Said Differently: A Show About B2B Storytelling
Said Differently features B2B go-to-market leaders as they share experiences and advice on balancing the art and science of storytelling, messaging, and market positioning. Sponsored by Troupe, the platform for story and messaging success.
Said Differently: A Show About B2B Storytelling
Defining and Measuring the Role of Chief Storyteller
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How Do You Define and Measure the Emerging Role of Chief Storyteller?
In this episode of Troupe's podcast SAID DIFFERENTLY, fractional head of storytelling for OWOW Agency Elliott Rayner digs into the increased attention being given to crafting and bringing winning stories and narratives to market. Elliott has authored books and runs workshops applying his specific framework that helps to align teams from the outset so that your messaging isn't just consistently practiced, but is connected to commercial outcomes.
Key moments in the conversation:
02:07 = Buzz around creating roles and teams for storytelling, but how do you define the role and its responsibility.
06:21 = Connecting your story and messaging to commercial success.
08:31 = Lessons from B2C applied to B2B dynamics, especially with information overload and shrinking attention spans.
11:10 = His go-to framework with three components for helping teams reach an improved and confidently-aligned narrative to tell the market.
16:04 = Head of storytelling can't just be externally oriented, but needs the trust and buy-in of the teams.
18:21 = How solutions like Troupe can help "prove it" with the data that measures and improves alignment and shows the connection to pipeline and revenue outcomes.
21:20 = Is this a full-time role or just an area of ownership for an existing role? Elliott sees two possible paths for the role, either an evolution of the brand role or it will have more of an emphasis on narrative and its consistency.
23:49 = How does the new world of AI accelerating product feature-shipping velocity impact the shelf life of messaging and your narrative?
For more resources, visit Elliott's website for his free ebook "Product Marketing: The Story Engine" and more: https://www.productnarratives.com/
Finding winning messages with Troupe: https://www.troupe.ai/stories/product-news-winning-messages
#messaging #storytelling #chiefmarketingofficer #productmarketing #b2bmarketing #marketingstrategy #positioning
Credits:
Troupe.ai for sponsorship: https://www.troupe.ai
Graphic and production support: 24 and Up
Music: https://pixabay.com/users/backgroundmusicforvideos-46459014/
Said Differently is sponsored by Troupe, the AI hub for messaging success. You can watch the video versions of these podcasts on our YouTube playlist.
Hi everybody, welcome to this episode of Said Differently, brought to you by Troop. I'm your host, Jennifer Socora, and this is your program for all things related to B2B storytelling, narrative, messaging, all the good juicy stuff. Today we have a guest that I'm super excited about because we've recently just met. I said recently, but who knows when you'll see this video, Elliot Raynor, who is a chief head of storytelling for OWOW. And Elliot has also been doing a lot of consulting work and uh workshops and things like that around, you know, for product marketers and more around building story. So super excited. Elliot, if you could say hi and give yourself a quick intro or give it a great thanks.
SPEAKER_01Uh Jennifer, yeah, really happy to be here and talk about my uh favorite subject, a subject that I know you're obsessed with as much as I am. And yeah, so I think what gives it away is the title Head of Storytelling, which I know I think we we're gonna discuss today. But I basically spent um the start of my career in the sports industry, a great place to learn how to tell stories. And then I've since spent uh a lot of time within tech, B2C, B2B, um, basically working with teams to learn how you can tell better product stories, with the idea that in most markets the best product rarely wins, but the best product story usually does. And so helping teams work out what is a strategy to actually build a story and basically what is the story that you can tell better than anyone else in the market.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh, I love it. Yes, I am a bit obsessed with this. I actually started writing stories when I was like five years old. So it's my blood. Um, yes, so the topic of our episode today is around this role of chief storyteller, which is really generating a huge amount of buzz. And um, you know, so like looking, I did a quick search. I know you you've posted about this, about the headlines around this. And, you know, there's been a lot of buzz even in the first half of 2026 so far, around, you know, this role, this emerging role of head of storytelling. You know, I just did, I'm looking at my notes here. You know, Wall Street Journal ran an article in December that kind of really kicked off a lot of conversation about that. But even before that, there were companies including Microsoft, Vanta, Notion, who've been appointing people to chief storytelling positions. They've been re-orging their teams and having teams like that are focused on narrative and all of that good stuff. So, you know, but storytelling isn't new. We've been doing it since, you know, back when we were in the caves and drawing pictures on cave walls. I mean, but the role now is getting defined, right? And now people are accountable for the role. If you could, if you could define it, Elliot, how would you define the role? And does it differ for different types of companies?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think the truth is it's all an experiment, and every company is doing something different. I think that's what you mentioned the article that I wrote. That's what I was really interested in, because you could look at the job descriptions. And all of those job descriptions for a head of storytelling or a chief storytelling officer were a little bit different. And I'm really looking forward to seeing who they hire because I think the profiles will be will be very different as well, and they'll end up doing very different things, and we'll be able to see what works and what doesn't. Ultimately, I I think what it's not is a person who comes in and creates stories, um, which you'd expect it to be. But after doing this hundreds of times with different teams, what I've always learned is most teams don't lack stories. They've got great storytellers, they've they've they've found a way to be able to tell their story, otherwise, they wouldn't have got too far. Uh, but actually, what you find off is is really misalignment that you go in and you hear 50 different stories. Yes. You know, you go um go spend have lunch with the product team, then go have a beer with the sales team, and then go back to marketing, and you might feel like you work at three different companies. That's been my experience. And so when I look at the definition of this role, it's not just to improve the storytelling, but it's really about aligning and bringing all of the different various functions within an organization and get them to rally behind the same story. And so I think that's the really interesting thing that some people will see that now, or it might take a little bit of time for that to be established, but that's where I see the real future of the role.
