NORTHERN PLANNER

When I was young, I used to love Greek mythology. Of course, at that age the stuff I read never included the sex, the incest or the jealous, petty cruelty. It’s actually racy stuff.

The Guardian has published some free booklets, with a summary of the best bits. It’s fun to read them as an adult and realise how naive I was as a child, but re-reading them, I also found a wider theme.

At the heart of great myths, the ones that last forever, there lies gritty realism. Like Homer’s tale of Troy, to quote Michael Wood in the introduction,"Of love and hatred, cruelty and heroism: the unchanging facts of the human condition" That’s the why the film adaptation of Troy never worked for me, it was a largely happy ending, whereas the real story ends in tragedy.

Another interesting strand is the way much of myth can be traced back to a kernel of truth. There is a real likelihood that a city called Troy actually existed, and some great war actually happened. Just like King Arthur lived in a real castle we think we’ve found –  Tintagel.

So the best myths seem to encapsulate some sort of folk memory – a framework for tale the expands and grows with every generation – but likely to have some sort of authentic core, somewhere at the start.

I think this has some lessons for those of us trying to make brands interesting. We have to start with something real, we have to make sure the way they behave is more realistic – there’s nothing wrong with having a dark side…….and we have to surrender some control so the story can take a life of its own.

I’m not sure if this is just twaddle, but it seems to make some sense on a Monday morning – let’s face it, we’re trying to create modern myths are we not?