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The Marketing Monomyth
“We have not even to risk the adventure alone,
for the heroes of all time have gone before us.”
- Joseph Campbell, The Hero Path
Think your story is unique? It’s not.
For years, I watched clients struggle with that concept. They all want to reinvent the wheel, finding new ways to tell their story, pitch their brand, roll out new products, case studies, campaigns. And I saw them grow frustrated and exhausted. Then one day I started listening to Joseph Campbell.
Let me rewind. Joseph Campbell was an author and professor of mythology, who in works like The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), explored the idea that certain themes and story beats crop up in civilization’s cornerstone texts across ages, regions, and religions. “The call to adventure.” “Challenges and temptations.” “Gifts from the goddess.” And he put them all together into a single “Hero’s Journey” or “monomyth” that apply to stories as varied as The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Ramayana to The Adventures of Huck Finn and Star Wars. (Honestly, a pretty boring writer, but his ideas are fantastic.)
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What I’ve found in my years as a creative is that marketing also has story beats that regularly pop up, and through that I created my own “Marketing Monomyth” to guide clients through the storytelling process.
I’ve found that if you can write a single sentence for each one of these storytelling beats, you’ll have the beginnings of a pretty good video script. Perfect? Of course not. But better than a blank sheet of paper.
And the great thing about this marketing monomyth is that it can be applied to all kinds of collateral just by shifting the proportions. Creating top-of-funnel thought leadership content? You'll probably spend 75% on the "Challenge" side of the monomyth and focus on the validation beat on the "Solution" side. Creating bottom-funnel demo content? Probably weighted more towards the "Solution" side of the story.
The crux of the matter is this. All good marketers tell the same story - “You have problems, we have solutions.” Any story that does not in some way follow that simple maxim is, in my opinion, a failure.
And if that makes you upset, don’t blame me. Blame Joseph Campbell.