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Tell me if you saw this headline from The Wall Street Journal floating around LinkedIn this week...

Opinions ranged from people being happy that companies are finally starting to give "storytelling" the due it deserves, to many marketers getting indignant because "we've been here the whole time!"
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But of course, me being me, I had to ask...
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Do businesses even know what they're looking for?
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Do "storytellers"?
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See, I think there is something that's been sorely missing from this conversation about "storytelling" lately, and I think it's high-time it's been addressed.
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While it's great that more businesses are looking for "storytellers" I think most are destined to fail.
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Most 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 business leaders are operators, systems thinkers, and problem-solvers — which is why they've always struggled with 'storytelling,' when it's presented as an art form.
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"Storytellers," on the other hand, (correctly) prioritize "feeling" and the reader / viewer / listener's emotions try to communicate how feeling will connect to business outcomes.
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Intuitively, all parties involved know this is possible because they experience it daily.
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But where many "storytellers" do a great job at selling the "what" (outcome) many come up short when communicating the "how," without relying solely on vibes.
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This often creates a fundamental disconnect for systems-thinking operators, because it relies on a pitch, and blind trust in a storyteller's "taste".
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Yes, trust is important, but if product-market fit, paid ads, and word-of-mouth have already reliably grown the business, it's hard to connect the dots on which exact metrics a "story" will move, how much money it will generate, how long it will take, and how it can be measured.
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That's why I've been advocating for Narrative Design.
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Not because it's a systematic approach to storytelling, but because it communicates the underlying principles that make stories work. (And it's not just The Hero's Journey")
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But it's also why I've had my head down for the past month and a half researching benchmark data and designing a marketing waste calculator.
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With this, storytellers will finally be able to tie a dollar amount to how much revenue is being quietly wasted, point to where, and propose a narrative that will bridge the gap, and give an idea of how much can be recovered.

Once this is done, we'll get back to our regularly scheduled programming and I'll show you how to use it to kick start conversations with stakeholders and clients to quantify the revenue they're leaving on the table due to weak narratives.
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Until then, I hope you and yours have a very relaxing end of the year.

Tommy Walker | The Content Studio ​

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