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How a Common Hollywood Screenwriting Technique Can Transform Your Marketing  – Part 3 of 3: The Hero’s Journey For Brands

January 10, 2015 - Published By Richard Camp, President / Creative Director

In my previous posts, I argued that telling stories is the most effective way to market your product or service. I also outlined the history of The Hero’s Journey narrative framework and how Hollywood has used it for years to craft blockbuster story lines. In this post we’ll look at how The Hero’s Journey can be leveraged for your brand.

For your marketing efforts, you can use Joseph Campbell’s, ‘Hero’s Journey’ framework to create compelling stories around your product or service. To review, here is a diagram of that framework.
Hero's Journey Steps

The key to using the framework in a marketing context is to place your customer into the role of the Hero, and your product or service takes in the role of the Mentor. Once you do this, your marketing story starts to take shape. Whether you are working on a product launch with many marketing touch points or scripting your next marketing video, the ‘Hero’s Journey for Brands’ can help. Obviously this is not a panacea for every piece of marketing collateral you create, but a surprising number of assets can be created or enhanced with this framework.

We use this framework so much in the work we do for our clients that we have created an abbreviated version of the Hero’s Journey specific to content marketing. Our abbreviated steps are:

The Hero’s Journey For BrandsHeros-Journey-for-brands

  1. Ordinary World – We see the Hero in his or her ordinary world.
  2. The Challenge – We identify the Hero’s need or problem.
  3. Refusal of the Challenge – They hesitate because change isn’t easy.
  4. Meet the Mentor – They are introduced to your brand’s value proposition.
  5. Cross the Threshold – The Hero takes the leap of faith, possibly due to some proof point you can offer.
  6. Central Ordeal – They agree to adopt/use your product or service.
  7. The Return – The Hero returns to their ordinary world, their challenge resolved with the help of your product or service.

Ready to put it into practice? We’ve created a PDF worksheet for you to apply the framework to your product or service. To learn more about the ‘Hero’s Journey’ and access the worksheet, download our free E-book:

Or, watch our archived webinar: