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Winning the Story Wars, Shaping the Future as Inspired Leaders
September 4, 2012 by Lizabeth Phelps
It’s pretty rare to come across a book that expands a business’s creative potential quite exponentially; has real and practical application, and is p
rofound. I believe that Winning the Story Wars by Jonah Sachs is one of the best books I’ve read in a decade because of these elements. It tells a unique and potentially world-changing story as it invites you to do the same. You’ll want to read it yourself and glean from it whatever your business most needs, but I’d like to share the impact it had on me–and it was, indeed, profound.
First, for you to feel the impact yourself, it’s necessary—in reading the book or in reading this post–to view yourself as a marketer. I always tell my Inspired Leaders that selling and marketing is 80% of their business, but I’ve never really called them or myself, “marketers.” Now, I will–and proudly, as you’ll see.
So, what if marketers were storytellers? As a business owner/marketer of services, do you think of yourself as a storyteller? Sachs establishes us as such from the very beginning as he tells us this story:
The Birth of Society’s Architects
World War I had birthed an economy that was producing a great quantity of material goods and keeping jobs and stock markets humming depended on continued production. The problem was, there was not enough demand for the supply.
Here, a “new mythmaker” was born: the marketer. Sachs writes, “…American political leaders…practically begged marketers to step in. As a result, the marketer went from a product pitchman to a major player in our cultural destiny.”
This is one of the most enduring and essential sentences in the book. Marketers were employed to shape our destiny. Frugality and modesty were cornerstones of the culture at that point in history. As he says, “To fill the demand gap, society itself would have to be revolutionized.” A new mind-set was called for to avoid an economic disaster.
Sachs includes these quotes from two of the most influential political leaders of the day as they addressed a gathering of top advertisers: Calvin Coolidge said, “[Advertising] is the most potent influence in adapting and changing the habits and modes of life, affecting what we eat, what we wear and the work and play of the whole nation.” Herbert Hover said, “You have taken over the job of creating desire and have transformed people into constantly moving happiness machines—machines which have become the key to economic progress.”
(Did you know you were a machine?)
Telling stories was something “pitchmen” were already doing rather well, and so they readily and effectively took on the challenge issued by the highest powers to transform the masses. They began creating stories and telling myths that soon created a new “consumer’s mindset” to ward off financial downfall.
Sachs writes, “[Marketing] messages…inform our sense of self, the world, and our place in it. If everywhere you look, there are stories designed to direct you to action, and these stories tell you that you are powerful and full of potential, you are likely to come to believe them…If the stories you are told have the opposite message, you will likely come to believe and act very differently.” He states that if we look at the traditional purpose of myth/storytelling in society, our current marketing stories provide messages that directly oppose the morals conveyed by society’s most important myths. They “embody the shadow side of myth—the dark side.”
Citizens vs. Machines
So, Sachs asks, What is the purpose of mythology? Joseph Campbell, an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and religion, told Bill Moyers that myths are about “the maturation of the individual, from dependency to adulthood…” Myths help us learn how to grow up, moving us from frightened children to mature, wise, contributing citizens.
As Sachs writes, “…most of us wish for a mature society, full of citizens that can think long-term, run a respectful democracy, make compromises, and leave a healthy planet for future generations.”
What would you say? Do we have this? Have we developed a mature society capable of making compromises and leaving a vibrant planet for our children?
Clearly not. And this is where Sachs opened my eyes wide as he states, and then goes on to prove, the premise that our immature society is because of marketers. “Even if we [marketers] consider ourselves wildly innovative and unorthodox, we come to our work fluent in a marketing language developed over the last one hundred years. And that dominant language is based on the inadequacy approach. Inadequacy stories encourage immature emotions like greed, vanity and insecurity by telling us that we are somehow incomplete.”
“Instead of teaching us to engage in the difficult journey of maturation from child to citizen, the [marketing] myths of our day keep us thinking like adolescents, consumers who wait to be told what we want and then supplied with satisfaction.”
Whew!! What a line! Go read that a second time. We are not citizens; we are consumers—made to be so by the powers that be. We are not thinking for ourselves. We are being thought by those who know that keeping people in an adolescent state is very, very good for business.
Psychologists on the Dark Side
Sachs then takes us on a journey of the birth of “inadequacy marketing” that is nothing short of fascinating. It began with some of the preeminent psychologists of the day. In 1920, J. Walter Thompson agency, still a major advertising firm today, was the first to consult with psychologists, who, at that time, had very dim views of humanity. Sigmund Freud and Ernest Dichter in particular saw humans as driven by lust, fear and vanity. Freud wrote, “…the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself… is… completely at variance with human nature…”
Dichter argued that a “stable citizen” was one who spent money to gratify his desires. His daughter said sometime later that her father and his colleagues though that, “by helping people use products to have a strong positive sense of self, they were forging the greatest society ever.”
