It is a truism that marketing is all about storytelling – but if you’re doing the marketing for your online business, you may have become so wowed by the opportunities afforded by the digital world that you’ve neglected to brush up on the fundamentals.
Figuring out how to use Photoshop, Buffer, or Instagram Stories may be valuable lessons for the modern professional, but learning to tell a story in the most compelling way is a timeless skill which has consumed the thoughts of great thinkers for many centuries. It’s something that we’re rarely born with. Rather, it’s a raw material that benefits from shaping and developing, like any other talent.
A great place to start is with the theory of story types. In fact, there are several such theories – everyone from Plato to Robert McKee has added their two cents. For marketers, though, the Seven Basic Plots of Christopher Booker put a lot of what you need to know into context. This is because Booker identifies his story types according to the particular emotion and take home lesson that each of them wields.
The Voyage and Return story, for example, is full of longing and discomfort – but with the romantic conclusion that it is by leaving your comfort zone that you will become stronger.
Comedy is about laughter and lightheartedness – but it is also about conflict resolution and problem solving. Just think of all the great commercials you’ve seen that have dramatized a funny situation to sell a solution to consumers who recognize their problems in the story the advertisement tells.
Every piece of marketing tells a story of one kind or another, and you can figure out which one’s best for your next campaign by checking out this new visual representation of Booker’s seven story types. The end. Or is it just the beginning?
Figuring out how to use Photoshop, Buffer, or Instagram Stories may be valuable lessons for the modern professional, but learning to tell a story in the most compelling way is a timeless skill which has consumed the thoughts of great thinkers for many centuries. It’s something that we’re rarely born with. Rather, it’s a raw material that benefits from shaping and developing, like any other talent.
A great place to start is with the theory of story types. In fact, there are several such theories – everyone from Plato to Robert McKee has added their two cents. For marketers, though, the Seven Basic Plots of Christopher Booker put a lot of what you need to know into context. This is because Booker identifies his story types according to the particular emotion and take home lesson that each of them wields.
The Voyage and Return story, for example, is full of longing and discomfort – but with the romantic conclusion that it is by leaving your comfort zone that you will become stronger.
Comedy is about laughter and lightheartedness – but it is also about conflict resolution and problem solving. Just think of all the great commercials you’ve seen that have dramatized a funny situation to sell a solution to consumers who recognize their problems in the story the advertisement tells.
Every piece of marketing tells a story of one kind or another, and you can figure out which one’s best for your next campaign by checking out this new visual representation of Booker’s seven story types. The end. Or is it just the beginning?