Content Strategy & the Heroes Journey

What Content Strategy lessons can we learn from acting, film making and the Heroes Journey?

Marketing, technology, social media, user experience, content strategy, and culture are inextricably intertwined. We build silos, departments, teams, and policies around these things as if they stand alone. 

The interviews with digital marketing leaders provided the wisdom for the second iteration of my book “When Everybody Clicks”. The book focuses on the importance of a mission in any business vertical that is delivering their products or services with purpose. It includes stories and case studies that illustrate the power of collaboration. Those stories are at the heart of purpose-driven work.

We can build more inclusive tribes with stories. Our communities can “click” when people believe deeply enough in the purpose of the work. The alignment on purpose helps build trust and part of that trust comes from competence.

When I first met Tommy Walker, I was drawn to his ability to speak about content strategy through the lens of the place he started, acting. 

He demonstrates the value of storytelling around the principles of capturing the arc of the protagonist and following that story arc all the way to resolution.

Tommy's acting background fundamentally shaped his content methodology. He approaches content programs like television networks rather than collections of isolated articles, using two core frameworks:

The Cinematic Universe Structure: Content pieces connect and reference each other to create narrative cohesion. At Shopify, this approach generated a 60% return visitor rate by making readers feel "something just happened or something is going to happen."

The Four-Act Story Arc: Tommy maps annual content calendars to a four-act structure, with each quarter functioning as one act. Readers undergo a transformative journey across the year. He uses Lord of the Rings as an analogy—individual blog posts function as scenes serving a larger narrative with a clear super objective and central conflict.

Tommy draws a sharp distinction between two types of standout content:

Distinct: Executing what others do, but in your unique way. Execution and voice create the difference. His "State of Discontent" survey exemplified this—conceptually "just a survey," but designed to provoke deep reflection. It achieved a 20-minute average completion time and 41.6% completion rate. He has used the survey as a path to helping content marketers better understand where they're stuck and how cinematic storytelling can help writers get unstuck.

Differentiated: Standing out based on premise alone. He previously hosted a show called, "In the Cutting Room" with interviews of in-house marketers as they edit articles in real-time, learning from each other and just doing the good work.

Learn more about his process in Tommy Walker’s interview.