Do Companies Need Storytellers, Ford’s EV Flop, Kushner Paramount Pullout | Diet TBPN

0:00You're watching TVPN! You know what else is the gift that keeps on giving? Hiring a storyteller, which apparently is the hottest topic in Silicon Valley. Thanks to our friend Katie Dayton over at the Wall Street Journal, who made this go mega viral by posting an article in the Wall Street Journal. All about how startups are hiring storytellers. Companies are desperately seeking storytellers is the headline, of course. We are going to dive into it. Jordi wrote a take. Storytelling is the only way to impose meaning on abundance, says Signal. Coherence on noise, legitimacy on power, strategy ops and capital are all downstream.

0:40Without narrative control, none of it will ever stick. This has been one of the core premise of my account. In a world of infinite output, story is the scarce primitive. Whoever can compress chaos into something people can feel, remember, forgive and rally around, actually runs the system. This skill is worth more than the entire C-suite combined. Okay. So lay off the CEO, the CFO, the CTO. You just need a storyteller. You're good to go. No, people are having fun with this one. What was your take, Jordy? Break it down for me. How did you frame this? How did you process this? I mean, should we read through the article briefly or at least summarize it?

1:15Yeah, yeah, for sure. So Katie writes, companies are desperately seeking storytellers. Brands trying to wrest greater control from their narratives are seeking storytelling skill sets. without a campfire in sight. Maybe some of them have a warm hearth like we do. Anyways, Corporate America's latest... What is the campfire thing? Normally, you'd be telling a story. Oh, around a campfire. Yeah, that makes sense. Light a fire and be telling a story that way. I usually think of smoking cigars around campfires. That's what I associate. Mostly focused on the cigar. But you like to yap between puffs.

1:45I do, I do. Corporate America's latest hot job is also one of the oldest in history, storytellers. Some companies want a media relations manager by a flashier name. Others need people to produce blogs, podcasts, case studies, and more types of branded content to attract customers, investors, and potential recruits. All seem to use the word differently than in its usual application to novelist playwrights. As storytellers at Google Job Ads said last month, we play an integral role in driving customer acquisition and long-term growth. The listing sought a customer storytelling manager to join the company's Google Cloud storytelling team.

2:19That sounds like a fantastic opportunity in another life. Personally, I'd be on the Google Cloud storytelling team. For sure. In some ways, in some ways we are. One article the unit published this year was titled Lowe's Innovation, How Vertex AI Helps Create Interactive Shopping Experiences. Microsoft Security Organization, meanwhile, is recruiting a senior director overseeing narrative and storytelling described as part cybersecurity technologist, part communicator and part marketer. Sure. Vanta is also hiring a storyteller. Notion recently. Head of storytelling. That's right. Productivity apps, Notion recently merged its comms, social media, and influencer functions into one 10-person team, a so-called storytelling team.

3:01Katie goes on and on. She talks about how more and more of these listings are popping up. They're growing year over year. They're showing up in earnings calls. Yeah. And I went and tried to find - I have a different take on this. I think as soon as there's a Wall Street, I mean, we love Katie, but as soon as there's there's a Wall Street Journal piece about a trend, the trend is effectively dead. And so there is no more alpha in hiring storytellers. You need to hire a yarn spinner. You need to hire a fabulist, someone who will go around to group chats and tell wild lies about your product, your company, how successful you are.

3:38You recruit this person and then they go around seeding little anecdotes, little tall tales, and they spin yarns. I think that's called securities fraud. I don't know. It certainly depends. Maybe if there's no securities changing hands. I tried to find a storyteller from a long time ago. Okay. And I found none other than the legend Steve Clayton, currently the vice president of Microsoft's communication strategy. But back in 2010, what was he hired for? The chief storyteller. No way. They were using that term 15 years ago. That's crazy. It feels like a very modern term. that title from 2010 to June 2021.

4:17I was trying to also kind of understand the, uh, from like the early 1900s to the 1950s, you had copywriters like that. It was, it was like pretty elite to be a copywriter. This was like a high status job. You were using Don Draper. Isn't Don Draper? He was a creative director, but also a writer and the people that he worked with were copywriters because at that time print media being able to use your words to get people to take action that you want that you benefit from is a very elite skill set one more example uh that i mentioned earlier early storytellers in silicon valley guy kawasaki uh he was he was one of apple's employees originally responsible for marketing their macintosh computer line in 1984.

