7 Mythological Character Types to Help Your Blog Marketing

Did you know that one of the reasons for the success of Star Wars is that it follows the ultimate mythological story template?

That’s why it connected so easily with people, because deep down, we all know this story.

It’s called the hero’s journey, and it was first given popular appeal by the totally bat-shit awesome Joseph Campbell (who was like a combination of Ed Wynn and Einstein). Campbell’s book Hero with a Thousand Faces is a landmark work of modern mythological study.

In the hero’s journey, certain events and character types repeat themselves in nearly every story, but certainly in myth. We respond to these character types readily, because no matter the outward trappings, the role that the character type plays is easily understood.

I’m going to borrow from Christopher Vogler’s excellent book for writers, The Writer’s Journey for the names of these types:

• The Hero – That’s you, or, when you’re marketing, it’s your ideal client. The hero receives the call to adventure and goes on a quest to bring back a boon for his or her people. Another way to see that: the client quests for success in an endeavor to support his or her family & lifestyle and find significance & meaning.
• The Mentor – That’s me, or, when you’re marketing, it’s you: you’re the mentor type for your client. Think Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid (the old one, not that new atrocity damaging retinas and brain cells) or Obi Wan Kenobi from Star Wars. Or Gandalf. In fiction this character is often a wise old person, but people of any age can adopt the mentor’s traits: wisdom, probing questions, guidance, encouragement, teacher, gift-giver and shaman.
• The Threshold Guardian – Tests the hero by denying entry to where the hero needs to go to fulfill the quest. In movies, this may be the villain’s henchmen. In business & marketing, threshold guardians are the answer to the question: what’s stopping you from X, where X is some thing your client needs to achieve. We externalize these in marketing and make them seem like “bad guys” with the line: it’s not your fault.
• The Herald – Announces (literally heralds) a new challenge or call to the hero to start or complete the quest. In other words, the herald is a motivator, a shot in the arm. Heralds are not always positive: something fearful may spur the hero to action, like the sudden presence of a new Terminator type robot in the Terminator films. Often Mentors are also Heralds. In marketing, this is where you use fear or accomplishment as a motivator for your client.
• The Shapeshifter – In fiction, the shapeshifter never is what it first appears to be. It’s a character who’s personality (or in the case of fantasy, their body) changes to surprise the hero. In marketing, this is the thing that isn’t what the client thought it was. It’s something familiar suddenly made dangerous. Think of headlines like Why Your Favorite Foods are Slowly Killing You or something like that.
• The Shadow – This is the villain, of course, the “bad guy”. It may not have occurred to you to have a bad guy in your marketing, but you can probably think of one. This is usually some government agency or uncaring bureaucracy you can make into a villain. Or it could be competition.
• The Trickster – A story without even one funny moment just isn’t right. You gotta have a trickster. Jesters, sidekicks, and Trickster/Mentor or Trickster/Herald character combinations are rampant in fiction. In the case of The Joker in Batman, he’s a Trickster/Herald/Shadow. The Cheshire Cat is also an example of the Trickster at work. This is the element of humor in your marketing. All the best marketers I can think of use humor to great effect. This is not to say they are known as comedians, just that there’s an element of comic relief that comes up from time to time in their marketing. Frank Kern comes to mind.

These mythological character types of the hero’s journey can really give you a fresh look on what you’re saying and how you’re saying it with your business blog and your marketing efforts.

Here’s what I want you to do:

1. Copy my list of character types above and paste it into a document of your own.
2. Then, under each one, write down as many ideas as you can think of about how this type can play out in your blog posts, your social media marketing, your email marketing and especially in your sales pages or product copy.

Image attribution: pb-n-james