This is the second and final post thinking about story telling, something which the marketing world is rather keen on at the moment. In my first post, I explored the different levels at which stories can be used. In this post, I am sharing learnings from having looked through Christopher Booker’s “The Seven Basic Plots”.
In this work, Booker describes the seven basic stories which seem to act as archetypes and recur in great tales from across time and across cultures. To be fair, with all this increased interest in stories, the marketing world has cottoned to these seven basic plots as a source of reference and inspiration.
However, there are perhaps more interesting elements to Booker’s analysis of stories that have been overlooked. In the last section, he explores how, in the past 200 years, many of these archetypes have been subverted and inverted. “They have become detached from their underlying archetypal purpose. Instead of being fully integrated with the objective values embodied in the archetypal structure, such stories have taken on a fragmented, subjective character, becoming more like personal dreams or fantasies.” Booker goes on to explore how this shift explains and reflects the shift in individual human consciousness that has occurred in recent history.
I don’t want to go that ‘deep’, but it made me wonder whether the idea of playing around with archetypes has or could be a source of creative inspiration. Here are some initial reflections.
- It might appear that advertising is creating its own archetypes which can then be distorted. Parody is the clearest example of this – and the Aldi version of Man on the Moon comes to mind here.
- In addition to the archetypal plots, Booker also identifies archetypal roles that individuals in the seven basic plots might play. These include the Mother, Father, Child and animus/amina (the character that embodies the qualities of the opposite gender to the hero/heroine). In a world where it is increasingly accepted and perhaps expected that men take on child care and domestic duties and that gender identity is not fixed, one might argue that rethinking these archetypes is necessary in order to have relevance today. Fashion is certainly getting interested, but this is likely to be more style than substance.
- Part of the reason that the archetypes begin to distort is due to the arrival of an author and their personality. What we are seeing in marketing is a different change in the center of gravity within narratives. Brands can now be less about story telling and more about story making; and it is the customer who in fact ‘has’ the story or, at the very least, is actively involved in it. Think about the ‘Share a Coke’ campaign where the brand sets the stage and provides a prop, but it is the customer who is the protagonist.
Whichever way these trends and shifts play out, it is worth ending on the fundamental reason why stories have so much to offer in marketing. Stories add to the humanity of brands. Without that narrative, everything is dominated by features, data and discounts and that sounds a bit boring to me.
