There have never been more powerful brands and household names than there are right now. What do these companies have in common? A clear marketing strategy that relies on storytelling and relatability with their target audience.
According to OneSpot, 92% of consumers want to make ads and marketing campaigns that feel like stories. From our experience, building a compelling story for your brand is the foundation of your business success, and this is the reason why we want to share with you the secret to that success. Let’s start from the beginning:
The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell: How storytelling can Take Your Branding to The Next Level
The Hero’s Journey was initially developed by Joseph Campbell, and influenced by Carl Jung’s view of mythology and familiar folklore stories. The structure summarises the typical template of these stories, following the protagonist (the Hero) who goes on an adventure, experiences a crisis, wins a victory and comes home changed or transformed. The Hero’s Journey has subsequently been used by many writers and producers when considering plot in entertainment but can also be used by brands for storytelling and relating to your customers.
The Main Stages
The Hero’s Journey has been well-developed over the years, with subcategories added and developed, making seventeen stages in total, but the basics remain essential:
Call to adventure
Meeting the mentor
Crossing the threshold
Trial and error
Growth and new skills
Death and rebirth
Revelation
Finally Changes
Atonement and return
Gifts
Returns Changed
Storytelling
Research suggests that messages delivered as stories can be up to 22x more effective than those that aren’t. So, what’s the story here?
Once upon a time, there was the main protagonist (let’s suppose is you) who receives a call to adventure, to go through a profound personal transformation. Once on the journey, the protagonist usually meets a mentor who can put a lot of things into perspective and take on a coaching role. Our protagonist, the future Hero, will then cross the threshold from the ordinary world to the special world, leaving the comfort zone, to begin learning and experiencing new things. They both will go on to meet life tests, allies and enemies with different values, and many lessons. Approaching a climax or the main event at the middle of the story, which may be an ordeal, death or rebirth as a consequence after this big challenge, the protagonist, now the Hero, cannot continue the same. Mentor and Hero celebrate a victory or reward before heading back over the threshold. The road back has a lot of self-reflection, revelations and the Hero recognises that changes must be made for a constructive future. The Hero usually brings this solution to everyone else on his return. And here it is where the Hero’s brand starts taking shape.
Would you like to create your own story? We have built an easy step-by-step visual guide of this on our feed to help you explore your Hero’s journey.
Your Brand Story
The obvious way to apply the Hero’s journey in branding is to implement it into your marketing and advertising, telling a story that makes the customer relate to your adventure and your brand purpose. You are now their Hero, and you are there to advise and guide them throughout their journey. Your experience during your discovery journey shows them how you are capable of being their mentor and helping them find their adventure.
The Hero’s journey can be incredibly beneficial to your brand to share your values and message with your audience. A compelling story helps them to see your products, services or even your essence more clearly. Just look at John Lewis’ success with their long-awaited Christmas stories each and every year, or how Nike’s domestic market share climbed from 18% to 43% with their story-led campaigns telling you to ‘just do it’.
People can’t resist the feeling of seizing the sword, contributing positively and winning a success that they can take home, making it a compelling and irresistible marketing and branding strategy.
This technique is a fantastic way to put your brand narrative to a story sequence, to connect and relate more closely with your target audience and to involve your clients or customers in feeling your company values.
For more ideas in building your Hero’s journey, visit our Instagram feed, where we have carefully created content for you, to better guide this process.
Vicky Martinez Dorr is a qualified Branding Consultant, Business and Leadership Coach, Speaker and Author with certifications in NLP and TimeLine Therapy® and Magna Cum Laude from Solvay Business School in Brussels, Belgium. With her universe of words, she is on a quest towards helping leaders reconnect with themselves, thrive and move towards an exemplary leadership world.
Her 15+ years of MarCom experience in Market Research, International Branding and Multicultural Leadership have taught her how to bring efficiency out of chaos in any organisation and people's professional lives. Her findings within the fragmented leadership, have moved her to start working towards a more authentic business world and more humane leadership culture.
Vicky is the Founder of www.yourbrandstory.eu and Founder of www.atreefortheplanet.org. She is also an abstract artist.