Every dollar you spend on marketing is wasted.
All that time spent in "strategic planning" sessions is better spent elsewhere.
Except when it's not.
Except when you're Apple and you teach your people to "Think Different."
Except when you're Airbnb, and you help people discover how to “live like a local."
The difference between companies who burn marketing dollars and those who break through the noise comes down to one thing...
Their story. More precisely, whether their story was well-told.
Most people realize that successful marketing requires telling a story, but very few successfully implement one.
Instead, most people end up with a variety of narratives.
"We founded this company in 20XX out of my garage."
“My grandfather started this company.”
"First, we built this, then we built that, and now we're selling it to you."
Who cares?
The most important metric for storytelling in business is whether it consistently connects our audiences to what they most earnestly desire.
Does it help them solve their problem? Does it help them win the day?
Even the best marketing fails when we believe that it is only words on paper, only well-crafted prose, scripts so constructed that anyone can execute them.
Marketing with story is vision. Marketing this way is the ability to see further, to shine a light into the future that says,
"This is what we believe. This is where we are going. Want to join us?"
Then do what you say. Make the story true.
Marketing is not a function of one person or a single department; marketing is the making and executing of promises to your target audience.
Marketing is storytelling. Stop making yours confusing.
Make something different. Make people care. Make fans, not followers.