Marketing’s big fat storytelling problem
Read any marketing job description today, and you’ll bark your shin on a reference to storytelling.
I’ve got nothing against stories. Stories are arguably what drew me into copywriting in the first place.
The problem is that painting marketers as storytellers is like painting jugglers as magicians, or jingles as opera. It embellishes the discipline, unnecessarily and to no good purpose.
You may point out that it’s our nature to embellish. But not only is storytelling not synonymous with marketing in any way — it’s not even an important skill set for effective marketing.
Do true stories in marketing exist? Yes. And they are excessively rare. In 20 years on the job, only once have I had the good fortune to be able to write a case study that was an actual story. That’s to say, it had a hero, a heroic struggle, and a genuine “happily ever after” moment, all of which were larger than the solution I was marketing.
There are also phenomenal examples of pure storytelling in the service of marketing campaigns. But as an in-house marketer, you don’t often get access to that kind of opportunity, especially during times of constrained budgets.
So, if we’re not telling stories, what are we doing? I’ll give you my take — and I welcome yours — but first: three thoughts on why it matters.
#1 It’s a reputational thing
Marketing has a credibility problem, internally within organizations, as well as with the public at large.
With that in mind, I present this extract from Merriam-Webster:
storyteller noun
sto·ry·tell·er ˈstȯr-ē-ˌte-lər
: a teller of stories: such as
a: a relater of anecdotes
b: a reciter of tales (as in a children's library)
c: LIAR, FIBBER
d: a writer of stories
This is … an issue. Calling ourselves storytellers screams “we don’t do data in these parts,” and worse still, buttresses marketing’s brand as the department of hyperbole, spin, and lies.
But wait, there’s more.
#2 There are skill set issues
The effective marketer is equal parts data scientist, psychologist, and communicator. These are skills that can be taught and learned in discrete chunks. Storytelling, on the other hand, is an art that is not easily broken up into teachable components.
It’s true that there are companies that do offer self-styled courses in marketing storytelling, but what they’re teaching is generally not storytelling. What they’re teaching is the value of emotional connections, empathy, and vivid imagery, in the service of driving brand engagement.
All of these are qualities of a great story, but they are not in themselves a story.
Storytelling takes time. It requires undivided attention. There’s a reason the central moment in any story begins with the words: “and then one day …”
Indeed, the approach of master storyteller Charles Dickens was simple: “Make ‘em laugh. Make ‘em cry. But above all … make ‘em wait.”
No marketer has that luxury.
Indeed, we consume eye-tracking studies that show us exactly what our audience doesn’t see. Conscious of the background noise and distraction embedded in today’s world, we deliver ever smaller bite-size promos. We’re on constant watch for ever more muscular CTAs that tap ever deeper into the lizard brain.
As I say, marketers are built on data, psychology, and communication — those are the concrete skillsets new marketers should be acquiring, rather than the fuzzy art of storytelling.
Which brings me to my final point.
#3 “Storytelling” misses the mark
If brevity is the soul of good marketing, precision is its well-toned musculature.
That’s why imprecision is the cardinal sin of marketing communications. When you use inaccurate words, you train your audience to ignore you. With every lardon of hype and every splinter of jargon, you train someone to switch away from your channel.
But is asking for precision asking for too much? Do we have to concretize everything? Isn’t that like asking Shakespeare to explain tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow?
No. Rigor is required to understand what we’re doing when we engage with our target buyers. After all, you can’t manage and improve what you can’t define, let alone measure.
The word “storytelling” in relation to marketing is too often an imprecise stand-in for ideas and skills that are quite different — and that are critical to moving your audience.
What we usually mean when we talk about storytelling is more akin to making authentic connections — in fact, it’s more similar to relationship-building than narrating.
Speaking of relationships …
Happily ever after, you say?
Language is an awful tool. It’s terrible.
Imagine a hammer you can’t use because it was made in another country. Imagine a hammer that gradually changes its shape over time, to the point where you struggle to recognize your great-grandma’s hammer. Imagine a hammer that looks and sounds like another hammer, but turns out it’s a pair of pants.
That’s language, and that’s why a picture is so often worth a thousand words. It’s also why language often works better in the service of evocation than storytelling.
And make no mistake: effective marketing evokes rather than narrates. Marketers do not so much tell well crafted stories as crystallize moments where pains meet solutions. Ultimately, evocation and emotion are the primary mover of buyers.
The other mover, of course: relationships of trust. That’s why great marketers gravitate toward the idea of authentic conversations, and master them.
Unlike storytelling, authenticity is teachable, testable, and a foundation you can rapidly iterate on.
After all, it’s your target buyer who’s telling you their story. All you need to do is provide the prompts … and lend them your ears.
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