Think Vertical Storytelling – Think Web-Weaving

By Julie Burgmeier

Carl Jung (26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytical psychology –  aka Jungian psychology.  Jung believed that mythic stories, whether they were creation tales, legends, sagas  or fairy-tales, were wisdom stories.  He defined the stories as very dreamlike, a condensed perspective from the unconscious, except that we have created these stories collectively.  To Jung mythic stories were a metaphorical way of expressing how we all face what are challenges in our everyday lives.  After attending the Jungian Society of Vancouver’s presentation by Jungian psychologist James Hollis recently, I started thinking of stories and social media in a Jungian context. 

You have heard it … advertising-as-interruption is over, and we are in the post-advertising age.  How do you move your organization’s marketing from a linear storytelling model to a vertical web-weaving (permeable/integrated)  model?  The latter is what makes up this democratization of the internet by ways of social media and the new publishing channels.  Democratization – of the people, by the people, for the people was once just a line you read in American government textbooks  and is now the basis of social media.   Marketing has a “new birth of freedom”.

Myth means story.  The etymology of myth means “to scrint”.  Think of it as an optic aperture which is an opening, usually circular, that limits the quantity of light that comes in and controls the image  illumination.  By following the aperture, the customer will be lead into greater depth of your organization and story.  What do you want to illuminate for your customers which will help them?   A myth is an affectingly charged story which is capable of moving the viewer or end-user.  When affect has been generated, the story has had it’s power.  How do you create a story for your organization that moves the reader in a way that they might not even realize?  Use metaphors, symbols, patterns and eddies.  The core myth or “tribal story” is your overall mission.  The sub-stories are your narrative and when weaved with your customer’s stories becomes a vertical web-weaving model. 

How do you collectively connect your customers to your story so that the individual is enlarged?  If you have accomplished this goal of enlarging the individual then you have created community.  Creating community is the ultimate goal of storytelling in the realm of content marketing and social media.  In this modern day society communities are eroding because of the changing economic and social  institutions.   The internet is creating new communities every second because of this craving from the individual.

What stories are coursing through your organization?  Which stories want to come into the world through you?  Something wants to come into the world through us – serving the soul and self  better.  Co-participate in your story. There is risk to being who we are.  The opposite of cruise control is scary but far more interesting.  What are the forces of energy behind the success of your organization – these are archetypes which are not nouns but forces of energy.  In the past clients/customers only received a glimmer of your organization by a TV commercial or a print ad or a company brochure…these are tiny apertures.  Let each sub-story be an aperture into your organization.

So hop on over to your right brain, get conceptual and creative to generate an emotion affect and co-participation- then you will get the behavior change you are looking for.  Story telling and web weaving has immense psychological power.