At its core, SOCAP is the world’s largest storytelling platform for those who dare to apply business principles to social change - a canvas on which socially conscious entrepreneurs, investors, corporate employees, philanthropists, artists and an increasingly broad array of enthusiasts who came to tell their stories in front of 1,600 of their peers....
...In a first-ever, somewhat unconventional SOCAP session, titled “The New Connectivity: Storytelling for the Digital Age,” Sachs spoke of the historical role of big business in shaping our culture. “Marketers have become our modern mythmakers,” he explained. This is a problem because, as Sachs points out, today’s corporate-induced myths are largely steeped in the idea that the brand is hero and the audience is a damsel in distress.
The problem with being the damsel in distress is that we are uncomfortably distanced from our brands and the companies they represent so that we no longer have influence over them. Instead, we are disparaged by their commercials and ads that tell us what we aren’t and attempt to convince us of what we ought to be. This is just one manifestation of the destructive relationship between marketers and their customers, yet it serves to illustrate how our audiences are demoralized and reduced to paralysis rather than empowered to become heroes themselves.
The “hero” Sachs refers to is drawn from the script of Joseph Campbell, the iconic storytelling guru and genius behind the Hero’s Journey – a step-by-step methodology tracked through history’s greatest epics from Odysseus’ journey home from Troy to Luke Skywalker’s realization of his destiny to defeat the Empire. We all desire to be Campbell’s hero, to frame our lives within our own great epic as we strive for higher actualization both for ourselves and society. But Sachs challenges us to flip the script if we wish to write the stories that will create real and lasting impact. “You are not the hero. You must make your audience the hero.”
So who are you? “You are the mentor!” says Sachs....
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Protection of children and teens is to be applauded.