Intuition, Imagination, & Advertising

One man I look up to took a surprising turn in his later life, a turn which I still feel uneasy about. Donald Miller (the guy who wrote Blue Like Jazz) now works as a consultant for companies & organizations through what he calls Story Brand. His emphasis is for organizations to clarify & simplify their message, the primary way being story-marketing. How does your company meet the specific need of your customer? How do you, as a guide, help them successfully overcome their problem? The formula for story is: A hero faces a problem, then meets a guide on their journey who calls them to a specific action that results in success or failure. Story Brand is a resource for corporate advertising & marketing. But I often find myself buying into their stories and wondering how I end up on Amazon searching for, "GoPro helmet mounts."

But in all honesty, I love learning about advertising. It's part of the reason Mad Men deserved three views (look forward to an essay on Mad Men & Ecclesiastes, by the way!)."It's toasted." In two words, Don Draper reframes an entire tobacco product in the middle of public health warnings. Every other cigarette kills you. Lucky Strikes are toasted. It's a process you take a part in, a story you buy into. Genius. And a bit terrifying.

I think two aspects of advertising captivate my attention, far above any specific brands or ads. All advertising relies on Intuition & Imagination. Here, I turn to a surprising source for why Intuition & Imagination are a big deal. Immanuel Kant, the 18th Century German philosopher, developed a rich account of intuition & imagination as human faculties. This makes a lot of sense, since Kant did not do much else besides philosophy. A common myth is that Kant was so devoted to his work that he never went more than 10 miles from his hometown. But that's not true. One time he traveled 90 miles....to tutor someone in philosophy.

For Kant, intuition is the faculty which allows representation to take place in our minds, mostly passively through our senses. Intuition allows us to understand relations between other representations and enables us to understand concepts. So, when you see a bear walking through the woods, your mind intuits a representation of a bear in your mind which you can understand within a larger conceptual framework (judging between species of bear, understanding bears as a kind of animal, etc.). Intuitions bridge the gap from what we see to the concepts that help us understand & make sense of what we're seeing. But, Kant also talks about fundamental intuitions, intuitions that make everyday experience understandable. The fundamental intuitions (a priori) are space & time. The intuitions of space & time are a part of life we take for granted, but it is also what makes story so powerful. The sequences of events, the growth of a character over time, the challenges & overcoming, seeing a character experience fears & trials similar to your own, all come back the the fundamental intuitions of life: space & time. A scene & the next scene, connected moment by moment. Story is, in my understanding, a fundamental intuition (or perhaps, in Kant's view, a concept) human beings share. Advertising, done correctly, taps into the intuition of story.

The problem with intuition is that a lot of the time it relies on what you're seeing in front of you. You need intuition to make sense of what you're experiencing, but there's an element lacking if all advertising does is lead you to a concept. Good advertising engages your imagination. For Kant, imagination has to do with being able to represent an object or concept in your mind without it's presence in intuition. Imagination is where you are able to represent a concept in your mind in such a way as to open up possibilities other than what is right in front of you. So, if an advertisement of a man & woman on a beach in the Bahamas leads you to understand the concept of relaxation & luxury, then it has fallen short. The final step is for you to understand the concept of the story and imagine yourself in place of the man or woman on the beach. You see yourself relaxing in the Bahamas. Advertising aims to get your intuition to understand the concept of the story & imagine yourself as the subject of the story.

This dual engagement of intuiting a story & imagining yourself as the subject of the story both fascinates me and scares me. It taps into a human being's most primal intuitions & offers a company as the guide on a story. The problem, it seems, is the the problem. Let me put it this way: If the Story Brand formula is correct, then the main character is facing a problem & needs a guide. The conflict is overcome through the product or service the advertiser offers. But is wanting a cheap but luxurious car really a human conflict? It is a conflict for some, but the fear I have in advertising is that we advertise poor narratives, choosing low-hanging conflicts & finding ourselves satisfied in overcoming a simple problem.

-HGM