Tapping into the power of story

It is true – storytelling is one of those words marketers pull out of their back pockets when feeling threatened or struggling to define the value of what they do. When you ask the auto mechanic to explain why it will cost $3,000 to repair your one-year-old car, nine times out of ten (or maybe a little less often) they will say, “It’s the differential” – and suddenly all discussion stops. Because the differential is a metaphysical concept turned into a physical object that sits somewhere in your car and makes all the difference in the world.

Storytelling is like that, too.

The term storytelling has a kind of aura around it; we all loved stories when we were kids – and now, by the magic of trends and influencers, storytelling has become a cool business concept. What more could we ask for? 

We may not be Conan Doyle or García Márquez or Baldwin – but now anyone can think of themselves as storytellers when giving presentations in dimly lit conference rooms or talking about LLM on LI Live.

When we think about what are the hallmarks of storytelling, some common terms or themes tend to come up:

• Engagement – stories generally hold our attention (at least the good ones)

• Inspiration – stories make us want to take action

• Escapism – stories (again, the good ones) can help us forget that we are in a dimly lit conference room, drinking our third cup of coffee at 8AM

How do we get there?

None of these are inaccurate as descriptions of storytelling – but they are mainly about the effects, not the ingredients. They will not help you in the slightest if you are trying to create something that will take your audience beyond the mundane and impact them in unexpected ways. 

What does it take to turn the ordinary deck or white paper or webinar into something extra-ordinary?

The first thing to note is that what makes a good story usually cannot be added after the fact – and, if it is, the effect may be awkward. You can pause in the middle of a dry statistics presentation to tell a story about your freshman sociology professor; but it would be better if you wove the professor into your narrative from the start.  

What else does it take to tell a really crisp story that will linger with your audiences in all the right ways? Here are a few ingredients to consider; not all are required in every story, and some can be more or less pronounced – but they point in the direction of what makes a successful story tick.

• Self-awareness – a storyteller addresses a listener and is constantly aware of how that audience may be responding. (But this doesn’t mean you always give the listener what they want or expect – keep reading to learn more.)  

• Voice – stories are told, not just written down; see how your story sounds when you read it aloud

• Pace – stories have momentum and direction; you can feel them pulling you forward, unfolding and gaining power. 

• Intuition – at some point, stories need to depart from pure logic and be guided by the intangible. 

• Experience & revelation – bringing a bit of your world and personal story into the mix can instantly amp up your impact

• Surprise – stories that are completely predictable are cliches; surprise magnifies your opportunity for real impact and resonance. 

• Meaning – stories resonate with bigger themes, becoming more than the sum of their parts.

• Community – a story draws strength and relevance from its contexts – the people who created it, the intended audience; and even the place where it was presented or published.

• Hope – some would disagree, but I feel a story needs to resolve its tension and provide solutions.

The truth is that storytelling as a concept is such a wonderful and powerful thing that even its overuse as business jargon cannot spoil it. My list of ingredients is probably slightly different from yours – but I think we agree that the destination is worthy. 

What are your secret storytelling ingredients? I’d love to know.

David Stanton is Founder and CEO of The Marketing Solver. You can write to him at this address.

If you are mass producing “thought leadership,” you are missing the point

The term “thought leadership” has become so commonly used – to apply to so many different things – that it has lost a lot of its meaning and authority. Some people believe that reposting an article on LI with a one-sentence comment counts as thought leadership. Or that articles or presentations written primarily by AI and published in mass quantities to drive leads and SEO should be called thought leadership.

I disagree.

Too often today, thought leadership is conflated with “content marketing” and even PR. While all of these content categories have their value, you and your firm can only benefit from the unique nature of thought leadership (also known as “TL”) by understanding and executing it correctly.

The purpose of thought leadership is to show the substance of a company – and an individual. It provokes thought as well as providing it, disrupting patterns of thinking and demonstrating a real immersion in the subject at hand. More than anything, it gives clients and prospects a window onto what it will be like to work with this organization or expert.

A thought leader has something to say that has little to do with selling – and while their work may have the indirect goal of promoting a company or product, their words and ideas have intrinsic value that rises above the commercial.

A word-by-word approach

“Thought leadership” should be grounded in the two words of that phrase, which is repeated so often that we may not even think about its promises or implications.

Thought requires more than copy-and-pasting from different sources, or simply echoing the ideas delivered by a Google search. Through hands-on work, conversations at conferences and with colleagues, continuous research, and reflection, the thought leader comes to a point of view about a highly relevant subject – integrated marketing, cybersecurity, the future of energy, or something else.

