The Storyteller Aquarius

(From chapter 6 in our current project)

The change in marketing from advertisement to story might be a product of the digital age as authors above argue. However, the change could be part of something even greater reflected in the change of astrological signs and the movement from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. In one of his last books, Carl Jung discussed the grand symbolism of this astrological change. He thought it was significant symbolically that the Age of Pisces (Symbolized by the fish symbol) was being replaced by the Age of Aquarius (Symbolized by the water carrier symbol). He saw it has the change in a worldview centered in the fish to one centered on one who carries water and fish that live in water.

One of the things that Jung sees in this grand change in signs is a change from a focus by something inside a context and to the perception of the context itself. Media guru Marshall McLuhan might say that the shift is one from focus on messages to the realization that messages are contained in mediums. As McLuhan once observed, “The medium is the message.”

Stories create the Aquarius water carrier in culture to match the grand movement of the signs in the heavens. Stories envelope customers in an environment, like water envelopes fish perhaps. The truth is that ultra-smart consumers like Millennials and other younger generations do not but the old tradition methods of advertising. In this method of marketing, they are similar to the Pisces fish in water. In this situation, they are part of someone else’s story. But in the modern application of screenplays to sell products, the products are no longer the Heroes or Heroines they have been in the past. Rather, now it is the customer of the product who is the Hero.

* * *

This great change is reflected in the change in the grand astrology movement from the Age of Pisces to Aquarius. Those who create stories are Aquarians. They carry the context of the world with them, the narratives that makes up context. The change in the great astrological signs suggest a change in collective consciousness of humanity, as Jung would say. Perhaps, the medium of a story is to be the key hold over people. A hold that makes them buy a product.

Once, when they were not sophisticated consumers in the world’s most advanced consumer society, those early years of marketing and advertising, they believed everything told them by business advertisers. I certainly did. (Believed I could develop the body on the back cover of the comic book. For just $2.99. Shipment in six weeks.) But now, as we move into the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, consumers have little time for ads. Yet still, the Internet wallpapers our computer screens with link ads based on click patterns. We all have different conglomerations of ads on our computer monitors or smartphones. Not much different perhaps. Just different worlds of ads “papered” onto our computer screens.

Ultimately, the application of screenwriting methods to business, the movement of business from shouting messages and slogans to quietly suggesting stories to be jointly participated in. A huge change. A grand shift between opposition symbols in many ways. One symbol was the loud advertisement. The other symbol is the quiet, enveloping story.