Samurai Jack, Hero Narratives, and Marketing.

I find watching Samurai Jack deeply inspirational, because of how often the show tells entire stories with nothing but subtext and action. This is possible because (most of the time) everyone falls into the same archetypes: Hero (Jack), Villain (Aku / Henchmen), and Unformed (Everyone else).

While hero and villain are hopefully pretty clear, the unformed characters are the most interesting - while the theme of the series is Jack trying to triumph over Aku, the only character arc we ever see is the unformed characters, those who will either shift towards heroism and self sufficiency, or evil and dependence, after being touched by the Jack / Aku conflict.

Because of who I am, this got me thinking about marketing.

Traditionally, casting someone or something into the hero role. The product is the hero, the product makes the audience the hero, or the supplier of the product is the hero.

In the first instance, you’re selling association. As in the recent superbowl commercial, buying a certain model of car will associate you with masculinity. In the second, you’re selling empowerment. Buying this shoe, for instance, will help you become a better athlete. The last example gets me thinking about the Orkin man, coming to save the day.

Samurai Jack suggests a different narrative to me - where the audience is already the hero, and your product is just part of their story, not the point of transformation or empowerment.

The best example of this in recent memory was Google’s superbowl ad. A love story where the risk, the romance, the passion and the reward all had nothing to do with the product. The product was a tool, and in the hands of the right person, it was powerful and a little magical.

The biggest problem we face is that everyone wants to be the hero, from the client to marketer to consumer. And since people on our end of the equation get most of the control of the story, we can see why so many narratives focus on the pre-consumer elements as heroic, as the protagonist.

The amusing part is, crafting a narrative where the consumer was the hero to begin with, and where you’re marketing a sidekick for them, is probably a half-decent way for you to actually save the day.

[Apologies for the lack of links, this was written on my iPhone, from bed.]

An Unfinished Post.

I’m an english lit geek.  This informs my point of view on pretty much everything.

It’s taught me that people are stories.  If you understand narrative, understanding people isn’t that much of a stretch.

This is probably why I think of marketing as being about plot points.  Everything is a decision made by the storyteller (or the consumer) to communicate something about the character, the plot, the narrative they’ve constructed for themself.

Thinking of it this way, rather than use cases or demographics or badge theory, makes it a hell of a lot easier to plan around human behaviour.

We’re slaves to our stories, and it’s impossible for us to resist constructing them with ourselves in the lead.

[I never finished this, and started writing it weeks ago.  I’m posting it now, rather than deleting this fragment.]

You are Talking, first and foremost.

All communication technology is augmented talking.  Written language is talking that can conquer time and distance, granting it range and longevity.  Printing press was the same, with the added benefit of speed.  Video, IM, Radio, all technologies that take talking, and give it the scale that one-to-one communication can never have.

But you knew that.

So why is the conversational aspect of social media such a big deal?  Because by the time communication strategy had wormed it’s way from an abstract concept into the DNA of the modern brand, there was so much technology in the way that the roots in talking were obscured.  The broadcast model - the basis of modern communication strategy since the industrial era - is hard to relate to talking, because in conquering the distance, speed and longevity limitations of talking, reactivity and intimacy were sacrificed.  No one looks at a TV and thinks immediately that ‘this is the spawn of conversation’.

It’s all augmented talking.  The difficult part is the urge to reinvent the wheel, when we all already know how to talk.  The magic comes when you realize that you don’t need to take modern corporate communications, and derive a way of talking from that.  The talking part has been figured out for centuries, and it’s faster to learn how to adapt the brand and comms strategy to that, than it is to develop a new way of talking that both fits into the existing biz structure, and doesn’t immediately alienate people.

It all started with talking.  So why should your communication strategy start any other way?

Greatest ‘Hits’: A Viable Pirate Myth.

[This post originally appeared on my old blog, BrokenGentleman.com, on June 28, 07]

I’ve been watching several documentaries lately on the state of copyright, onremix culture, and on the comparative bargain between rights-holders (large corporations) and the people. The problem isn’t that they are focusing on piracy, because piracy is a big issue. The problem is that piracy has been subverted to only mean ‘downloading copyrighted material from the internet’, or more specifically, music or film content, with a notable amount of software, and some print content thrown in for flavouring.

When I talk to people about my opinions on copyright, I first and foremost raise the idea of the developing nations licensing, (creative commons style) and why it makes more sense than universal price structures, universal copyrights, and unilateral laws. Developing nations don’t have money. They have economies, and funds, and purchasing power, but they don’t have money on a western scale.

Copyright is about money, primarily.

This is evident in the idea of region coding, for game systems, dvds, etc. A global price structure is an impossiblity, because it would either kill profit in the west, or eliminate the market in the global south, and Asia. So, DVDs and movies come out in formats that only work on hardware sold in certain parts of the world. Otherwise, everyone would buy legal versions for the cheapest region.

A developing nations license is more or less the same idea, but taken to extremes. Copyright is waived in countries which would not create a viable market for it. Content, ideas, patents are used for the benefit of the people who need them, rather than locked down. The net profit for the creator / owner is nothing either way, but in one instance, people are helped.

The best application for this idea is medication, specifically AIDS drugs.

However, there’s no pressure on this. The entertainment content industries are forced to at least TRY to reckon with the reality of their situation, because more people are downloading content than shaking in fear of an impending RIAA lawsuit.

There’s no one pirating patented AIDS drugs in a series of mobile African factories, and distributing them to the people. And the free culture / anti-copyright movement has a lot of people who constantly try to emanate that kind of cultural responsibility, that kind of IMPORT in what they do. The undercurrent is always that, somehow, by downloading a record instead of paying EMI, they are fighting for a better future.

We’ve got the kids signing up with Amnesty International and the Peace Corps, and we’ve got the millionaires throwing money around in an attempt to make the world a better place.

If I had to pick a place to start, I’d ask Bono and Gates to fund an illegal, patent-ignoring lab on an offshore oil rig, where we would make lab-grade medicine for the people who need it, can’t afford it, and will die without it. THIS is the kind of piracy that is only wrong according to the law, and is, or should be, a natural human right.

Instead we’re downloading Spiderman 3 and getting confused when people don’t treat us with the proper revolutionary regard.