How can a MacGuffin (not a McMuffin) help tell your brand story?

What's the story? #8 – why storytelling will always be the key to building great brands.

A MacGuffin is the name Alfred Hitchcock popularised (if not invented) for an age-old storytelling device, that he used frequently in his films. Not something you can order at the Drive Thru.

Rather, it is an object, person or even piece of information that helps to move the plot forward, and compel the characters to act in a certain way. But its actual nature is not necessarily significant to the story. Quite often, the audience never discovers what it is.

Probably the best example in Hitchcock’s films is in North by Northwest.

Cary Grant plays an advertising exec, mistaken for a secret agent and hunted down by spies, who are trafficking government secrets. Happened to me, more than once.

We never learn what those secrets are. Because they don’t really matter. What does really matter, and what keeps us on the edge of our seats, is worrying if Grant can stop the spies from killing him, clear his name, win the woman he loves – and a Cannes Grand Prix. 

OK, I made the last one up, but you get the picture. The MacGuffin just helps to paint it.

Quentin Tarantino loves a good MacGuffin too, and famously used one in Pulp Fiction. In France it’s called “Le MacGuffin.”

Anyway, Vincent and Jules get into some serious sh*t on their mission to recover a mysterious briefcase – whose contents are never revealed – for mob boss Marcellus Wallace. The plot is their need to recover it, rather than what’s actually inside it, which tells a deeper story about redemption, fate and the possibility of changing who you are.

But how does this relate to selling hamburgers or breakfast buns? Or B2B services?

Ads like VW’s The Force, Harvey Nichols, ‘Sorry, I Spent It on Myself’ and many of John Lewis’s Christmas ads, all use MacGuffins.

A Darth Vader costume, cheapskate Christmas gifts, or a toy penguin all help tell a more meaningful brand or product story, that touches the hearts of consumers and marketing directors alike.

The MacGuffin can be the product. Or not. Depends on your story. It just has to give the characters a motivation to do something, that helps tell the real story of how a brand can enrich our lives and businesses (or just breakfasts) in some way – that creates a human connection between it and consumers.

The MacGuffin drives the story. Human emotion gives the audience a reason to care about it. And about your brand. And your products. Even McMuffins.