"Falling Heroes" via Pensiero on Flickr
Rick Liebling just wrote an interesting piece about bringing real storytelling back to advertising. I’ve been thinking along the same lines. So many ads try to be clever– and many succeed. But I’m sick of clever. Pardon me for a sec while I mix metaphors, but clever is the bubble-gum pop music approach: all sugar, no substance. Ok, back to storytelling. If your product or service is truly good– awesome, even– you have an emotional connection with your market in there somewhere. Even with commodities, like milk & eggs.
So, how would you do it? How would you tell a compelling story, 30-60-90 seconds at a time, over three months? What if you used Joseph Campbell’s monomyth framework of a hero’s journey from “Hero With A Thousand Faces.” Each stage of the hero’s journey could be broken up into a couple 30, 60, or 90 second spots. The three meta-stages stages of the hero’s journey could be divided up as follows:
- Month one is Departure: Call to Adventure, first part of Road of Trials
- Month two is Initiation: second part of Road of Trials, The Boon
- Month three is Return: Return to the Ordinary World, and Application of the Boon
The trick will be getting a company with enough money and daring to take on such a project. A hero company, even.
Lots of ads already use a contracted version of the hero's journey ( best hero's journey explanation I have ever come across is at http://www.clickok.co.uk/index4.html and associated videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/clickokDOTcoDOTuk ); for example the coffee ads with George Clooney et al.
Thanks for the links, Lucy. I still think it'd be interesting to do a full-on, multi-month version of the Hero's Journey, though.