Why I Am Not a “Certified Brand Narrative Consultant”

“Storytelling” is all the rage today in marketing. Every day I get multiple ads on social media for various narrative-based brand strategy frameworks that guarantee that I will see massive success if I utilize their method. If they’re aimed at me (as a brand strategist myself), they claim I can fill my pipeline with eager clients as I churn out one brand strategy kit after  another for clients using a “proven framework.” If they’re aimed at me as a general business owner, they claim that they can help me most effectively articulate my brand and grow my bottom line. All I have to do is get certified in their method, and then I can lead you, my client, to your own success as I rake in the money selling you productized brand kits on a repeatable framework.

Most of these models are based on the idea that you position your potential client or customer as the hero who has a problem, and you’re the guide who can help them achieve their quest. You’re Gandalf to their Frodo. You’re Morpheus to their Neo. You get the idea. You start them on their quest and provide guidance that helps them “discover” that your service/product has been the solution to their problem. They pull the sword out of the stone and suddenly they’re the king of the Britons. Quest achieved.

I don’t buy it. Why? 

I’ve Seen This Movie Before

Craddock and Lowry influenced a whole generation of preachers to focus on narrative.

In order to understand my first criticism, you need to know a bit about my background. While I usually say that my PhD is in something like “communication and organizational culture”, my field’s actual name is homiletics and liturgics. Yes, the study of preaching and worship. Which is how I know that preaching has had its own love affair with narrative and storytelling as a “master form” for all sermons. Except for one major change from the norm: this time, preaching was actually ahead of the secular curve. The homiletic interest in narrative really peaked in the 1980’s building on Fred Craddock’s As One Without Authority (1971) and Eugene Lowry’s The Homiletical Plot: the Sermon as Narrative Art Form (1980). It seemed everyone in mainline preaching was ditching “deductive” structures to use inductive, story-shaped sermons leading the congregation on a journey as they all “discovered” the truth together. Does any of that sound familiar?

But the phase ended. Preachers realized that story is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Inductive preaching as a shared journey of discovery wasn’t the bullet-proof method practitioners had hoped. And eventually other structures moved in, some of them incorporating story-like elements, and others subsuming story in the role of illustration. Yes, story is a powerful tool. But it is only one option in a vast sea of choices. Sometimes, it’s the best tool and takes the lead; at other times, it’s a secondary tool and plays a supporting role.

The point is, these cycles of “what’s hot today” in a particular area of communication happen. Today in marketing, it’s storytelling. Tomorrow it will be something different. I’m not eager to jump on a bandwagon that limits me unnecessarily. Which brings me to…

The Marketing Story Frameworks Don’t Tell a Good Story

Just for fun, I ran my own brand through an AI tool provided from one of the biggest brand-as-story proponents. It gave me a set of questions and limited my response to 700 characters for each. I put 600-680-ish characters in, so it wasn’t a paucity of material. And what it spit out was… boring. Bland. One-dimensional. It wasn’t a story. It was a bunch of business-sounding nouns stuck into a structure that had only the bare minimum of connective tissue. The client (or “hero”) was described as someone who simply wants something. But there’s no depth of analysis. Why does this matter? What if they’ve misdiagnosed the problem?

Because there’s a lack of depth in analysis, there’s a lack of depth in description. You read the summary that it spits out, and the words just float on the page. They’re not attached to the story, and they’re barely attached to each other. You could easily replace the nouns in my “brand story” with those for a different sector and it would all still fit their framework. So much for a custom or bespoke brand strategy! There was nothing about my unique values around sustainable growth and inclusion. Not a peep about my background and the fact that I have doctorate and that my own dissertation dealt with how faith communities retell, adopt, and re-enact shared stories. Why? Because that doesn’t fit in a neat 700 character input box.

And really? Is everyone Gandalf? (Well, I am; but I’ve only read The Lord of the Rings 20+ times.) Is every brand a “wise guide” helping a “hero” on their journey? No, of course not! Sometimes the customer/client just wants a cold drink. They need a shovel (to borrow from an old marketing adage). They don’t always need a wise guide on some grandiose quest of self-discovery. It’s arrogant. It’s a story of inflated self-importance.

Behind the Curtain, The Wizard is Just… AI?

When I downloaded the accompanying guide to using the brand story method to work with a client, the core of every process was “use our AI.” Get the program to spit out landing page copy, or sales copy, or a tagline, or an elevator pitch, and then the remaining “check boxes” are just making sure that information is properly disseminated.

But AI has its limitations. It’s not genuinely creative (yet). And there are a host of other aspects of AI that should make us hesitant to rely on it wholeheartedly, from the replication of bias in the material on which it was trained to its environmental impact. And if the creatives it produces are as bland as the narrative framework it generated for my brand, there will be nothing that actually differentiates the brands that use it from one another.

I’ll Stay Bespoke, Thank You Very Much

I remain committed to my core conviction: every act of communication is different. Every “speaker” is unique. The answer isn’t easily replicated frameworks. It’s deep thinking, sound analysis, and yes, a bit of creative spark. I do use storytelling. I love a well-framed narrative model. But I also know that if the characters aren’t fleshed out, it’s going to fall flat. And story isn’t always the best approach. The best approach is going to be based on two things:

• What am I trying to say? (My focus.)

• What am I trying to do in this act of communication? (My function.)

With those statements in hand, and knowing as much as possible about my audience through qualitative and quantitative study, I’ll build out a messaging strategy that draws on a wide range of tools and frameworks.

That is how you get authentic, effective, human-centered marketing.