HERO COMPLEX: A Guide to Crafting Compelling Brand Narratives.

At one point or another, we are all confronted with the realization that we are simultaneously fragile mortal animals and god-like creatures capable of sending a man to the moon, as Ernest Becker so eloquently argues in his masterpiece The Denial of Death. To reconcile with our animality and divinity, we seek immortality and develop a hero complex.

We build societies and civilizations that will outlive us, create cultures and religions that give us transcendence, engage in consumerism and hedonism, pursue mastery and spirituality, seek community or individuality, all as an attempt to appease this existential dilemma.

As makers and marketers, we express our hero complex by striving to use our talents and gifts to make unique contributions to the world. We bring ideas, products and services that we hope can change people’s lives and move humanity forward.

Inevitably, our self-centeredness and selfish motivations leak through our work. With our “amazing,” “innovative,” “revolutionary,” “game-changing,” “disruptive” ideas, companies, products and services, we paint ourselves as heroes on a quest to change the world.

We bring so much passion into our work, but as the heroes of our own stories, we lack the empathy required to recognize that our customers have a hero complex too. That empathy gap is often what separates great brands from the rest.

The real challenge for all of us is to learn to go against our self-centered nature and shift our vantage point to make our customers, audiences or readers the heroes of our respective brand stories — not us, our products, services or even companies.

Great companies like Apple and Nike understand that they are not the hero. At their best, they’re the protagonists that help the hero — the customer — on her journey. Great brands escape the trap of the hero complex. They accept, with pride, their role as supporting cast and set out to provide the heroes of their stories with the inspiration, motivation, support and tools they need to complete their respective journeys.

Here’s an excerpt of Apple’s manifesto.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes […]

They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward […]

We make tools for these kinds of people […]

It’s clear here who the hero is and what role Apple plays in this story.

When we tell stories from our vantage point, it doesn’t leave much room for our audience to make it their own. It doesn’t allow them to see and hear themselves in our brand narratives. It makes it impossible for them to see how we can help them fulfill their deepest aspirations.

When we give into our hero complex, we fall into the product-centric trap, we become driven by forces like external validations, ambition, competition and profit which all feed our selfish impulses. We forget that fundamentally, our products, services, companies or brands are worthless in and of themselves, because they only gain value in the context of people’s lives — those we vowed to serve and the real heroes of our stories.

Ultimately, we have to remind ourselves that, beyond functional and transactional needs, customers have aspirational needs. They use our respective brands as pieces in their puzzle of needs. In order to build brands consumers find meaningful, brands with the kind of relationships Apple, Nike or Harley Davidson enjoy with their customers, we have to get better at understanding our customers’ hero complex.