Winning the Story Wars

1. The Story Wars: Competing for Influence in the Digitoral Era

We live in a world that has lost its connection to its traditional myths, and we are now trying to find new ones—we’re people, and that’s what people without myths do.

Media saturation. In today's media-saturated world, individuals are bombarded with thousands of commercial messages daily, making it incredibly difficult for any single message to cut through the noise. The traditional "broadcast era" model, where attention could be bought, is rapidly dying, replaced by a chaotic "digitoral era" where audiences control what they consume and share.

Oral tradition's return. This new digital landscape surprisingly mirrors ancient oral traditions, where ideas survive by being memorable, compelling, and adaptable enough to be passed from person to person. Messages are no longer fixed; they are owned, modified, and spread by audiences, making peer-to-peer sharing the new battleground for influence.

• Broadcast Era: Exclusive access to expensive machines (presses, transmitters), elite gatekeepers, fixed content, passive consumers.
• Digitoral Era: Free distribution, easy sharing, audience ownership/modification, peer-to-peer networks, active participants.

Storytelling's power. In this environment, only great stories can bridge the chasm between skeptical audiences and desired influence. These stories must not just entertain but provide meaning, shaping how people understand themselves and the world, ultimately recruiting them into a shared "us" and inspiring action. The "story wars" are a fundamental struggle for control over these narratives, fought by everyone from political movements to sneaker brands.

2. The Five Deadly Sins That Sabotage Storytelling

Most of us are in desperate need of a mentor.

Common pitfalls. Marketers often fall prey to five "deadly sins" that doom their messages in the story wars: vanity, authority, insincerity, puffery, and gimmickry. These sins, nurtured by the broadcast era's lack of natural selection for ideas, prevent authentic connection and story resonance.

• Vanity: Focusing on the brand's greatness rather than the audience's reality and values (e.g., John Kerry's "me-focused" campaign).
• Authority: Relying solely on facts, jargon, or credentials, assuming expertise will speak for itself, neglecting emotional connection (e.g., early climate science communication).

Audience alienation. These sins alienate audiences because they fail to acknowledge the audience's perspective or intelligence.

• Insincerity: Losing oneself in an attempt to please the audience, leading to inauthentic messaging (e.g., McDonald's "I'd Hit It" slogan, Fiji Water's "carbon negative" claims).
• Puffery: Issuing detached, godlike proclamations from above, rather than speaking with a human voice (e.g., old car ads' stiff pronouncements).
• Gimmickry: Prioritizing fleeting humor or shock over genuine truth and meaning, resulting in empty emotional connections (e.g., Super Bowl ads focused solely on gags).

Apple's transformation. Brands like Apple, initially guilty of these sins with products like "Lisa," learned to transcend them. Their "1984" and "Think Different" campaigns shifted focus from self-admiration and technical specs to empowering audiences as "creative rebels," demonstrating the transformative power of overcoming these storytelling flaws.

3. The Myth Gap: Society's Urgent Need for New Narratives

To live without myths would put us in uncharted territory in the history of human civilization.

Eroding foundations. Society is experiencing a "myth gap"—a growing chasm between rapidly changing realities (e.g., atomic bomb, civil rights, ecological crisis) and the traditional myths that once provided universal explanation, meaning, and guidance. Old religious myths struggle with literal interpretations, science avoids meaning, and entertainment often prioritizes mere amusement.

Myth's true role. Myths are the indispensable glue of society, providing shared stories that codify beliefs, enforce morality, and offer practical rules for life. They operate in a symbolic realm, offering flexible truths that inform reality without demanding literal belief, and are enacted through rituals that make them real.

• Symbolic Thinking: Myths exist in a separate, imaginative realm, using symbols to convey deep truths beyond literal facts.
• Story, Explanation, Meaning: They provide a coherent narrative that explains existence and offers purpose (e.g., Genesis, the American Dream).
• Ritual: Humans enact myths in the real world through rituals (e.g., Passover Seder, shopping).

Marketers as mythmakers. In the early 20th century, facing a "demand gap" after WWI, political leaders explicitly invited marketers to create new myths to drive consumption. Marketers, adept at symbolic thinking, storytelling, and ritual creation, stepped into this void, transforming society from one of thrift to one of hyperconsumption.

