James and the Giant Peach

Having seen one of my childhood favourites in the bookshop window earlier this week, I thought it was about time to give it a spare moment this weekend. Well, a few spare moments. Other than appreciate Road Dahl’s skills, I realised it partly follows the common and basic story format of a hero’s journey.

In short, James lives with his horrible aunts after becoming an orphan. One day a mysterious man gives him some supernatural crocodile tongues which cause the giant peach to grow. His aunts are run over by the giant peach during his escape. On his journey, James has numerous adventures with his new insect friends on the peach and he saves their lives many times before landing in New York. Here, he is no longer sad and lonely, but respected and admired for his adventures with the peach which everyone wants to hear about.

You see, our customers want to be heroes too. They want to be successful, admired and respected. They too want to overcome obstacles and challenges they’ve faced and be known for rising above them. By telling a good story of how your product or service helped them do this can be very effective in getting the attention of potential customers. It can be as easy as getting hold of a couple of testimonials. Or, if you happen to be selling giant peaches I guess it won’t be that difficult either