5:01he actually popularized the word evangelist in marketing the Macintosh as an Apple evangelist and the concepts of evangelism marketing and technology evangelism slash platform and evangelism in general. And he became this idea of like word of mouth marketing, not quite storytelling, different keyword around it, but he was also sort of one of the early turning points in tech marketing. Anyway. Yeah, and around that time you started to get content strategists, right? And if you look back to the 80s and 90s, it was about, that was kind of like the boom of brand strategy, brand identity. Think like the Nike era of marketing.

5:47And Bology recently went viral because there was a clip from an older podcast that was reposted on Axe, went viral. And it was his take a few years ago during the creator economy boom, arguing that companies need a founding creator or like a creator and resident. It was higher than creator and residents. It was like on the co-founding team, you should have a CTO and then you should have a creator. But it went viral and everyone was saying like, oh, this is so, he's so behind. And I had to correct someone. I was like, no, no, no. Like that clip is actually a couple of years old. When he was saying it, it wasn't.

6:24So it was sort of interesting that way. Early insight. Yeah. I wrote a piece for the newsletter today at tbpn.com. And of course, I titled it, You Don't Need a Storyteller. It said, according to a friend of the show, Katie, at the Wall Street Journal, companies are desperate to hire storytellers. Hiring a storyteller is not a new phenomenon, but it makes sense that companies feel the need to hire them right now. Why? Because it's never been more obvious that the best storytellers in the world create billions of dollars of value for their companies and create massive advantages using only their words.

6:54Their words are so powerful that no matter where they appear on the internet, they draw millions of views and create a vortex of talent, capital, and customers. Yeah, there's this thing where like, if you have a hot take, you don't actually need to own the platform. You can just go do a circuit of appearances. A podcast tour. Anyways, I'll continue. So the reality distortion field that emerges often results in 100x PE ratios. Of course, every company in the world wants this. The problem is that it's impossible to hire the most elite storytellers because they are founders. Think Elon, Karp, and Palmer.

7:29New coinage alert. I call these types Joe Rogan CEOs. I love it. You know if you have a Joe Rogan CEO. It's fine if you don't. There's great CEOs that are not Joe Rogan CEOs, but there's a certain type of CEO that's a Joe Rogan CEO. And to be clear, you're not saying that the CEO has to have the same aesthetics as Joe Rogan or the same style as Joe Rogan. Well, even Karp has not been on Joe Rogan. That's true. But you know that if he went on, it would be a grand slam. It'd be electric. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no. So it's more about being able to put on a performance in that particular environment.

8:03Can you capture people's attention for three hours? Yes. Just like rambling, basically. Whereas there have been CEOs that have gone on Joe Rogan successfully, but they just haven't delivered a Joe Rogan experience. And I think if you think about early stage founders, who would go on and just crush Joe Rogan? Augustus D 'Origo. It just immediately comes to mind. You know who these people are. And there's CEOs, founders, CEOs of his generation. He's a JRC. That are amazing, even though they're not necessarily a JRC. He's a JRC. So I continue, the internet is noisier than ever with thousands of startups competing for Mindshare.

8:44When every startup has a great launch video, no one does. And yet these storytellers consistently break through and dominate the timeline. Even though Gen.ai allows marketing teams big and small to massively increase their output, it is often not even 1 % as effective as one of these elite storyteller founders going on a podcast or just posting stream of consciousness on X. The white pill for savvy marketing teams is that even as we're seeing an exponential increase in content production, I'm not sure we're seeing an exponential increase in great ideas. That means that companies large and small that don't have the luxury of having an Elon or Palmer on the payroll still have a chance to break through the noise and be remembered.

9:21As I was personally reflecting on 2025, there were only a handful of like truly corporate storytelling moments that I remember. And each of them worked for different reasons. One, don't work at Anderil. Iconic campaign. Palmer makes like a cameo in it, but he's not the star. He's just like a character in it, but you could remove Palmer and the ad would still carry weight. I thought that was one of the best campaigns of the year. The other one was Astronomer. Their reaction to the crisis and the viral moment they had. The campaign is titled, Thank You for Your Interest in Astronomer. It obviously featured Gwyneth Paltrow.

