For as long as people have been able to communicate with each other, there have been stories. Every language and every culture has produced its folk tales, sagas or fairy stories. They have been passed on from one generation to another first through the oral tradition and then, after the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, in books.
Fairy stories populated our imagination when we were young. We didn’t realise it of course but they were packed with symbolism. Freud was the first to reveal the symbolism that told a different story to the one that was first apparent and uncover our hopes and fears, particularly through folk mythologies involving wolves. Bruno Bettleheim further expanded this in 1976 in The Uses of Enchantment.
Let’s take an example. Cinderella is a typical rags to riches tale. It’s also a coming of age story where the child who is downtrodden and persecuted by her step-sisters at the beginning grows and blossoms into the fully-fledged young woman who marries her Prince Charming at the end. She is now ready for the responsibilities of adulthood (and she gets rich).
You can see where this is going, can’t you? Fairy tales like that symbolise genuine aspects of our psychological and physical existence. They are pointers to our real world behaviour and, as children, we need them just as much as food, warmth and shelter. They have incredible power as they are hard wired into us.
All the greatest brands all use some sort of back story to underpin their core values or their leaders. They stand by their ability to bring people together. This is how we identify with them and take them to our hearts.
Take Cinderella into the business world. She was born to a doting mother and father and had a happy early childhood. Or she started out with some pretty powerful backers and she thrived in her early years.
Then her mother died and her father remarried. Or rather there was a change of shareholder and things took a serious downturn because in addition to the new shareholder, new board members came in and proceeded to take over the company. Cinderella was reduced to doing all the menial tasks and was no longer allowed to be the figurehead.
Finally, an opportunity for a new contract came up with a new extremely rich backer who only wanted to work with Cinderella. So she closed down the old, failing business and moved into a new world of prosperity with her new partner, Prince Charming.
Symbolism can be used to powerful effect to engage with readers. It enables us to wrap up very basic business messages in stories that people want to read. It is also one of the building blocks of a great brand and we should not be afraid to use it in our communication.
Some more ideas? Aesop’s Tortoise and the Hare, Hans Christian Andersen’s Ugly Duckling or Charles Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood. I’m not seriously suggesting using the stories of our childhood to illustrate business messages. I am however underlining the importance of a story in the promotion of an idea or concept or dare I say it, a product.
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