There’s a well-known Buddhist story of blind men and an elephant. A group of blind men (some say men in the dark) touch an elephant to learn what it is like. One blind man feels the tusk and believes elephants to be hard and tough. Another feels the flexible ear, concluding that elephants are agile and graceful. Another feels the legs and concludes the elephant is strong and powerful. Each individual perspective is valid, but no one person understand the whole animal.
When the men compare notes on what they felt, they’re in complete disagreement. The story is meant to illustrate that understanding and reality depends upon one’s own perspective and context.
Like most Buddhist teachings, this story has application in all aspects of life, and can even be applied to marketing. Brands are complex beasts, with attributes not unlike the elephant – some soft, some strong, some flexible. We do our best to communicate them, but at the end of the day, we’re subject to audience perspective. Consumers each have their own varying perspective and it’s constantly changing and evolving. It’s why context is so so important.
This parable got me thinking about transmedia storytelling, where a story spans multiple media in a coordinated way. Consumers are exposed to varying touchpoints, each tasked with delivering specific parts of the overall message. Individually, they each give a sense of the story, but together they have real power.
If the blind men had been exposed (individually) to each of the elephant’s “touchpoints,” perhaps they’d understand the whole.