They share those insights in a variety of ways: conference presentations, articles in journals, white papers, LinkedIn live sessions – and, yes, blog posts. Their ideas are offered without strings attached, showing clients and prospects the intelligence that they get when they work with the thought leader’s company.

Leadership should be viewed as a challenge, and a complex one. To be really valuable to their firm, and elevate their personal brand, the thought leader needs to do more than repeat the ideas everyone else is already saying. That is following, not leading.

I know nothing about solar wind farms – but if you were to say that these farms hold great promise as future sources of energy, I would say that you have not broken any new ground. You are not a thought leader. On the other hand, if you have a novel idea about how wind farms should be arranged, or how their energy should be used in combination with electricity from other sources, then I think you might be onto something.

Inherent innovation

To anyone immersed in a particular field, true thought leadership should have intrinsic interest, because it breaks new ground – even in small measures – and points the way to innovation. If something presented as thought leadership has the reader starting to nod off after just one or two sentences, then nothing new is being said, and no leadership is being provided.

According to my definition, thought leadership is not a simple thing. For companies that want to promote their potential thought leaders, it requires a commitment to doing more than selling. If your manager has no patience for anything that does not deliver revenue directly, it is unlikely that thought leadership will be supported. This does not mean that the thought leader needs to be nestled in an ivory tower, thinking big thoughts all day long; most will have worldly responsibilities – like sales quotas and other goals – and will probably need to keep thought leadership as a “side hustle.”     

My point of view also requires tha we treat the phrase thought leadership with greater care and respect. When an intern writes a blog post about company participation in a local charity race, we can applaud – but we should not call them thought leaders.

A little help from … 

Of course, thought leaders can still get help along the way. Gen AI can be an excellent source of core research and help expand or polish texts. And firms like The Marketing Solver can help create and guide thought leadership programs to make them more impactful and less of a burden. 

But the core of thought leadership needs to be innovative ideas generated by people who have given deep thought to what they do – experts who can bring that knowledge and disruptive spirit to client projects, industry presentations, and more. If you do not have a thought leader behind your “thought leadership,” then that knowledge cannot be activated in practical terms – and has little real value to the company.

In a deeper sense, this approach is about how we view our work. Maybe a series of SEO-focused blog posts will deliver prospects to your door – but will you have the goods to deliver on that “next step” in the conversation?  If a prospect in a meeting asks a followup question about the blog post you just published, will there be someone who can pick up the thread and really bring those ideas to bear on the project at hand?

Quality over everything

The truth is that, as competition has grown and digital platforms have multiplied, the need to be talking everywhere on a 24/7 basis has become almost inescapable for companies large and small. As a result, brands and individuals have dialed back quality in the pursuit of quantity – just to be sure that their social posts or press releases or blog posts are the last thing the client sees before he or she goes to sleep at night. 

This is largely a top-of-funnel focus – get their attention, rise in the SEO rankings, and be noticed. But what happens when the client or prospect scratches the surface? Will there be any substance to share, or innovative ideas to set you apart?     

By thinking clearly about what thought leadership is and should be, and asking more of ourselves than simply parroting received ideas in the hope of catching someone’s attention, companies have the potential to really stand out – to provoke thought, conversation, and fresh ideas. 

And that, I would say, is the essence of smart marketing. 

David Stanton is CEO of The Marketing Solver and a 20-year veteran of marketing and communications. Connect with him at dstanton207med@gmail.com.

Defining the ingredients of a healthy brand

At the core of all your marketing efforts is your brand. But the word brand is kicked around quite a bit these days, to the point where it may seem that everything you see, read about, and buy is a brand.  

This is definitely not the case – and failing to understand what brands really are can lead you to make mistakes with your own marketing and IP.

A brand is something that can only come from one place, one maker. There may be multiple products or services under one brand umbrella, but they are all recognizable parts of the same family.

And a brand is more than just a logo; it is every experience that a prospect or customer may have or associate with your products. If your company is separate from your brand or brands, people may connect their experiences of the company with its brands. How you feel about Nike as a company, for example, will likely influence your impressions of Air Jordans – and vice versa.

This means that you cannot surgically separate the look and design and messaging of your brand – the parts you clearly control – from how people experience what you do in the real world, in situations or contexts that may be mostly unpredictable. If your company stock starts to tank and the Wall Street Journal chimes in with negative coverage, for example, your brands will almost certainly take a hit – unless they are so discrete from your company that people do not make the connection.

If you have a brand, guarding and curating it are essential. First, before you invest time and money, make sure your brand is truly unique; explore the possibility of trademarking – by researching if any similar ™ applications are already in motion – and try to secure relevant URLs. 

