In every story, there are three characters: the hero, the villain, and the victim.
A century ago, American film was born out of the vaudeville scene. The main storytelling medium at the time was melodrama, when the characters were almost comically basic.
Think of the mustachio-twirling villain, tying a damsel in distress to the train tracks, being thwarted by a gun-toting hero, and you have all the basics you need to tell a compelling story: setting, conflict, and characters.
Melodrama worked for so long because it was so simple. You could look at the characters and instantly identify the hero and the villain.
A couple of months ago, I wrote about What Most Marketing Gets Wrong, and how experts and entrepreneurs often mistake themselves for the hero in the story of their business. Spoiler alert, if you didn’t read that article: you are not the hero. Your customer is the hero, and you are the wise mentor who helps them on their quest.
So this begs the question:
Who is the villain that opposes your customer?
For Netflix, the villain is sleep. The Sandman is the obstacle that would keep a Netflix subscriber from consuming more content. Domino’s Pizza had The Noid a few decades ago — ‘Avoid…