• Edward Bernays: Tied cigarettes to women's suffrage ("Torches of Freedom"), creating a ritual for a new myth of female equality.
• Keep America Beautiful: Created the "Crying Indian" ad, offering litter prevention as a ritual to reconcile with a crumbling "man vs. nature" frontier myth.

4. Marketing's Dark Art: The Inadequacy Approach

Messages like these deny the concept of higher human purpose.

Freudian roots. The dominant language of marketing, the "dark art," emerged from early 20th-century psychologists like Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays, and Ernest Dichter, who believed humans were driven by base, aggressive, and sexual forces. They saw marketing as a way to manage these "dangerous masses" by channeling their frustrations into consumption, thereby ensuring social and economic stability.

Inadequacy formula. This approach consistently follows a two-step process:

1. Create Anxiety: Tell stories that begin with "You are not..." and play on negative emotions like greed, fear, lust, or insecurity, making audiences feel incomplete or lacking (e.g., Listerine's "Sad Edna" campaign creating fear of "halitosis").
2. Introduce the Magic Solution: Offer a product or brand as a simple, magical fix to alleviate these anxieties, bypassing the difficult journey of maturation (e.g., a vote for Johnson to stop nuclear war, a shoe to replace exercise).

Postmodern evolution. Modern inadequacy marketing subtly invokes or assumes anxiety, while postmodern versions (e.g., Kenneth Cole, Groupon) even mock the triviality of consumption, yet still reinforce the idea that shopping trumps all other human values. These campaigns deny higher human purpose, reducing citizenship to mere consumption.

Crisis of consumption. This pervasive "consume at all costs" mentality has led to a global crisis of overconsumption, resource depletion, and declining happiness, despite increased material wealth. The dark art's stories, by keeping people in an adolescent, consumer mindset, actively hinder society's ability to address urgent challenges like climate change and wealth inequality.

5. Empowerment Marketing: Appealing to Humanity's Higher Nature

Telling the truth—most importantly, the truth that human nature goes beyond our basest desires and orients to a higher potential—provides the foundation of a storytelling strategy that can build your next breakthrough communication—and your entire brand.

Maslow's counterpoint. Empowerment marketing offers a powerful alternative to the dark art, rooted in Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Maslow, rejecting Freud's "cripple psychology," studied healthy, "self-actualizing" individuals and found a universal human drive towards psychological maturity and "growth needs" beyond basic survival and deficiency needs (greed, vanity, fear).

Higher values. Empowerment stories appeal to these higher-level "being needs," which include:

• Wholeness: Feeling sufficient, connected, moving beyond self-interest.
• Perfection: Seeking mastery, often through struggle.
• Justice: Living by high moral values, overthrowing tyranny.
• Richness: Examining complexity, seeking new experiences.
• Simplicity: Understanding underlying essence.
• Beauty: Experiencing and creating aesthetic pleasure.
• Truth: Expressing reality without distortion.
• Uniqueness: Expressing personal gifts, creativity.
• Playfulness: Need for joyful experience.

Audience as hero. Unlike inadequacy marketing, which casts the brand as the hero saving the anxious consumer, empowerment marketing positions the audience as the emerging hero on a journey of self-discovery. The brand acts as a mentor, inspiring and equipping them to pursue their higher potential.

• "Think Small" (VW): Celebrated modesty and truth against status-seeking.
• "Real Beauty" (Dove): Exposed unattainable beauty ideals, affirming women's inherent worth.
• "Just Do It" (Nike): Emphasized inner strength and perseverance, not magical product benefits.
• "Yes We Can" (Obama): Glorified optimism, collective sacrifice, and engaged citizenship.

6. The Hero's Journey: Structuring Stories for Deep Resonance

What the Shaman or seer brings forth is something that is waiting to be brought forth in everyone.

Universal pattern. Joseph Campbell's "hero's journey" reveals a universal story pattern, deeply ingrained in human consciousness, that resonates across cultures and millennia (e.g., Moses, Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz). This structure allows audiences to see their own inner truths and potential reflected in the narrative, fostering deep identification and evangelism.

