The artisanal trend away from copywriters and art directors to ‘storytellers’
What everyone loves about being called a ‘storyteller’ is that it can be defined as whatever you like, so anyone can claim to do it – says Dave Trott
It seems everyone in advertising is desperate to call themselves a storyteller.
They write articles about storytelling, they give lectures, make videos, even offer courses on storytelling.
They must be seen to have mastered the ancient craft of storytelling.
They want everyone to know they can keep an entire village spellbound around the fire, with their tales.
Well, unlike everyone else in advertising, I’m not a storyteller.
I’ve always been a creative director.
And I never had a storyteller in any of my departments.
I never hired storytellers, I hired thinkers, creative people.
The change from copywriters and art directors to storytellers is part of the artisanal trend.
Everything must be stone ground, or made by hand, or traced back to some pre-industrial roots.
So storytelling harks back to the days before video games and mobile phones.
Before television, before electricity.
When we’d sit around the fire and drink mead and eat venison.
Listening to the skilled weaver of tales who held the yokels spellbound.
That’s all very well.
But the storyteller never had to actually sell a product.
Beowulf wasn’t sponsored by anyone.
It was just a story.
And also the storyteller was guaranteed the full attention of his audience.
There was no competition.
It was his story or nothing.
But today there’s £20 billion spent on advertising in the UK, for example.
And 89% of it is not noticed or remembered.
That’s roughly £18 billion ignored, because it’s all wallpaper.
So nine out of ten storytellers are talking to themselves.
Of course what everyone loves about being called a ‘storyteller’ is that it can be defined as whatever you like.
So anyone can claim to do it.
Wherever job you do, you can make it sound like telling a story.
Whether you’re a ‘marketing storyteller’, a ‘digital storyteller’, a ‘financial storyteller’, a brand ‘storyteller’, or a ‘management storyteller’.
All you have to do is add storyteller to the end of your job title to make it sound more creative.
Which is why I find it patronising to be called a storyteller.
It demeans the real job of advertising.
The job I’m supposed to be doing.
Which is getting my message noticed and remembered.
In the old days, storytellers got noticed simply by telling a story.
They were the only one in their village doing it.
Nowadays everyone, everywhere is doing it all the time.
So being a storyteller just means being exactly like everyone else.
Being part of the wallpaper.
Which guarantees you won’t get noticed or remembered.
Just like the other £18 billion of storytellers all telling similar stories.
The £2 billion that gets noticed are the ones concentrating on making themselves different from everyone else.
Concentrating on standing out from the wallpaper.
The ones who aren’t storytellers.
Dave Trott is a consultant, author and former ad agency creative director. This article was first published on his blog
Finally, someone from the upper echelons who isn’t afraid to speak the truth.
another wonderful abomination along the same lines is ‘content strategist’…the most confusing designation to be thrust upon us thanks to a lady called kristina halvorson. so what does a content strategist do?
apparently, anything you want her to do.
audit content, tabulate and categorise content, tag content, research and plan content……and when you’re finally done with all that …..then don’t forget that you have to now write or create the content .
So you have people who can do the other 5 non-creative things fairly well but CAN’T write…or people who can write but haven’t got a a clue about the other 5 non-creative tasks. No wonder content is crap.
ReplyPerfectly written…about time the industry got back to what it does best …create awareness via ads…not Fb banners or tweets…not “content” but copy craft… the industry seems to run out of giving new names to old functions…forget about titles man!
ReplyI love Dave Trott’s columns.
Occasionally, I binge-read them by clicking on the “related content” links at the bottom.
What’s most interesting about Dave’s world view is that, almost always, he tells well-rendered stories to make his point. Stories from his own life experience. Or his knowledge of history.
Except here, in this column.
Which just goes to show that, in selling your product (in this case the Dave Trott creative philosophy) that there’s an exception to every rule.
ReplyGreat article Dave. Another word to throw into marketing’s room 101 alongside content, curated, disruption (and many, many others).
ReplyHave your say