Also, consider whether the brand imagery and messaging are in line with your future plans. Maybe your brand arose organically, almost by accident, but really does not represent where you want to go with your business. Think hard before abandoning any brand that has significant equity – but sometimes there is no avoiding the need for a change.

How else can you care for your brand? Here are a few suggestions:

• Be sure the brand lives in your heart, not your head: Among those intimately connected with a brand, it should feel like someone they could talk to and would want to spend time with. If the brand does not have life, it is time to figure out what is missing and make swift repairs.

• Be consistent: Use your brand name and logo in the same ways to mean the same things, so that no one couild ever be confused about what it is.

• Consider all of the experiences that can be associated with your brand: Catalog and track all the imaginable situations and stories that could be shaping your brand in people’s minds, and do your best to manage them.  

• Stand for the benefit of your clients and prospects: Clearly associate your brand with an awareness of customer concerns and needs, rather than simple self-interest. If all of your LinkedIn posts are about your products, for example, and you invest little or nothing in thought leadership, your brand will likely become one-dimensional in the minds of prospects.  

• Live by your brand values: Just like people, brands have compasses that define them and help guide their actions. A key part of being consistent is understanding and honoring the values that consumers associate with your brand.

• Get regular feedback: To be sure your brand stays in synch with clients, prospects, and the marketplace, use conversations, conferences, surveys, and any other opportunity to ask how you are doing and what could be improved. 

• Make everyone in your company a brand advocate: For a brand to truly come alive and stay fresh, it needs to be supported by the passion of employees at every level. If your colleagues are not bought in, the customer will feel it, even indirectly. “Selling” to your own teams is crucial.

• Don’t be afraid to evolve: As much as consistency is important to a strong brand, so is responsiveness. You don’t want to be the brand that has remained the same for so long that people cannot imagine it any other way. To be alive means to change – not rashly or unexpectedly, but still noticeably,

What are your thoughts on brands and branding? I’d love to hear them — please share!

David Stanton is CEO and Principal of The Marketing Solver. He can be reached at this email.

The thinker & the doer

In today’s world, staying “lean and mean” is the order of the day for B2B marketing teams. Even companies that are thriving are, at best, holding marketing budgets steady — or, more likely, making cuts by leveraging AI, automation, and other digital resources.

According to a 2024 Gartner survey of CMOs, marketing budgets now account for 7.7% of total revenue at the average firm, compared to 9% in 2023 — and 11% in the years before the pandemic. 

Stepping in to fill many shoes in this era of consolidation are “fractional” leaders — CMOs, creative chiefs, and other “freelance” department heads who bring needed expertise and guidance, but often work 20 or even fewer hours a week. They usually do not earn benefits but help deliver (or should) some of the focus and consistency that on-staff leaders would. 

But to be a marketing leader — fractional or on-staff — in today’s environment, it is not enough to say “I just do strategy.” It’s true that CMOs need to focus on the big picture — continually aligning marketing strategy to brand and product goals and synching up all of the department’s many activities. 

But because teams are thin and budgets tight, marketing heads also need to be able to switch gears, roll up their sleeves, and get stuff done. It is popular these days to say “multitasking is impossible” — but today’s marketing leaders need to find a way to make multitasking a way of life; otherwise, they will be letting precious opportunities fall thru the cracks.

What could and should a marketing leader do? Here are some thoughts:

• Talk to CMOs at your top three clients to find out their marketing plans for the rest of the year — and how your companies can partner.

• Help your COO or CTO prepare for a LinkedIn live interview on the ways that AI is helping your company raise its game.

• Develop a survey for clients on how they would like to see your company improve customer service in 2025.

• Host a podcast series on ways that your company is helping employees develop their personal brands. 

• Hold lunch meetings with the sales team to develop new techniques for making your conference booth truly irresistible and impactful.

Does it sound like a lot? In a world of shrinking marketing budgets and teams, “a lot” is the new “just about enough.” The marketing leader cannot afford to be a behind-the-scenes player exclusively, presenting to leadership and tweaking the same planning deck from quarter to quarter. If you are not visible and seeing the sun (physical or metaphorical) shine on your head every day, you are missing too many opportunities and letting your company down.

The truth is that the marketing leader has unique power in the organization to straddle departments and reach out to other C-suite leaders for … whatever might seem like a good idea! Making things happen and driving innovation is always the marketer’s purview — and if it isn’t, something is broken and needs to be fixed.

Is this a call to become a Superman? Maybe — and maybe that is what is needed. It’s not about keeping your job; it’s about making sure your company has what it needs to thrive in a truly tough marketplace.

If that is not the CMO’s mission, what is?