Jesus and the Role of Storytelling in Marketing

Members of the nonprofit organization, Invisible Children, filmed a documentary in 2003 to expose the atrocities of a rebel group in Central Africa known as the Lord’s Resistance Army.

storytelling

Guest Post by Darren Shearer

“The world doesn’t need a lecture. The world needs a picture.”  

~ Louie Giglio

The film showed how the LRA had been abducting and abusing children, forcing them to become soldiers in its army. The film awakened many people to the plight of these children in Central Africa, but it wasn’t until almost a decade later when awareness about the problem skyrocketed.

In March 2012, Invisible Children released an internet campaign known as “Kony 2012,” which called for the arrest of one man that recruited many of these children. Remarkably, the video that was released as part of the campaign was viewed 40 million times in only three days!

Rather than presenting mere facts and statistics about the issue, this campaign told a story and put the spotlight on one main antagonist: Joseph Kony. The founder of Invisible Children also featured his own son in the film to help viewers consider their response to the issue as if their own child had been forced into Joseph Kony’s army.

To deliver his message to people on an emotional level, Jesus told stories about ordinary people and everyday situations. The Greek word for these types of stories is “parabola,” which means “comparison, illustration, analogy.”

Leonard Sweet said,

Jesus told between 31 and 65 parables (depending on who’s counting). Scholars can’t agree whether some are parables or not. But most will admit that at least one-third of Jesus’ teachings are parables. They were His brand signature.

Jesus didn’t illustrate his points through parables to mince words. Quite the opposite! He used these parables, simple stories, to help people feel a certain way about his message, which is the most effective form of education.

People always had an emotional response to Jesus’ parables. Through his stories, his audiences felt the joy of good news, the pain of sadness, and the sting of rebuke. They felt; then, they understood.

Not only did Jesus communicate through stories, his core message itself was a story. To explain how intensely humans are loved by our Creator, despite our self-inflicted flaws, Jesus told three sequential stories that depicted this type of love (Luke 15).

The first story was about a shepherd that left his 99 sheep to go out and find the one sheep that was lost. Second, he told of a woman that lost a treasured coin, so she swept the entire house until she found it.

As the climax of this trio of parables, he told a story about a father whose son rejected him and squandered his inheritance. When the son came back to ask for forgiveness, the father ran to him, restored him to his place in the family, and threw a massive party for him.

Leonard Sweet notes,

Jesus was a Jewish preacher, not a Greek preacher. He majored in images and stories, not in ideas, syllogisms, and propositions. But Jesus chose to communicate biculturally: He had to speak to Greco-Roman linear thinkers and to Hebrew nonlinear thinkers… Greek is the language of words while Hebrew is the language of images.

Logic affects thinking. Emotions affect behavior. It’s not enough to share facts and features about what you’re offering. People must be able to feel the joy of someone that possesses what you’re offering. Likewise, they must be able to feel the pain of not having it.

Louie Giglio said, “The world doesn’t need a lecture. The world needs a picture.” There is no better way to accomplish this critical task of marketing than to tell a story that illustrates the benefit of what you’re offering. Stories connect on an emotional level in a way that helps people to view themselves personally experiencing whatever it is you’re offering. Until your message is communicated as a story, it’s just theory.

Questions:  

  • What is the plot of the story that your brand is telling?
  • Who are the main characters in the story that your brand telling?
  • If somebody made a movie about the story that your brand is telling, would you pay to see it? 
Guest post by Darren Shearer. Darren is the founder and CEO of High Bridge Books, host of Theology of Business Podcast, and author of three books including, Marketing Like Jesus: 25 Strategies to Change the World, (of which the above post is an excerpt), and The Marketplace Christian: A Practical Guide to Using Your Spiritual Gifts in Business.

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