10:05I think this one will be studied in 10 years. It was like really a perfect reaction to that moment. And I did not know Astronomer before then. I do now. I will never forget them. I thought ramps expenses should do themselves with Saquon. That one was this combination of like luck, incredible execution and timing. And ultimately, it just like having the Eagles got it done. And that like was the cherry on top. It was a great campaign. It was a great, you know, first Super Bowl commercial for them. And then finally, Avi Schiffman's campaign, which I call Buy Every Billboard. He literally bought every billboard.

10:47Friend did something absurd, which we can call the Buy Every Billboard strategy. Many people criticize the campaign and the product, but the results from an awareness standpoint are undeniable. Avi spent one to two million, was my estimate, and became a household name, at least on the coast. And a lot of other brands have spent like 10 times that amount and you don't even know who they are. And I think like it's very possible that billboards can have increasing returns to scale. So you might buy two billboards, not really see any noticeable like lift and awareness and attention and traffic. But if you buy like 200, it's sort of undeniable.

11:23You can't miss it. When he came on the show and was like, it's the biggest billboard campaign in history. I was like, there's no way. And then I saw it everywhere. And I was like, okay, Anyways, I said hiring a storyteller to craft narratives and tell your story internally and externally is fine. But if the goal is to be remembered and you lack a Joe Rogan CEO, remember that one great campaign is worth 10 ,000 posts. Yeah, I would just like to see companies instead of, you know, frantically just trying to make a lot of noise in a bunch of random ways as you go into 2026. How do you have one breakout moment campaign and truly be remembered?

11:59I'm trying to square like the problem that these job posts are trying to solve. So in the Wall Street Journal article, it says the percentage of LinkedIn job postings in the US that include the term storyteller doubled in the year ending November 26, I guess, to include some 50 ,000 listings under marketing and more than 20 ,000 job listings under media and communications that mentioned the term storyteller, storytelling. clearly people are you know business leaders are interested in storytelling both as a you know a narrative for investors but also uh as an actual physical job but i'm wondering like you get in the seat it does feel like a little bit of what this this journal article is saying is like is like you're going to be storytelling every single day it's kind of counter to what which i guess is what your whole point was but it's very much counter to your point of like one big campaign one breakthrough idea.

12:56I don't know, is there a world where you need both, where you need inspiration, but you still need, at a certain point, there was an example here. It's like, they did a Lowe's case study on how Vertex AI helps create interactive shopping experiences. Is that going to be the major breakthrough? The standout moment for me this year from Microsoft was Satya saying, I'm happy to be a leaser. I'm good for my 80 billion. So when you think about when I, you know, I think what does that do for a Lowe's partnership? You know, this was actually Google's cloud storytelling team. They published an article.

13:32And so if they just have to get out a blog post, maybe there is some benefit to just like shifting their mindset to at least being like, hey, instead of just doing like a list of facts, like why don't you try and like tell it like a story? Meaning like the react structure, conflict, resolution, characters, antagonists. Like, you know, like, because like a lot of like, it sounds like a low bar. They didn't want Lowe's to have efficient cloud infrastructure. They didn't want the shopping experiences to be interactive. But then Google came in and changed it up and changed up the game. You know, if I'm at a big company, if I'm employed at a big company, it would be cool to have a recent, like a centralized resource.

14:10That's like, here's how we talk about this product. Here's how we talk about our mission. Here's how we talked about talk about our roadmap in the near term and the medium term and the long term. Right. But ultimately, when you think of the companies that are great at storytelling, it is because the CEO is a great storyteller. I would argue that Apple, who's historically been an amazing storyteller, is not currently an incredible storyteller because Tim Cook is like 11 out of 10 operationally. and he's not the guy to go on. I don't see Tim Cook popping up on a bunch of podcasts. They're also not paying him enough to go do extra stuff.

14:50If you're making that type of money, you're not going to be like, yeah, I'm going to go work on the weekends. You're going to five o 'clock rolls around. Exactly. You're bailing. You're bailing. It hasn't mattered. He's told the story through the company's performance, which is that he is one of the most elite operators in business history. Last night, I feel like we had dinner with a great storyteller, and he told us his entire life story. And what was interesting and why I thought it was a really great story was two things. One, the facts of the story, just the truth, was a lot of up and down, a lot of conflict.

