Content That Gets Gestalt

In a post last week, I’d explored factors that make content more memorable, citing a study done at Cornell University suggesting that, while lines in a movie might become popular because of an unusually effective delivery by an actor, there are specific qualities that make quotes “stick in our minds”:  Memorable lines, for example, tend to be short, using simple syntax but distinctive words. 

This week, an Indy’s Child article about autistic kids caught my attention, because in essence it was describing an approach to language and learning that is quite the opposite of using “distinctive” individual words and phrases to get our point across…

 “Most people assume language develops in a linear, word-by-word fashion,” Jessica Willitz explains.  That’s not the case for the majority of autistic children, researchers found. 84% of autistic individuals are GLPs, gestalt language processors, learning in chunks and scripts – phrases they’ve heard from songs, shows, and the people around them. (The term “gestalt” is derived from a German word that means “whole” or “put together”. Gestalt therapy was developed in the 1940s as an alternative to traditional, verbally-focused psychoanalysis.)

A “gestalt” approach can be applied in creating marketing content, a WordPress article suggests. “The perception of stimuli as groups or chunks of information, rather than as discrete bits, facilitates memory and recall.”  When creating written content, we’ve found at Say It For You, consistent use of bolding and font size for key terms helps readers subconsciously group those together, as does white space surrounding a set of related statements. The object – making our copy more readable – and more memorable.

Going back to the tendency of autistic children to repeat “scripts” from songs and shows,  in content marketing, we’ve seen that threesomes can make content more  memorable (“the good, the bad, and the ugly”, “stop, look, and listen”). In articles and blog posts, while there can be a razor-sharp focus on just one story, one idea, one aspect of a business or practice,  one call for a single action, that focus can be supported by three points.

In creating marketing content, get gestalt!