Why am I now focused on storytelling?

In a world of ephemeral tactics, storytelling is here to stay.

For the first 4 years, I was generally pleased with the video work I delivered as an entrepreneur, freelancer, or employee. After all, I taught myself everything, the work translated to business impact, and my client or colleagues were generally excited and appreciative. Heck, some have identified a few of them as being legitimately artistic. But something changed over the holidays in 2019.

The facts of this moment are hard to recall, yet the feeling I was left with remains visceral. While I didn’t dwell on it, the moment was dead simple to interpret. And it’s only returning to the surface as I try to articulate to myself just why I’ve been working towards storytelling now.

With almost 10 family members in attendance, the moment began with my Dad prompting me to airplay his favorite video campaign of mine that features a local country club in OKC. While these videos are celebrated by the client and regarded as the best of its kind in the region by competing clubs, it wasn’t 4 minutes later, or halfway through the second video, that I could tell that these videos weren’t gripping. Not even to my family.

While I sat there appreciating this or that about each cut in the video, my Brother’s eyes drifted to his phone as my Sister began playing with her dog named Cookie. After 6 minutes, most family members had resumed conversations. Shortly thereafter, you could hardly hear the video due to various conversations. It was a hyper-authentic reality check that told me I’ve been missing something. I wasn’t mad and I wasn’t sad, I was oddly relieved to know where I stood. My suspicion was mounting. Most people don’t like to give negative feedback. And even though my Mom is an author of multiple books and the chief editor of a magazine, she never seemed to know how to critique me in terms of story design.

I finally asked myself, how is it that my three-minute visual masterpiece can’t hold my family member’s attention when they can all watch visually shameful content for hours on end? It began to make more and more sense from then on as I analyzed YouTube content in a new way. It eventually clicked, and there is no turning back.

While I stumbled into storytelling on a few occasions through my past works, my original north star was to apply an elevator pitch framework to narratives. Having earned a B.S. in Entrepreneurship at a top 25 program, the elevator pitch was what I knew best. Reviewing my work with a newfound understanding of what a story is, my portfolio at large could be described as marketing narratives at best.

To achieve my personal capstone in content marketing, I’ll need to tell gripping marketing stories by mastering story design. Big or small, and no matter the medium, I will be measuring all future works by their story first. I’ve gone too far in content creation not to cross the threshold into becoming what others may recognize as a storyteller.

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Storynomics by Robert McKee has been my nightly source of reflection for some time now. It’s just a book, yet it’s shifted how I read, watch movies, advertisements, and even YouTube videos. It’s certainly changed how I write. Talk aside, I haven’t practiced storytelling enough to have this skill baked into my portfolio. Yet. But you might see a story-like narrative in my most recent blog post.