Storytelling: Snake Oil and eye rolling

The increasing popularism of storytelling has created a bit of eye-rolling* in recent years. Sometimes anecdotally viewed as the snake oil** or emperor’s new clothes** of marketing (or so I have heard) the impact of great business story structures has been replaced with jargon (up the funnel, down the hose, through the lens). 

Category Development has always been a story filled landscape, we just never called it that. Just like Marketing has existed for centuries, it just wasn’t labelled or taken seriously for a long time. The use of storytelling techniques in category development is always combined with strong commercial acumen, insight and a holistic category overview. Unlike fairy tales, Category Development stories are always true. Like fairy tales, category development stories have an intention, an objective, to warn against the dangers of conversing with hungry wolves is very much the same as really addressing the wolves need for a plant based diet and larger packs of wolf shampoo. 

Category development stories are evidence based narratives constructed to drive action, snake oil or the emperor’s new clothes are easily identifiable as untruths. 

*eye-rolling: total lack of vision, often displayed by ‘executives’ from 1982 or accountants.

**snake oil: A cure all that cures nothing at all.

***Emperor’s new clothes: Some non-existent clothes sold to a vain and silly emperor. Big nudey rudey scandal ensued.