Storytelling: The Modern
Marketer’s Greatest Yet Most
Dangerous Tool
Giovanni Rodriguez is CEO and
cofounder of The Silicon Valley Story
Lab, a media and content-strategy
consulting firm that advises the
Fortune 500, global NGOs, and leading
technology startups. Among other
services, the Lab provides storytelling
training to executives, marketers, and
communications professionals, in
both online and offline experiences.
Giovanni is a regular contributor
to Forbes where he writes about
his professional experiences and
pioneering communication projects.
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A Fast and Simple Primer on Best Principles
and Practices
Giovanni Rodriguez
Abstract: In the past few years, storytelling has emerged
as a must-have competency for businesses everywhere.
What are the core principles for businesses and what are
the best practices? The author—who advises companies
in the Fortune 500, global NGOs, and leading technology
startups—offers a fast and simple primer on the princi-
ples and best practices on modern corporate storytelling.
As the author states, there are eleven core principles.
But he counsels that the principles continue to evolve.
Keywords: communications, communications
professionals, marketers, marketing, storytelling
Introduction
In the summer of 2017, I launched a series of articles on
Forbes.com about the art, science, and ethics of story-
telling (Rodriguez 2017b). The objective of the series: to
share key insights gathered from my studies and work
in the field with clients in both civic and commercial
arenas. At the time of the launch, I regarded each of the
articles as building blocks for a curriculum on what I’ve
come to regard as the modern marketer’s greatest but
most dangerous communication tool.
If the Forbes series were ever to become a full cur-
riculum, this monograph—which, in an earlier version
appeared as an article in the series (Rodriguez 2017a)—
would be the foundation. In fact, over the past few
months, my business partners and I have used drafts of
this monograph as a primer for a storytelling workshop
we have taken to businesses, agencies, and nonprofits
throughout the world. What we have learned in these
workshops—in discussions with communication profes-
sionals, marketing professionals, and executives seeking
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 Storytelling: The Modern Marketer’s Greatest Yet Most Dangerous Tool
a more robust and reliable approach to
thought leadership—has further deepened
our perspective on the subject matter.
What follows is our current ­ thinking.
But we will find ways to update the
­monograph as we continue with the global
workshops.
We Are Culturally Wired
for Storytelling
In the world of corporate ­communications,
much has been written about how t­he
digital age i­ ncreasingly has contributed
to the ­ tribalization of society, the steady
fragmentation of people into like-minded
­ associated with the “top of the ­funnel” expe-
groups (Pariser 2011). What has not gotten as
much attention is the role that s­ torytelling has
played on platforms like Facebook, ­Twitter,
and the latest iteration of blog ­platforms such
as Medium.
Just as important to note: the t­ ribalization
of communication through s­torytelling
well preceded the digital age. As I noted in
several instances in the Forbes series, sto-
ries predate written history. For students
of storytelling, this is not just an inter-
esting, if geeky, fact, but an invitation to
­examine what may have been the original
purpose of storytelling. According to some
storytelling experts—based on what they
know about indigenous cultures—stories
in part assisted with the indoctrination of
younger members of the tribe by having
them tell, in their own words, the stories
of the tribe (Loofbourrow 2017). Assum-
ing that this story and other stories about
stories are true, the tribal origin of stories
should be top of mind when practicing sto-
rytelling. Stories can unite people, but they
can also divide. That said, there’s an often
overlooked aspect of tribal storytelling that
might help us compensate for its shortcom-
ings. I will return to that at the end of this
article.
We Are Physically/Biologically
Wired as Well
This was the topic of the fourth installment
in the Forbes series, entitled, “This Is Your
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Brain On Storytelling,” (Rodriguez 2017c)
where I looked at organic chemicals and
the effect they have on us when we follow
a story. I note how these and other com-
pounds (I call them drugs) might effectively
guide people down the so-called marketing
funnel from attention, to arousal, to action.
First, there’s cortisol, which is produced
when something warrants our attention,
like distress. When we hear about potential
threats in our environment, or hear some-
thing distressing in a story, cortisol helps us
stay attentive. From a marketer’s ­perspective,
cortisol may be the compound most closely
rience—the first contact with a customer—
known as awareness. Next comes a far more
popular compound—so much has been
­written about it—called dopamine. This gets
produced to aid in an elaborate learning sys-
tem that rewards us (with pleasure) when we
follow the emotionally charged events in a
story. This takes us further down the funnel.
