Outside In Banking

“A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”  — Joseph Campbell

I mentioned the hero’s journey in my last post, without any explanation or context.  I’ll remedy that here.

The context is mythology.  Specifically, brand mythology.

Bank marketers typically keep their distance from this end of the branding spectrum, because mythology seems too ethereal.  It’s anything but.  Many of the most successful brands in the world are built on carefully cultivated mythologies.  Harley Davidson (outsider), Apple (creator), and Campbell’s Soup (mother) come to mind.

Joseph Campbell, quoted above and no relation to Campbell’s Soup, was a scholar who spent his life identifying common structures in mythologies from around the world. Primary among these structures is the monomyth, also known as the hero’s journey.

Here’s the basic monomyth structure:

1. Ordinary World – Business as usual
2. Call to Adventure – Something upsets business as usual
3. Refusal of the Call – Hero is reluctant to leave what he knows
4. Deciding Factor – Someone or something cause him to reconsider
5. Crossing the Threshold – The hero begins his journey/adventure
6. The Road of Trials – The hero perseveres through a series of challenges
7. The Supreme Ordeal – The hero meets the ultimate challenge, overcomes it, and captures the object of his quest
8. The Escape -  The hero endures more trials before re-entering the world of business-as-usual
9. Return with Elixir – He returns with what he has learned or won for the benefit of his fellows

If this sounds familiar, it should.  The monomyth is the basis for a significant percentage of Hollywood movies—Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz, The Lion King, The Matrix, Gladiator, Groundhog Day, Casablanca, Titanic, Ben Hur, and When Harry Met Sally, to name a few.  A current example is Crazy Heart, the Jeff Bridges vehicle.

Here’s how it plays out in the current Domino’s campaign:

1. Ordinary World – Domino’s as it has been for, let’s say, the past decade
2. Call to Adventure – Complaints about product quality in focus groups
3. Refusal of the Call – Domino’s continues to focus on reliable delivery and affordability
4. Deciding Factor – YouTube video depicting employees doing disgusting things to Domino’s food puts the company’s reputation at risk
5. Crossing the Threshold – Domino’s decides to redirect consumer attention from cleanliness to taste
6. The Road of Trials – Company engages in trial and error process to improve the taste of Domino’s pizza until the new, improved pizza is finalized
7. The Supreme Ordeal – Domino’s needs to let the past go, and face the public with new pizza—it does so with a risky, new advertising campaign admitting to quality problems and showing the company dealing with this reality
8. The Escape -  The company endures criticism from pundits for abandoning existing fans.
9. Return with Elixir – Formerly critical consumers loves the new pizza

Any bank could employ the monomyth structure that Domino’s used so adroitly.  Which is not to say that a bank would need to expose its shortcomings.  A bank could tell the story of fulfilling a mission, overcoming a challenge, or self-transformation. The main point is to dramatize a change process—a heroic journey—that benefits the customer.