15:22Yeah, it was riveting. It was riveting. Failure wins. He's the protagonist, but there were antagonists and there were mentors and trials and tribulations. It really did fit the hero's journey. So the facts were there and you could go fact check them and be like, oh yeah, there were these story points. But then also the way he told the story didn't hide those. There's another version of that story where he only tells you the good moments in the story, and he doesn't tell you about any of the trial and tribulations. And we're like, okay, yeah, we get it. You're successful. It's boring. Instead, we were like, whoa, another downturn, another up, another swing.

16:01It was emotional. It was a roller coaster. It was a great story. If If there's anything that comes out of the storyteller era of corporate marketing, it should be giving marketers, writers, storytellers permission to actually inject conflict into their marketing materials. Yeah, look at the way that Palmer responded to that journal piece about how Anderil had a fire at one of their test sites, right? He was paraphrasing, but it was effectively, yes, we had a fire at the missile test site or whatever, at the explosive test site, right? Like, yes, we, and he was trying to do that. He was trying to do that in the journal article when he, clearly when he was talking to them, but they pulled out moments where it was like, we fail a lot.

16:43Yeah. Whereas Palmer was trying to tell a good story, which is like, yeah, we fail a lot because we test a lot. Yeah. And we're trying to iterate faster than our competitors. And through that we'll succeed. I think tech needs to fall, like fall in love with advertising again. Advertising is amazing. Like I want to see companies hiring advertising specialists. I think this gets lost because we're in this era of rapid testing, iterating through a bunch of assets, volume. So do you think it's going to be hard for companies to hire great storytellers? The Venn diagram of people who get tech, get people, can explain complex things simply, and can make people care is tiny.

17:25It's easier to be a great storyteller if you have motion than if you have aura. It is. Tech bro obsessed with storytelling but hasn't read a book in the last five years. Instead of a launch video, somebody should just write an announcement in the full hero's journey. That actually sort of works. I mean, I would use the story circle when I would write YouTube videos. It's basically like a three-act structure but in eight parts. There's a clue, Eric Zaworski says, there's a big clue in the middle of the viral Wall Street Journal article by Dolly Dighton that explains why the people who would otherwise crush the role of storyteller, the hot new job at hot startups, rarely get the gig in the end.

18:07As designer Stefan Sagmeister observed back in 2014, it's all the people who are not storytellers who now suddenly want to be storytellers. Yeah, I just think a title like this, I think a good test if you're trying to hire for a role like this is would the person be, do they want the title storyteller? Yeah. Or would they be okay with the title copywriter? Because in my view, if you're hiring somebody to be a storyteller, their job is to like write down words in a structured, impactful way and help the entire organization like share those words in a consistent manner. A lot of people want the title creative director, but do they want to be a project manager?

18:48No, they want to be a creative director, right? There's just a status associated with that. There's maybe a status associated with storyteller. But at the end of the day, if you're trying to hire for this, do you want somebody that is obsessed with writing? You should be willing to take the job of storyteller. If I come to you and you say you want to work for me as a storyteller, I say I'm going to start you off with the title fabulist. and if you're cool with that then maybe we'll upgrade you to storyteller chat gpt has a new image model they just launched this sam altman teased it with a photo that at this point you know him and a bunch of uh him and a bunch of polos what is the actual announcement how is this how is this framed i know i know the model got better elf but what is elf it's a good model sir today we're releasing a new version of chat gpt images powered by our new flagship image generation model Now, whether you're creating something from scratch or editing a photo, you'll get the output you're picturing.

19:47It makes precise edits while keeping details intact. And it's four times faster. You know that's a big deal. There's a Sora video from Ramp Capital. Let's pull it up. Impressive. Oh. Very nice. That's pretty funny. I like it. Now let's see more slop. Oh, my gosh.

20:05The ability to use Sora to make jokes at Sam's expense is truly new territory for, I mean, I guess there were probably people that were in MS Paint making fun of Bill Gates. So these transformations work on both simple and more intricate concepts and are easy to try using preset styles and ideas in the new ChatGPT images feature, no written prompt required. In an effort to make it easier to prompt, we are now instantiating more UI. So as that image shows you. As the models get better, we need more SaaS. With this, it feels like OpenAI and the ChatGPT app are definitely sort of embracing this idea that you will need to bring a little bit of idea generation.

