There are No Consumers, Only Heroes: The Truest Expression of Consumer-Centricity.

Kenneth Burke identified stories as equipment for living. Very true. They are the way we think about, organize and make sense of the world's anarchy. They help us feel centered, connected, oriented making us more aware of our identities, our responsibilities and our relationships to the rest of the world. They guide our behavior.

It’s no big ta-da that story is important to marketing - both from a research standpoint and a communication standpoint.

But what we do need to rethink is what stories we use and how we use them.

The old school marketing approach is to find stories within a company or invent stories about a company to tell people and attract people.

But Transformation Design does the opposite. It finds stories in people’s lives and helps companies participate in those stories.

Allow me to beat this horse: The difference between old school marketing and Transformation Design is the difference between people coming to you and you going to people. The old school makes the company the focus of attention and activity as marketers lure people in to play in the company's story. On the flip side, Transformation Design makes people the focus as designers create ways for the company to play in people's stories.

Hugh MacLeod had it right:

“If people like buying your product, it's because its story helps fill in the narrative gaps in their own lives.”

It's not about people playing in a companies stories. It's about companies playing in people's stories.

And that is the client offering of Transformation Design: to make their company an important player and contributor in people’s personal narratives.

Over the past week, I’ve thought a lot about this so I thought I’d share with you my most recent thinking to see what y’all thought:

We all desire some sort of personal change in our life whether it is in how we live or who we are. We spend the better part of our lives – sometimes all of it – struggling to achieve that change.

These struggles for personal transformation, the people we meet and the experiences we have along the way make up the personal narratives that shape our lives, define our identities and guide our behavior.

Especially our purchasing behavior.

Therefore, the more ways in which companies can align with these stories and contribute to them the more valuable they, their products and their marketing become to people.

But doing this requires a significant mental shift.

Companies must acknowledge that consumers do not exist; only struggling heroes looking for assistance exist.

Companies must recognize the end game is not a product in every hand, but the transformed individual.

Companies must think of themselves and act not as producers/distributors of value but as role players in the stories of everyday people finding value.

A company that achieves this mental shift must then change their market activity to align itself with people's narratives.

This is the job of Transformation Designer whose job is defined as:

The creation of interactive systems that intertwine products, experiences and marketing to create touch points that help people achieve the personal changes they desire and a client company offers.

Literally, you design commercial activity that aligns with people’s personal narratives in a way that helps them fulfill their personal transformations.

A company who does achieve this mental and behavioral change is no longer seen as a company; it is seen as an asset (or an ally) in one's personal narrative.

And by doing so, the company becomes, in the truest sense of the term, “consumer-centric.”

(Or as I’d say, hero-centric).

Discuss…