Storytelling is not marketing

Last week, I was sitting across from a founder. She was very talented, highly motivated, and had a great website. She told me what her company did. For twenty minutes. I nodded. And then I asked: What frustration led you to start this company?

Her expression changed. That's when things got interesting.

That's when you really start getting to the heart of the matter—when emotion comes into play.

Companies are rebranding and commissioning new copy and a new design.

What you really need is the essence of why you do what you do.

Marketing and storytelling are not the same thing

Marketing has one goal: to influence behavior. A click, an inquiry, a purchase. You start with what you want someone to do, and work backward from there to craft the message.

That gives marketing a certain quality. You can tell by the structure: here’s the problem, here’s our solution, here’s why we’re the best choice.

Believable, sometimes, but rarely engaging.

Storytelling starts somewhere else. Not with what you want someone to do. But with why you exist.

Not your mission statement. Not the sentence written for the "About Us" page. The real answer to the question: what frustration led you to start this?

Why that's so difficult

Most founders are so busy building their business that they never stop to think about that question. From idea to launch to growth, and two years later, the website says something different from the pitch deck, and both say something different from what the founder tells people at a networking event.

Nothing dramatic. Just consistently vague enough to leave people unmoved.

So they turn to a marketing agency. They write new copy—polished and professional. But it still feels like nothing. Because the problem isn’t the copy.

The problem is that there is no core from which the copy can flow.

Storytelling isn't just a creative gimmick

This is where things often go wrong. People think that storytelling means coming up with a nice metaphor, making an emotional video, or writing an “authentic” post on LinkedIn.

But effective brand storytelling is a combination of three things.

Strategy: Which story works for whom, at what moment, and through which channel. Psychology: How people make decisions, what builds trust, and why the limbic brain responds to persuasion rather than features. And creativity: how to translate that into language that people remember and share.

Take one away, and it doesn't work anymore. Strategy without creativity is just a PowerPoint presentation. Creativity without strategy is a fun post that doesn't get results. Psychology without a narrative is manipulation.

What you can outsource

You can outsource marketing. Campaigns, ads, social media. That’s fine.

Not your story, because your story isn’t a campaign. It’s the reason your company exists—and why it should matter to the right people.

That story has almost always been there. In the reason why the founder once decided to do things differently. In the decisions a company makes when no one is watching. In what the best employees say about their work when they’re not pitching.

Most companies have simply never given it a second thought.

That’s what I do. Not inventing. Discovering.