There was a time when “storytelling” in a business context was a useful idea. The insight — that humans process information most effectively when it’s organized narratively, that data embedded in a story is retained better than data presented as data — is empirically grounded. The application to marketing and communication made sense: instead of listing product features, show a person whose life is changed by the product. Instead of citing statistics, make the statistics into a character with a journey. Good advice. The problem, as with all good advice that enters the marketing industry, is what happened next.
The Colonization of a Word
At some point in the early 2010s — the exact date is lost to the archaeology of conference presentations — “storytelling” became the answer to every question about content, communication, and brand identity. What should our content strategy be? Storytelling. How do we differentiate our brand? Storytelling. Why isn’t our B2B marketing working? Not enough storytelling. What do we put in this slide about quarterly earnings? A story.
The word spread with the speed and indiscrimination of a virus encountering a population with no immunity. It appeared in agency credentials decks. It appeared in CMO job descriptions. It appeared in the LinkedIn bios of professionals who had never written a narrative sentence in their lives but had attended a workshop and were now, apparently, storytellers. It appeared in brand guidelines. It appeared in the description of services offered by consulting firms that help companies restructure their supply chains.
The supply chain consultants are still not telling stories, by the way. They are making decks about supply chains. But the decks now have a slide that uses the word “narrative.”
What “Storytelling” Now Means in Practice
When a client briefs an agency on “storytelling,” the instruction means approximately nothing specific. It may mean they want emotionally resonant content. It may mean they want a content series rather than individual posts. It may mean they want a brand origin myth. It may mean the CEO read a Seth Godin book over the weekend and wants to be exciting now. It may mean they saw a competitor’s campaign and liked the feeling of it without being able to specify why.
The word has been used to describe so many different things — content marketing, brand narrative, PR pitching, investor communications, user journey documentation, employee onboarding — that it no longer describes any of them usefully. When a brief says “we want to tell our brand story,” the creative team knows exactly as much as they did before reading it. Which is to say: nothing actionable.
This is the fate of words that become fashionable in industries that run on language. They get used until they’re smooth. “Innovation.” “Disruption.” “Authentic.” “Purpose-driven.” Each of these entered the marketing lexicon carrying real meaning and departed as meaningless decoration after approximately three years of conference panel overexposure. “Storytelling” was the same.
What Was Actually Good About the Original Idea
The underlying insight, stripped of the buzzword packaging, remains valid. Human beings are narrative creatures. We remember stories. We are moved by stories. We make sense of the world through stories. A brand that understands this and applies it with skill and discipline will communicate more effectively than one that doesn’t.
But applying it with skill and discipline requires actually understanding what a story is. Not a case study formatted as a journey. Not a video with a piano soundtrack and slow-motion footage of meaningful moments. An actual narrative structure: a protagonist with a specific problem, a genuine obstacle, a resolution that changes their situation in a concrete way. Most of what the marketing industry calls “storytelling” does not meet this definition. It is mood, or texture, or character illustration. These are fine things. They are not stories.
The word policed its own meaning by becoming too popular to mean anything. What the industry needs now is not a new buzzword to replace storytelling but a willingness to be specific about what it actually wants: emotional resonance, narrative structure, character development, situational specificity. Say those things. The brief will be better.
The Briefing Problem
The reason “storytelling” persists despite its emptiness is that it does something useful for the person writing the brief: it sounds aspirational without committing to anything specific. “We want storytelling” communicates a desired quality — something that feels human, connected, emotionally engaging — without requiring the brief-writer to specify what that means in concrete terms. It is aspirational hand-waving, and it is comfortable because it defers the hard work of definition to the creative team.
This is, in a very literal sense, what Fuck The Brief is about. Not a rejection of the brief as a document but a rejection of the brief as permission to be vague. A good brief makes the creative work easier, not harder. A brief that says “storytelling” without defining terms has made the creative work harder while giving everyone involved the illusion of having been helpful.
The word is not coming back. Not as a useful term of art, anyway. It has been used too many times, in too many directions, by too many people who were using it as a synonym for “not boring.” That’s fine. The concept it was pointing at — the power of narrative in human communication — survives perfectly well without it. Use that concept. Describe it precisely. Leave the word in the pitch deck graveyard where it belongs.
→ If your last brief contained the word “storytelling” without further specification: we’ve all been there. NoBriefs — where the brief comes to be honest with itself.