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You are a farmer

by | Brands, Concepts, Storytelling | Feb 19, 2013

The Metaphor of the Deeper Storytelling in Brand, 
the Undercurrent of Persona; the Dodge Farmer Ad, Super Bowl
You are a farmer - Dodge

The bigger allegories in archetypal positioning.

You are a farmer - Dodge

Imagery, shown [above and below] from
the Dodge Super Bowl ad.

On Tuesday February 5th, I gave a talk on branding for The Film School, one of the only cinematic and film training schools in the world that focuses on the notion of story-building first, in the practice and craft of making films. Several things came up in the talk, but one sidebar conversation was in the layering of story.

Tell me a story, and I’ll listen for another, that lies beneath that first telling.
Looking at a visual,
there is something to be seen on the surface,
and something deeper, beneath.

You are a farmer - Dodge

It always seems that there’s a story that lies on the surface of any encounter, which then becomes another story, at deeper glance, and another, or many more, seen in the seething layering of story, on story, in story. Like a movement of patterned silken veiling, there is something on one level that can be seen, then another — sliding beneath; in the diaphanous transparency of the two, the three, the more. People will see, hear and listen to what they can. And likely only what they can, as we’ve noted in the past —
“you know now, only what you know — now.”
People perceive, grasp and comprehend only what they can, for the moment.

You are a farmer - Dodge

It’s mythic — and like the reflective and scholarly meditative wisdom of Jung,  and his theories in the mystery of the collective unconscious — there are stories that lie far beneath, mythic, metaphorical and deeply powerful. These are all inherently framed in the humanity of the teller — who are they, what is their story, why would I listen, what would compel me to care?
People, their stories, the impressions —
therein, the story that binds,
one to one,
one to one billion.

You are a farmer - Dodge

The point to caring might be in the delicacy and tenderness of the telling – people, imagery, ideas that compel the viewer to “hold” that story as something personally magnetizing. That magnetic resonance might be that there is something deeper to it. Which is why I was shocked by the Dodge “Farmer” ad — the point was quietude, poetry, a spectacularly contrarian if not soulful rendition of the spirit of “the farmer” — who might be in all of us, the sower, the hard worker, the committed attendee, the one that deeply cares about the earth.

Imagine a Super Bowl ad:
mostly stills,
some slow-motion captures and quiet pans,
a simple voice-over,
speaking, in a manner, to the core
of what might be seen
as an American heart.
A legend, a mythic registry —
the planter of the seed, maker of food, sustainer of all:
life.

You are a farmer - Dodge

You are a farmer - Dodge

You are a farmer - Dodge

You are a farmer - Dodge

You are a farmer - Dodge

You are a farmer - Dodge

You are a farmer - Dodge

You are a farmer - Dodge

You are a farmer - Dodge

Being of Girvin farmer stock, a family legacy of planting, growing, harvesting — being with farmers, growers, reapers — I’ve been out there, the windy and dust rattled fields, the long arc of the Sun — dawn, day-long, night runs — emergency harvests, hauling, bailing and bucking bales of hay, driven Combines, field trucks, barn stacks. Lightning and roiling Nimbus clouds on the horizon — the scent of wet hay, grasses, the ionized smell of crackling electricity.

I get it. I hold it.
And I will share it.

It’s a story on the top — first read, but there is more, deeper, to be held.
That, in everything, is the dive to the deeper waters of the imagination.
Memory binds us wholly to a re-collection.
Gathered, again.

Tim | Queen Anne Studios
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WEAVING BRANDSTORIES
CROWD MIND | EXPERIENCE DESIGN | MEMORY STRATEGY