Sachs reiterates that these men (and others he describes) were not “side characters in the early days of marketing from the 1920’s to 1950’s. They were its central figures.”
For over a century, marketers have been the storytellers shaping our destiny by stimulating anxiety and inadequacy; storytellers creating a society of individuals spinning in childish states of fear and desire. And what’s most frightening is that we are immersed in these stories. We expect them; we laugh at them; we fall into line because of them (literally and figuratively).
“We need a society of mature people,” Sachs writes, “to engage in the discussion of where we go from here…And we need millions, if not billions, of us to insist that this difficult decision be brought out of the fringes and into the mainstream. A world of willfully immature consumers won’t get us where we need to go.”
Allelujah! Here is where my role as a business owner/marketer changed forever—and I hope the same will be true for you. Sachs writes, “As mythmakers, we marketers have enormous influence in crafting society’s stories…Surely we can create another shift…and we can thrive while doing it.”
Imagine…being a part of creating a new shift.
I underlined several times the final sentence of his book: “I felt an…enormous appreciation for the fact that I am a marketer—a modern mythmaker with the power to shape the future…I couldn’t imagine a more meaningful life’s work.”
Wow. That hit me like an anvil. No more meaningful life’s work than that of a marketer? I’ve been a marketer for a long time; have my Bachelors of Science in Advertising and Marketing and as a business owner for eleven years, marketing is eighty percent of my business. But there’s always been a bias against marketing, and I still carry just a bit of it. You know what I mean; how many marketers do you respect?
But now…thanks to Jonah Sachs and this truly thought-provoking book, I, too, look ahead to what is possible as a marketer and say, “I cannot imagine a more meaningful life’s work.”
We are not merely business owners. We are not even merely Inspired Leaders, here to change the world with our one-of-a-kind specializations. We are here to shape the destiny of society…by the way we market. By asking our followers to aspire to something far greater than their individual self-interests; by encouraging them to reach for ideals that are high on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; by showing them what is possible without anxiety and inadequacy and with inspiration.
I say all of the time that the most successful businesses of the future will be led by bold, inspired leaders with potent messages of change that uplift humanity. And that these messages will be integral to our marketing and selling efforts. Jonah Sachs and I are two peas in a pod.
What I did not see for myself–or for you and all the other Inspired Leaders–until reading Winning the Story Wars, is that in doing business this way, we will shape the destiny of society.
Do you join me in experiencing a profound shift in mind-set? Recognizing that you are here, as a business owner, with a far greater purpose and potential than you ever realized: that of shaping our destiny with new stories?
Will you join me, and Sachs, and all other new-world marketers, in being architects of a new earth populated with thoughtful, mature citizens no longer yanked by chains of inadequacy and fear?
If so, then make a comment to that effect below.
Then, go learn what I’m all about by watching the 3-part video series on the top right of this page.
And then, go read Sachs’ book.
Together, we will change the world…for good.
Rebecca says: Wow! That’s really amazing. I love it. I am going to watch the videos now!
Dan says: How exciting and time-appropriate for me to hear! I am headed to Peak Potential’s “The World’s Greatest Marketing Seminar” in Los Angeles next week, and this is just too awesome to get from you today! I have even more reason to be fully aware at the training seminar! Thank You!
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Lizabeth Phelps says:
Hey, Dan. Love Peaks! I just went to Guerilla Business School in April. Nothing like a shot of that energy to spark new ideas. I’d love to hear how it went!
Jayne says: Fantastic, visceral, empowering and how I absolutely love and desire to do things. This is one of those things you read and you know it is a ‘kairos’ moment, for me most definitely. This is the kind of sacred challenge that enthuses one – body, soul and spirit. I’m crying because I’m experiencing truth, and I am grateful. It’s 1am here what a way to end my day. And just ordered the book. Thanks for sharing Lizbeth!
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I am so excited that you received this with such enthusiasm, Jayne! Thank you for reading, and please let me know what you got from the book. Enjoy it! It’s so good…
Jonah Sachs says: Hi Lizabet,
Jonah here. Just wanted to thank you for such a thoughtful and inspiring review of my book. There are lots of ways to measure success as an author I guess but seeing that my work is helping to inspire people to commit to world-change even further is absolutely my definition. So you made my day with this review.
Thanks.
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Well, you just made MY day, Jonah Sachs!!!! Love, love this book…and I didn’t even *touch* on the storytelling portion of it, which was incredibly progressive. Thank you for writing it. It sits on my living room table, calling me daily into inspiration. You’re a treasure.
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