The transcripts are then reviewed to capture common narrative themes and identify archetypes based on their own perceived identity, life goals, fears and aspirations. These narrative themes and archetypes are meant to be subjective and emotionally appealing to our audience’s values, based on how they see themselves and others.
Because storytelling is based on emotion, this work is, by nature, subjective – every archetype and narrative theme can be debated as to how accurately it applies to each group, etc. Indeed, there may be more effective themes that are not mentioned, or for one reason or another were not brought up in the focus groups. But like all storytelling, the goal is not to create the one perfect story (which is impossible), but to capture strong, compelling stories that will resonate with the greatest number of our audience, delivered by empathetic voices, which compels them to act.
We then compare the audience narratives with the client’s messaging and/or call to action, and determine where these complement each other, and create a narrative. Note that the actual message isn’t present, but the narrative theme, and the way the message should be delivered, is created.