Why perspective is everything

Most advertising is safe and boring and doesn’t change consumer behaviour because it has been shaped around a familiar perspective that is easy to ignore.But what if there was a systematic way to interrogate your marketing challenge? A way to help you ask freakish questionsand land upon big impactful ideas that stand out, provoke, and gets remembered. That is what The Hero’s Journey Guide To Creative Opportunity provides.

 Hundreds of perspectives across 12 Stages

This growing online guide is full of brilliant campaigns that use hundreds of different perspectives that can be applied to any challenge. For nothing exists in limbo. Everything exists in relation to something else and it is our view of that context that is shaped by the perspectives we’re shown.

 Methodology

This guide is not based upon science and rigorous research. Nor does it fall into the folly of offering a set of rules to follow. However, it is comprehensive in scope and replays back to you many of theworld’s best campaigns in a systematic manner.

 Why The Hero’s Journey?

While the very mention of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth divides opinion, there is arguably no better framework suited to housing the diverse range of perspectives that creative advertising at its best produces.

Furthermore, it acts as a broach church that can accommodate the anecdotal wisdom of Dave Trott, Rory Sutherland, Sir John Hegarty, Paul Arden and George Lois to the rigour of Richard Shotton’s behavioural analysis. Of course, it is a natural fit for the storytelling experts such as Robert McKee, Donald Miller and Jonah Sachs. And finally, it can house the invaluable insights that comedic structuralists such as Steve Kaplan and John Vorhaus bring to the mix.

 How Does This Guide Work?

It forces you to ask freakish questions. Why freakish questions? Well, if you ask the same questions as everyone else, you will get the same dull answers.  Yet, what fascinates people is what’s different, what’s interesting, what’s controversial.

This is the mantra of David Trott who illuminates his thinking with hundreds of real-life stories which he packages up into timeless lessons that can be applied to advertising.While, in his book, ‘The Story Wars’ Jonah Sachs stated his key purpose was to adapt the key principles of Joseph Campbell’s work ‘The Hero’s Journey’ to the modern world of marketing in the digital era. Yet, what he stumbled upon were three universally powerful viral story elements: Freaks, Cheats and Familiars.

This Guide unashamedly ‘borrows’ their lingua franca to create a streamlined set of scenarios designed to illicit a big idea at each pivotal moment of The Hero’s Journey.