We say we want love, but we don’t experience the world, our relationships, ourselves, through love- we experience the world through story.
Stories are how we give meaning to what happens to us. The question then is “how do people we fall in love with our story?”
Well, we better have a compelling archetype for our story…
*
When we think of stories, they activate archetypes. Archetypes are a recurrent symbol or motif in literature. They remind us of socialized, common truths and they help us navigate through our lives. When an archetype is embodied into a narrative, it becomes instantly recognizable.
*
Apple-the brand- has done a remarkable job designing a compelling archetype for their brand story. People see Apple as the rebels. They are the crazy ones, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently.
But if you really look, Apple is really Eve. Apple is the “seductress” within their story. Apple uses the most powerful Western archetype we live with: Eve seducing Adam with an apple. What Steve was saying when he imagined the company logo with a bite bitten out of the apple was “I am conscious. I will give you the consciousness that Microsoft will not give you. In order to do that, I am going to seduce you.” That’s why Apple products are such sexy machines. We’re inexplicably attracted to them. We want to play with them, caress them. Apple’s seduction takes place flawlessly.
*
This brings us back to love. If you think about it, what people fall in love with is a story/archetype they are familiar with and connect to within someone or a company that through socialization, they already love.
We've always desired the seductress.
We'd love for the hero to come save us.
We root for the underdog.
We fantasize over the artistic dreamer.
What Apple did -that you can too- is express their very essence. Apple shows in their own way who they are and what they want to do with their relationship with us.
*
So what will your story be?
With each relationship you have, what do you intend to do with it?
If you were the explorer, the achiever, the defender, the nurturer, the motivator or the intellectual... how would that shape your perspective, decisions and thus your destiny?
“We realized none of it was real and set ourselves free.”
This was written by James Wong.