How to Tell a Story (Not Just Describe What You Do)
Most founders are not telling a story. They're just stating what their company does.
What's the difference? A story is bigger than you and your product. It makes your success feel inevitable and your mission feel existential by positioning your company as part of a wave of necessary and inexorable change.
Consider tvScientific: The Story of Performance TV
I paraphrased that last line from one of my favorite adtech storytellers, tvScientific CEO Jason Fairchild. His story goes something like this:
We still live in an era of unaccountable advertising, and CTV is no exception. This is why search and social platforms have been eating the open internet's lunch for a decade-plus.
If the open internet and CTV in particular are really to compete with Google and Meta, they can't just be about buying views. Advertisers need to be able to buy results.
If you make CTV accountable — if you make performance TV a reality — you are able to bring in the performance marketers and SMBs that have made search and social a combined $500B market. This would transform the open internet. It is the biggest opportunity in advertising outside the walled gardens.
Notice that this story is so much bigger than tvScientific or its tech alone. It's about the entire advertising industry. It hinges on a movement: performance TV. And it makes tvScientific feel inevitable, like they're bringing about an obvious change that must happen.
Get a Little Hollywood About It
Think about what is probably the most successful fictional story of my generation: Harry Potter. It’s not just about a kid who has to grow up and defeat a villain. It’s about the stuff storytellers and their audiences have loved since time immemorial: good and evil, sacrifice, destiny.
OK, we’re in adtech. But if you can’t get at least a little Hollywood about your story, your prospects of recruiting top talent, maximizing pipeline, and rallying investors, public or private, are nil. Your company will be limited by your lack of vision. You can’t build a billion-dollar public company talking about supply path optimization or transaction IDs (sorry, nerds).
Emulate Elon Musk
The world’s most successful founders tend to have a knack for storytelling, and they don’t shy away from existential terms. Elon is a great example.
Is SpaceX a space tourism company? Is Tesla an electric vehicle company? Absolutely not. In Elon’s telling, they are critical for the survival of the planet and human civilization. They must happen. Their success is part of something so much bigger than those individual companies, let alone their technology.
If you’re not willing to challenge yourself to craft a story on this level — and then get out there and shout it from the rooftops every day — you’re not thinking big enough.
How and Why to Tell a Story
Founders: If you want to maximize your awareness, drive more pipeline, and achieve your mission faster and bigger, you need to tell a story. You cannot just describe what you do (“we drive performance for advertisers and maximize revenue for publishers”).
Otherwise, no one outside the 5% of customers who are ready to buy today — let alone talent, investors, and those who influence your customers — will care.
To craft a story:
Identify what’s wrong with the status quo.
Consider your version of climate change or unaccountable advertising — the galvanizing force driving your mission.Name the villain who represents the status quo.
You’re an adtech company, so it’s probably Google or Meta. Could also be a fat cat like Nielsen.Champion the people you’re fighting for.
Advertisers, publishers, and consumers.Tell everyone how you’re changing the industry — how the industry must change — to save your customers from the villain and improve the status quo.
Steve Jobs: "The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come."
Don't underestimate the power of a great story. The fate of your company depends on it.