Key story elements:

• Brand Hero (Audience): The ordinary person in a world out of balance, feeling an inner "call to adventure" to pursue higher values. The marketer's job is to acknowledge their agency and inspire, not coerce.
• Brand Mentor (Brand): The character (your brand) that guides the hero, offering strength, inspiration, and a "magic gift" to make the journey possible. The mentor doesn't do the work for the hero but empowers them.
  • WWJD principle: Brands must embody a consistent, relatable character (archetype) so audiences can ask "What Would [My Brand] Do?"
• Brand Gift: The unique concept or visual that makes the brand special and makes the hero believe they can defy the odds (e.g., Apple's beautiful design, Obama's online tools).

Narrative arc. The journey involves the hero entering a "magic world" of new possibilities, confronting a "nemesis" (often a reflection of the hero's own dark side or societal flaws), and ultimately "seizing the treasure" – a "boon to society" that the hero brings back to heal their broken world.

• Moral of the Story: The ultimate lesson learned from the hero's triumph, clearly articulated or implied, providing meaning and consistency to all communications (e.g., "Truth is beauty," "Working hard together, we can solve our problems").

7. Be Interesting: Capturing Attention with Freaks, Cheats, and Familiars

The more unexpected the information, the more processing time it is given.

Primal brain appeal. In the digitoral era's attention economy, stories must speak directly to the primal brain structures that evolved to quickly identify what's important or interesting. This involves using "freaks, cheats, and familiars" to cut through noise and grab attention.

Three pillars of interesting stories:

• Freaks: Novel, unusual human beings or characters that break expectations. Our brains are hardwired to focus on other humans, especially those who are unexpected, triggering curiosity or strong emotion (e.g., Antoine Dodson in "Bed Intruder," Isaiah Mustafa in "Old Spice").
• Familiars: Elements that resonate with an audience's existing cultural references or tribal interests. By speaking a language the audience already understands (e.g., parody, specific subculture references), marketers can "arm the choir" and turn tribe members into evangelists who spread the message (e.g., "The Meatrix" spoofing "The Matrix," "Old Spice" parodying beauty ads).
• Cheats: Characters who violate or uphold established social norms. Our brains are programmed to pay close attention to situations where norms are challenged, whether the cheat is a villain (punished) or a rebel (paving new norms). This creates compelling conflict and emotional stakes (e.g., the intruder in "Bed Intruder," "your man" using women's body wash in "Old Spice").

Beyond traditional elements. While character, conflict, and plot are foundational, freaks, cheats, and familiars provide specific, evolutionarily-driven tools to make stories instantly noticeable, emotionally engaging, and highly shareable in a crowded digital landscape.

8. Live the Truth: Authenticity as the Ultimate Brand Strategy

Stick to the truth, and that means rectifying whatever is wrong in the merchant’s business. If the truth isn’t tellable, fix it so it is.

Authenticity is mandatory. In the transparent digitoral era, authenticity is no longer optional; it's the price of admission. Brands must not only "tell the truth" in their stories but "live the truth" through their actions. Hypocrisy, like BP's "Beyond Petroleum" campaign, can lead to catastrophic brand and operational failures.

BP's cautionary tale. BP's "Beyond Petroleum" campaign, while a brilliant empowerment marketing success, was built on a lie. Its powerful green branding created an "illusion of invulnerability" and "unquestioned belief in the morality of the group" (groupthink) among its leadership, blinding them to severe safety issues and cost-cutting that ultimately led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

• Marketing vs. Operations: BP spent more on green advertising than on alternative energy research, and its core business remained aggressive, risky oil exploration.
• Groupthink: Leadership became convinced of their own "saintliness," ignoring warnings and dissent, leading to reckless decisions.

Pepsi's "Reflop." Even well-intentioned efforts like the Pepsi Refresh Project, which empowered citizens to direct charity funds, failed to translate into sales because of a fundamental disconnect between the brand's "refreshing the world" message and its core product (sugary drinks contributing to an obesity epidemic).

Agents of authenticity. Today's audiences, empowered by social media, act as "agents of authenticity." They are forensic experts, journalists, and everyday consumers who expose hypocrisy (e.g., Greenpeace exposing Mattel's deforestation, Don't Panic exposing Conservation International). They want to love brands and see them live up to their stated values.

Building authenticity. Brands must proactively invite these agents to be allies, forming authenticity teams (internal and external) to identify and rectify missteps. More importantly, brands must become "vehicles to promote values," like TOMS Shoes' "One for One" program or Patagonia's "1% for the Planet" and "Common Threads" initiatives. This deep integration of values into operations generates compelling, buzzworthy stories of progress, not just claims.