become unforgettable.

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s Peak–End Rule shows that people remember two parts of any experience most strongly: the emotional high point and the ending. That’s why rallying cries and taglines are so powerful. They collapse the meaning of the story into a short, repeatable phrase that the brain can hold onto.

Hollywood has given us endless examples: “I’ll be back.” “May the Force be with you.” “They can take our lives, but never our freedom.” Each embeds the essence of the story in memory.

Brands do the same: Nike’s Just Do It. Apple’s Think Different. These phrases are not slogans, they’re memory anchors.

The DRAMATISE™ framework ends here because embedding is not about information. It’s about encoding. If you don’t close with a rallying cry, your story leaks out of memory. But if you do, you create what neuroscientists call a mnemonic hook, something the hippocampus can retrieve instantly when your brand comes to mind.

In short: stories don’t sell. Neurologically embedded stories do.

Final Thoughts: From Noise to Neurological Impact

Forgettable stories are wasted effort. The DRAMATISE™ framework ensures your stories don’t just fill feeds, they embed in memory.

To recap:

• Disrupt to grab attention with cortisol.
• Relate through scars that trigger oxytocin.
• Arouse anticipation with dopamine-driven curiosity.
• Magnify the moment with sensory immersion.
• Amplify the stakes to hold focus.
• Trigger Surprise with prediction error that locks in memory.
• Illuminate a path forward with clarity.
• Show proof that belief is possible.
• Embed your message with a rallying cry.

When you combine science with story, you don’t just market, you rewire how your audience sees you. That’s the real power of neuromarketing storytelling.

So here’s your challenge: pick one client story or personal moment, run it through the 9 steps, and publish it. Watch the difference between content that vanishes in the scroll… and a story that sticks, spreads, and sells.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of Master Your Business for deeper examples: Episode 143
📥 Download the free DRAMATISE™ Story Builder Template: www.deirdremartin.ie/dramatisestorybuilder

Your competitors are already building authority through story. The only question is: will your story be remembered, or forgotten?

Author: Deirdre Martin, award-winning, triple-certified, international best-selling author helping service providers make their first million without burnout.
Last updated: September 2025

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