20:52OpenAI hires an executive from Google to lead M &A. OpenAI hire, comms chief Hannah Wong is departing the company. Okay. This came out yesterday. She's stepping down. She's going to depart the company at the end of January. Wong was the AI giant's first chief comms officer and guided the company through the launch of ChatGPT. Heightened regulatory scrutiny, controversies, and a slew of deals and lawsuits. The bigger picture, departure comes as the company is pushing on a variety of fronts. Do you think that she asked for the storyteller title and she didn't get it, so she quit in protest? Very, very possibly, John.

21:24It's very possible. Yeah, I feel like she deserves, she deserves like a little bit of a vacation at this point. I can't think of a more stressful job since 2021. We've had some gray hair. There is a fantastic article in the Wall Street Journal. We got to go through it. Advertisers start Christmas season early. This was written for us. This is fantastic news. Brands chase inflation-weary shoppers with plentiful TV spots. There's a whole bunch of interesting article or interesting stats in here. Are you tired of Santas and relentlessly cheerful snowmen filling every screen? No. Blame the advertisers.

22:05Advertisers kicked off the holiday season even earlier this year, and they are inundating televisions with commercials. The activity comes despite continuing efforts by many businesses to rein in costs to contend with tariffs. Holiday TV ads started in earnest in early October, and companies have spent a combined$1.47 billion over the past nine weeks, a 13 % jump compared with the year ago period. Guess how much holiday retail sales are expected to be this year? I'll give you a hint. In 2020, it was 0.7 trillion, 700 billion. Then it went to 850 billion, then 900, then 950. Last year came in around 99, something really close.

23:02What was it? It was 0.98 trillion,$980 billion this year. It's expected to be over a trillion. There are massive investments in digital promotions, flooding social media, email inboxes, and text messages. So, of course, the$1.47 billion that's happening on TV is just a small slice of the overall advertising that's happening this holiday season. Retailers spent$5.8 billion on digital ads in the U.S. from November 1st to November 7th, a 4 % increase from last year. Holiday shopping season remains a critical moment for retailers with inflation still weighing on household budgets, but brands aren't taking any chances of losing out on the action.

23:44The National Retail Federation is projecting that holiday sales will surpass$1 trillion. A handful of retailers are proving particularly busy on the TV ad front so far. Walmart's ads feature a Dr. Seuss-inspired world starring Walter Goggins as the Grinch. Target, meanwhile, brings back Chris Kay, a jolly bearded Christmas enthusiast introduced in a 2024 campaign. In Target's spot, a woman with whom he is on a coffee date gets a peek at his gift list and leaves him confused by referencing his naughty list. Interesting. They polled consumers, how do you feel about the timing of holiday ads? When holiday ads start.

24:31So Amazon, one of the largest advertisers in the country, aired its first holiday TV ad on October 13th. Okay, but you've got to give me more. Was Santa in the ad? I'm kind of a purist. I like to go full speed ahead on the Christmas spirit. Would you say that the Christmas ads are A, much too early, B, slightly too early, C, about the right time, slightly too late or much too late? I think you can start doing holiday advertising without putting snow on the ground. How would you do that? Wait, describe a holiday ad that doesn't at least have a little bit of snow. I would like to see Amazon do a plain text ad that's Star Wars style where the text is just scrolling.

25:17And it's like, get ready to buy stuff. This is about to be the Super Bowl of just buying stuff. Do it on Amazon.com. It's time to buy. It's time to buy. Buku Capital is arguing that AI is not a bubble. He says real businesses are seeing real impact from AI. Coding and tech support help are the two clear immediate role beneficiaries. Advertising is another clear beneficiary. Meta has talked about it in detail. Traditional boring companies like C.H. Robinson are pointing to AI and agentic workflows as making them more efficient. The market is responding quite rationally and scrutinizing these AI input companies diligently see Broadcom and Oracle this past week.

25:58So that is the sign of, yeah, I agree with him. Like the fact, people are taking a victory lap dunking on Oracle. It's like, this is how the market should be working. Like it should sort of be like, okay, we're regarding this future RPO five years out with some skepticism. We're not going to give you that much credit for it upfront. You got to actually deliver some real value. You got to get some cash flow into the business. Mag7 minus Tesla have reasonable valuations and the hyperscalers have more demand than they can handle. He says, I've been vocal that indiscriminately gunning all AI input companies is a dumb thing to do.