Beyond Sex, Status & Convenience: A Simple Storytelling Exercise for the Complex Chore of Imagination

“One danger in our time of social media and cable news is that we start to accept the media’s narrative as all-pervasive and correct. The complex chore of imagination is to say: it’s not! The world is not a complete fabric of misery. There are pockets of beauty; there are pockets of joy.” ~ George Saunders

So you’ve got a great business idea — but struggle to get people to care, or see why it matters.

This can be wildly frustrating — especially when you’re personally invested or identified with what you’re building, or when it’s grown out of personal experience, belief, or need.

But if this is the case, then you also have a huge advantage — in that you are uniquely positioned to bring key themes and aspirations of your business to life, through effective storytelling.

Of all great communication techniques, only story allows you to easily sidestep your audience’s inner critic (aka prefrontal cortex), activate our imaginations (via mirror neurons), deliver a punch straight to the heart-guts (via dopamine release), and inspire us (as fundamentally irrational decision makers) to take action.

The following quick exercise (adapted from the book Winning the Story Wars by Jonah Sacks) is designed to get you thinking about how YOUR personal story might be related to your “brand story” — and how to use both to tap into the universal human quest.

First, understand that for roughly the past 100 years, modern advertising has largely targeted our “deficiency needs” — the ones at the base of Maslow’s hierarchy — i.e. our drives for physiological and psychological safety, sex, security, and social acceptance.

Buy this car, an invisible Don Draper implores with tented eyebrow, and you’ll be the envy of all your friends.

Today, consumers are too smart for that; we know we’re being manipulated, and we resent it. To protect ourselves, we hit mute, fast forward, or follow the click-bait down other rabbit holes.

Which is why today’s most enduring and beloved brands have turned the pyramid upside-down: constructing their core message to evoke the very top of Maslow’s pyramid — called “higher being needs” — and target the more noble human impulse, toward self-actualization.

Think of Apple’s “think different” or Dove’s “true beauty” campaigns — each one found a way to embody and represent our drives for things like “uniqueness” and “beauty” and “truth” — which we only have the luxury of thinking about and pursuing AFTER our basic needs have been met.

To take a page out of their playbook, review the list of “9 Higher Being Needs” below, and choose 1–3 that resonate most with you.

WHOLENESS

The need to feel sufficient as an individual, and connected to others as part of something larger; to move beyond self-interest.

PERFECTION

The need to seek mastery of skill or vocation, usually through hard work or struggle.

JUSTICE

The need to live by high moral standards and to see the world ordered by morality; to overthrow tyranny.

RICHNESS

The need to examine life in all its complexity and diversity; to seek new experience and overcome prejudice.

SIMPLICITY

The need to understand the underlying essence of things.

BEAUTY

The need to experience and create aesthetic pleasure.

TRUTH

The need to experience and express reality without distortion; to tear down falsehood.

UNIQUENESS

The need to express personal gifts, creativity and nonconformity.

PLAYFULNESS

The need for joyful experience.

Now: For each of the 1–3 you chose, reflect on the following questions:

1. What does this word/idea/concept mean to me?
2. Where do I see this (or the lack of it) showing up in my community?
3. How have I personally experienced this (or the lack of it)?
4. How do I strive to embody or enact this — in my life, and in my business?

Remember: within every human being lives the seed of heroic potential.

Your job, as a leader and storyteller? Is to remind us of that.