The audience’s journey 1/2

In the next two blogposts we are going to dive into the audience journey. If you have followed the idea of Binge Marketing a little bit, you will know by now that the audience journey is based on the hero’s journey that is used in Hollywood to keep the attention of the audience during a movie. It appears that your audience is going through the same stages as the hero in a story. By unravelling the audiences journey you’ll get insights on what content is most relevant to your audience at what point in his journey. To understand your audience it is good to know there are three main parts in their journey:

1. The depart from the ordinary world
2. The adventure in a special world
3. The return to the known world again, yet wizer / more mature

The miniseries The Queen’s Gambit show these three parts perfectly. If you haven’t seen it yet, don’t wait any longer. It’s brilliantly made with a perfect hero’s journey in a wonderful arena. I will show you the three parts of the journey by the example of this miniseries. But I have to warn you for spoilers 🙂

The hero’s journey in The Queen’s Gambit 

The Queen’s Gambit is Netflix’s miniseries about a female chess talent. The creators initially thought about making a movie, but turned it into a miniseries because they could really evolve the character of Elizabeth Harmon, Beth. And it worked. Although this story is about a young girl playing chess in a, by men and Russians, dominated world in the 1950’s, it is not really about chess. Still, the chess clubs are doing well by the success of this miniseries and also the sales of chess boards and pieces tripled in all countries. Just another example of how this parallel universe of creators of films and series can work for us in marketing.

From an ordinary world to the special world and back again

Let’s have a look at this hero’s journey. You can divide it into three main parts: The depart from the known world, the adventure in the unknown world and the return to the known world, yet wizer and more mature.

The Depart

So in the Queen’s Gambit, Elizabeth starts her journey in the orphanage. Her ordinary world. Then there is a call to adventure, which, in her case is, the fact that she sees the janitor playing chess every day. It makes her curious and she wants to learn how to play. But she can’t at first, according to the janitor, Mr. Shaibel, because ‘he doesn’t play strangers’ and even worse: ‘girls don’t play chess’. But in this story, Mr. Shaibel develops as her mentor. He learns her how to play chess after all and that is her ticket out of her known world.

The Adventure

Then, the second part of the journey: the adventure. Beth is fighting her demons: she wants to win and doesn’t know how to cope with losing. Losing the game, but also losing her mom. Pills and alcohol are her enemies. And when you think she really lost it, her friends come to help her get through this.

The Return

Time to move on to the next stage of the journey: The return. Beth goes to Russia, she doesn’t need pills and alcohol anymore to play the champion again. All the lessons learned on her journey are applied in this phase. Beth wins and as you can see here she returns to her known world as a self confident woman, dressed almost like the white queen herself.

Now what can we learn from this hero’s journey as marketers? I will explain that in the next episode. If you want to stay updated, you can subscribe to my newsletter or join Binge Marketing on LinkedIn.

(photo’s bought for editorial use via www.alamy.com)