Long before marketing existed, stories were already moving through civilisations, cultures and generations. They were how people made sense of the world.
Stories are relational. They need a storyteller and a captivated audience willing to imagine a different world or be carried somewhere new. Stories are how we’ve passed on knowledge, wisdom and culture. They help us learn, remember and stay connected.
The best storytellers have a knack for stopping time and creating pleasurable anticipation. They introduce heroes and villains. They know when to reveal a twist, when to pause for effect, and when to leave something unsaid.
While writing The Marketing Movement™, I found myself thinking constantly about the reader and, later, the listener too. How would I make people feel something, reflect differently, and see marketing through a new lens? How could I make it accessible to anyone interested in creating movement in their work or life?
I didn’t want to write as a teacher or a preacher, although many sections do share useful knowledge and insights. That’s probably an old habit from a career spent making marketing and communications easier to understand. When it came time to choose the audiobook narrator, I was looking for a warm storyteller whose delivery could ebb and flow with the manuscript in the same way it had been written.
Stories, metaphors and analogies became the most natural way to communicate the book’s ideas because the human mind is like a parachute. It works best when it is open.
Writing a book is a lot like developing a product. Delivery and packaging matter just as much as the ideas and creativity do.
This audiobook journal entry is an ode to storytelling because stories became my greatest shortcut to reaching my audience while writing a non-fiction book that I hoped would feel different from traditional marketing books.
The intention behind the book was always to move you emotionally, challenge conventional thinking, and help you move forward.