If cortisol helps with awareness, dopamine
aids, so to speak, with arousal, rewarding us
to stick with the journey.
And then comes what could very well be
the wonder drug of storytelling: oxytocin.
While there are many other things in the
human organism that help make us social,
oxytocin has been identified as a chemical
that promotes prosocial, empathic behavior.
And, according to the story scientists, it’s
what enables us to identify with the hero/
protagonist in a story.
I conclude the article with a note of cau-
tion. The young science of ­neurochemistry
has led to flimsy and u ­ nsavory ­marketing
practices. In the spirit of the ­scientific method,
I advise readers to a­ pproach the topic with
a critical mind.
Warning: Stories Are
“Truth-Neutral.” Tell Stories
Responsibly
And here’s one reason for the caution.
Joseph Campbell, the famous scholar of
­
comparative mythology, often observed
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 Storytelling: The Modern Marketer’s Greatest Yet Most Dangerous Tool
that stories need not be factually true to
be effective as long as they resonate as
­emotionally truthful. That’s what makes
them so powerful, and dangerous. One
kind of danger is the power that the story
has to distract us from facts that don’t quite
fit the story arc. In my article about story
and neurochemistry, I quote a physician
who describes how the brain, “seeking its
dopamine reward . . . overlooks contradic-
tory or conflicting information whenever
possible.” But there’s a more nefarious kind
of danger: the intentional use of story to
obscure facts, deny facts, and posit ­outright
falsehoods. This is a clear and present
­danger in the current era.
Why Businesses, in Particular,
Should Love Stories: They Are
Problem/Solution Based
In professional contexts—for example, in
branding and positioning—the story-based
approach for developing “messaging” has
great value because of its focus on ­describing
both the problem and solution the ­customer
is facing. The focus is guaranteed because of
the basic structure of a story: act I (quest),
act II (conflict), and act III (resolution). With
the story-based approach to positioning, the
challenge for businesses shifts from decid-
ing which product features to highlight, to
articulating the relevant problem they are
solving, and how.
In workshops, my business partners and
I have taken extra time to examine each
of the three components (quest, conflict,
and resolution). One thing we emphasized
was the importance of truthfully sizing
each of the components, for without a good
quest and a great conflict, there can be no
­meaningful (valuable) resolution. We give
the example of a startup that I worked for
in 2000, a time of great turmoil in the tech
industry; it was the aftermath of the first
major Internet bust. The startup—VMware,
which was then a small, little-known com-
pany operating inside a single building in
Silicon Valley—was about to reintroduce its
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technology to the enterprise market. In the
late 1990s, it had found a small and prof-
itable niche selling its product—software
that enabled PCs to run multiple operating
systems at once—for engineers to test ap-
plications. VMware did that by identifying
a pretty big challenge (helping engineers
test applications more efficiently) and by
providing a pretty big solution (by virtual-
izing the standard Intel chip). But when it
came time to move to the enterprise mar-
ket, where the opportunity was to revo-
lutionize the data center one Intel server
at a time, VMware had a story based on a
bigger challenge: helping businesses every-
where to save money on computing during
the economic downturn. Today, VMware
is one of the world’s largest technology
companies.
Stories Create not Just Perceived
Value but Perceived Valuation as
Well
A related principle: Stories can help busi-
nesses and other organizations create
value, and valuation. Again, it’s a structural
thing: between act II (conflict) and act III
(resolution) is where the perceived value of
the product is created. But if the corporate
storyteller is a marketer inside a startup,
the same exercise might help increase the
perceived valuation of the company in the
eyes of its ultimate customer: the company
that will someday acquire the startup.
In workshops we have conducted with
startups, we emphasize the importance
of story-based positioning versus brand-
ing. The art and science of positioning a
­company—that is, helping to communicate
where the company sits relative to other
technology companies in its category—has
emerged as a must-have competency in
the technology world because of the sheer
volume of competing companies. What my
business partners and I have learned is that
being able to tell the story about what a com-
pany is doing for others in the ecosystem
(potential partners and competitors alike)
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