By Stuart Lambert, co-founder
Super piece in the Wall Street Journal this week, detailing the current (cyclical, I think) corporate zeal for “storytelling” and associated storytelling jobs.
Microsoft is recruiting a senior director overseeing narrative and storytelling. Compliance tech firm Vanta is hiring for a head of storytelling, offering a salary of up to $274,000. The percentage of LinkedIn job postings in the US that include the term “storyteller” doubled in the last year: 20,000 job listings under media and communications mentioned the term. Meanwhile, executives used the terms “storyteller” or “storytelling” on earnings calls and investor days 469 times this year, up by some 20%.
I bet this article has been shared around agency-land a lot. Cue lots of frothy excitement: “guys, this is another sign that it’s PR’s time to shine!”
Except we’re not storytellers, contrary to what many PR people think. We aren’t George R.R Martin or Stephen King. We’re not Vince Gilligan or Dan Erickson and wherever we work our agency is not Disney or HBO.
We are communicators.
The ‘storytelling’ term re-emerges as a buzzword in comms every few years. What’s interesting is what has shifted: in an increasingly blurry media world where what’s real is being muddied with slop and information muddied by misinformation, real stories about real people and real actions and real impact are at a premium.
And smart businesses and smart brands instinctively know that this means they need to respond. The trouble is, the right response isn’t to attempt to be a ‘storyteller’. It’s to understand storytelling principles and apply them to communication.
Using them to inform and underpin a new narrative and content strategy rather than the traditional approach.
These are trends we can see playing out with our clients such as Mielle and Oatly and even with our more sustainability focused work like Twinings and Nike.
- The shift from the blurring of marketing and comms to the blurring of comms, social media and influencer (creator) relations
- Flooding the zone with different formats of the same story including the focus on Substack as a comms channel
- The shrinking of earned media and how we help clients shift from an earned media-only focus
- The pushback against AI slop (one of the phrases of the year) vs the human/authentic
- How quickly companies are burning through these roles – it’s interesting to note the high turnover in these storyteller roles mentioned in the WSJ article, begging a question about the balance of expectations and the reality of what storytelling can do for the brand
Brands and businesses might think they can engage customers/stakeholders more deeply by being better at storytelling. But I think they misunderstand the term, take it too literally, and the result is expectations are woefully missed.
People don’t encounter or engage with a brand and expect a story in the literal sense. Nobody is buying from Patagonia because Patagonia has gone all Sarah J. Maas and is suddenly writing bestselling marketing content…
But people DO buy Patagonia because they can see Patagonia has understood the need to play a role in the wider story that we’re all part of: Patagonia stands for something, has a sense of character with drive and values, which sees them play a role in the sustainability sub-plot of the world. And Patagonia’s (excellent) comms is based on their actions within that sub-plot, which we’re all part of.
In any story, a character’s decisions in the given situation drive the plot. In real life, this is the same for all of us and for companies: our and their decisions and actions drive our and their narrative, and move things forward.
PR people will never be true storytellers, in the real meaning of the word. But we sure as hell need to know how to appeal to brands’ (clients’) need and desire to bring more storytelling principles into their communication strategies and their narratives and their messaging and their stakeholder engagement programmes.
For example, when we at Blurred talk about making your sustainability comms more about people than planet, and more about positive impact than just harm reduction – that is storytelling principles in action.
Because human beings (not ‘corporates’ or ‘consumers’, but people) are drawn to stories, and the stories humans like best are ones about people (name a story you loved that has no people (or personified animals!) in it), and ones about positive impact (that’s essentially the basis of every ‘hero’ narrative arc ever written).
When we talk about storytelling at Blurred, we focus on some of our core beliefs: “What you do matters more than what you say.” “Actions speak louder than words.” “We help our clients stand for something, do better things, make a difference, so that you have a better story to tell.”
It comes down to this: what can you, Company X, do that means you have a better story to tell to the world?
Image shows some suited business people pretending to be storytellers at a campfire. Generated by AI (Adobe Firefly)