A Shiny Ribbon

You receive a present and are asked: “What did you get?”

Your reply: “A nice, blue, shiny ribbon.”

​Wait. What?

The ribbon

The ribbon is what makes the present nicer, what completes the picture of it, a part of it. But that’s not the present itself.

The present

Same is with marketing and storytelling.

So, to whoever tells you that “marketing is storytelling”, think twice. It’s the other way around.

Storytelling is (a tiny bit) of (one/few points of) marketing.

Does it help? Yeah.

Is it all about storytelling? No.

When marketing is taken as storytelling, you end up with a nice ribbon… wrap paper… and maybe a box. The present? Maybe somewhere.

Your buyers don’t want storytelling. They want a way to get their unmet needs solved.

Stop focusing on the ribbon. Focus on the present.