Before I get started, please don’t read this piece if you are looking for a way out of financial challenges, or to be given a sign that today is the day to follow your dream of becoming a standup comedian. This article comes with a very strong health warning: I can’t look into your past or tell your future. To be honest, I can barely remember what I did last week.

However, I do believe that many of the skills involved in reading cards link back to the core psychologies and behaviours that are also fundamental in advertising. As such, understanding and using them can be a powerful tool in helping brands deliver outstanding creative that audiences can connect with.

A few years back, a colleague offered to read my tarot cards. Everything she said felt highly personal to me; she knew things my best friends didn’t, and she ended by informing me that I was ready for a big change in my career. After chatting with a few other colleagues, it transpired that she had said the same thing to all of us. My first thought was that this was an incredible inside job conceived by a rival agency to poach our staff. But my second thought was, is this a skill that can be learned rather than ordained by a higher power?

Thus started my own journey of exploration. I read the books, I visited psychics in pubs, seaside towns, even travelling as far as New Orleans – where I had my bones read – to learn more about the craft. As it turns out, there is more of a (behavioural) science behind it all than we may think. And as a creative, I couldn’t help noticing more than a few similarities with the world in which I work.

EVERYONE IS UNIQUE – OR ARE THEY?

One of the age-old challenges for advertisers and creatives is how to connect with audiences on an individual level but a global scale. In tarot reading, one of the basic rules to remember is that there are two sides to everyone. The external side of ourselves, which we project every day to others, is how we want to be perceived. Often, it’s a happier and more confident version of our true selves.

As consumers, this is the version of ourselves that we want brands and advertisers to connect or associate with. This is why many brands will show happy, confident people dancing around with a product, because it appears that’s what people want en masse.

We all face similar challenges in life, so it’s not difficult for a tarot card reader – or a creative – to find a situation that most people can relate to

The other side of us is internal – who we really are deep down and our innermost thoughts. The side we all think is unique because we don’t often talk about it openly. But the secret is, we all feel like imposters. We all thought it was only us that turned into a monster when we were hungry, for example, until Snickers made it commonplace. And we all thought it was just us who planned to book a holiday when we had a spare hour to sit down and do it properly, only to end up quickly booking something while on the loo to avoid not having a holiday at all (which formed the basis of Trouble Maker’s recent Lastminute.com work).

We all face similar challenges in life, so it’s not difficult for a tarot card reader – or a creative – to find a situation that most people can relate to, so long as you’re prepared to accept that humans aren’t as unique as we think.

TAPPING INTO NOSTALGIA HELPS BUILD TRUST

If you have ever had your tarot cards read or watched Derren Brown on TV, one of the first techniques that is used to build trust early in a session is tapping into nostalgia. Showing the individual that you can look into their past in order to see the future.

In the mystical world of tarot reading, this is often achieved by tapping into the broad trends of childhood. You had a creative passion that you were great at but have cast away, a pet that you formed a huge bond with, and so on. Childhood is so predictable because there are rites of passage that we all ultimately go through.

Nostalgia is proven to be powerful in advertising, not just because it reminds people of the past but because, if done right it, can create scenarios that unlock huge emotive connections. A good example is Nike’s Find Your Greatness ad, which featured a little boy stood on the high dive. We resonate with it because at that age we all put ourselves in situations that we realise we can’t handle at the last moment, and then have no choice but to go through with. Your first horse riding lesson, riding your bike down a big hill, singing on stage at school – the moment is essentially the same.

LANGUAGE MAKES THE WORLD MORE INTERESTING

An air of showmanship plays a huge part in tarot reading and astrology. What adds the magic is the ways in which we describe the planets, how they are moving and therefore what lies in store. It transports us to another world for that moment. Tarot card readers are not afraid to use language to make the world they are describing more interesting, which ultimately helps build a story.

Take these two versions of the same reading: 1) You are going to meet a person who will change your outlook on life. 2) With Venus moving into your second movement, that is a time of transformation. However, the pull of Saturn means that it’s beyond your control. There will be a person that will come into your life and have a profound affect on how you see the world around you.

As creatives, there is a lot we can learn from the language of fortune tellers. Let’s build language back into campaigns as one of the strongest techniques brands can use to tell their story

For me, learning about this was a huge wake-up call to how we’ve lost the art of storytelling in advertising. We have seen a growing trend over the past ten years to be as succinct as possible. Forever tasked with coming up with the shortest tagline, these often don’t end up making a huge amount of sense.

As creatives, there is a lot we can learn from the language of fortune tellers. Let’s build language back into campaigns as one of the strongest techniques brands can use to tell their story, how they are different and what they stand for. To connect, engage and stand out in a world filled with acronyms.

The final learning I took away from the greatest and most experienced fortune tellers I met over the course of my year-long journey was to go into each reading with the aim of making people feel better when they leave, and that’s what I’m now trying to instil with every new creative brief that comes in.

Jonathan Fraser is founder and chief strategy officer at Trouble Maker; troublemaker.co.uk