SPEAKER_00Why do you think companies are placing an importance on this role right now? Why is this the moment? What's your feel?
SPEAKER_01It could be a couple of things. It could just be a buzzword. You know, that Wall Street Journal comes out, it's a great sounding role. I think most people would be excited to put that on a business card. And so it could be a way to uh attract people to the brand. But I also just think that now people are starting to see there's a direct line between commercial success and um telling a great story. I always say to people, if you doubt storytelling, go look at every industry and see which companies are winning. And I guarantee you it's very rarely the companies with the best product. Uh, it's usually uh the ones who are telling their story the best. So I think you know, the C-level organization and investors are really realizing that that's the important thing and it's worth investing in. And I think you mentioned before, Jennifer, it's not new, it's been around for a while. Yeah. I think the key difference is it's always been seen as a skill, something that we can all train a learning and development thing, rather than a function, rather than something that should be treated very seriously. Uh, and I think that's been the switch in the last six months. Uh, and I think that's where a success is going to lie, is really seeing it more of a function and someone who owns the narrative of the company. Uh, that's a very important thing. And I think it's now finally getting um the idea of allocating someone to be in charge of that.
SPEAKER_00I I really like what you said about how like you're connecting it to commercial success because you know, you can have a story or a plan for your message. Most companies have some kind of messaging plan that they're supposed to be executing on. And you can train your team, you can get them down to like perfection, right? Take them through presentation workshops and soup up the content and everything. But if that foundational message story is missing the mark, the commercial success is going to be less than, right? So now we're down to what's working. Is it working?
SPEAKER_01So, yeah, and you see it all the time, right? I mean, how many times do you see a landing page and you truly understand what a company does or understand if you are the target customer, or understand that this company is the best in the market or the worst in the market. And those are the three things that I that I focus on. And it's I I think like most things in marketing, we we like to make things too complicated. Uh, I think we're very bad at that, and actually think most people agree that the best marketing is simple. And I think that's where storytelling's real advantage lies is storytelling can take something very complicated, very technical and very boring, and make it super simple, super clear, and really effective. And I think that's why the companies who have very highly technical products, um who have uh a buy-in committee or have a product that you need to learn about over 10, 20 brand touch points before you make a decision, these are the ones who are now investing in storytelling because they've got the most to gain. And you've mentioned it before. We've seen it as a B2C thing. It's easy to understand that perfume, cars, uh, sneakers to build brand stories. And I think this is the switch that we're seeing is it's B2B technical products are now saying, oh, the this is something that we should be investing in as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a great point. I'm actually going to switch up the sequence of the questions I had lined up to ask based on what you just said. But yeah, I do think that there's a lot we can learn from B2C, and you bring that background because of where you've worked before you moved into kind of B2B world, and and now I know you do you do both. Um But attention spans are shrinking too, right? So like we're playing into that dynamic dynamic. So even in the B2B world, you don't have all day to tell your story, right? You have to get you and and messaging is about making choices rather than cramming everything in and just giving people like an overwhelming story that they can't remember any of it, right?
SPEAKER_01So yeah, I I always lead with three statistics going in when I need to convince people is that the average person digests 32 gigabytes of information every day. So we've never been more overwhelmed by what we're seeing. The average person has 18 tabs open on their laptop at any one time. Judge you now, Jennifer.
SPEAKER_00Look at your own tabs and tell me if that's oh, I have multiple browsers open, a multiple, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So look, even when I have your attention, I might only have one eighteenth of it. And uh, for those people on TikTok, the average watch time of a TikTok video is 3.3 seconds. So you would think it's not a lot of time to tell a story, but the message I try to get across is you can tell a story in a single image in so much less than one second. Uh, there was the great example of OpenAI's big brand campaign where it had zero copy, uh zero products really in it. It just showed moments of people having that aha moment with uh ChatGPT. And people were able to convey a lot of meaning from that. And that's the real power of storytelling. It doesn't have to be in the page, the real storytelling happens in your brain. And that's why learning a little bit more about the neuroscience and the science of storytelling is such a great advantage for marketers because then you can you don't need a lot of time. You do you if you really understand your audience, you understand the market, and you understand your product, you you can create a great visual story in a fraction of a second.
SPEAKER_00And one would hope. And so let's let's talk about how you approach this. I know, you know, our team just met you recently at the product marketing summit in New York City. You were giving a workshop there. So you give workshops. I know you wrote and published a book last year on called Product Marketing, the Story Engine. So, you know, product marketers are they're kind of in that seat, but look, everybody's telling a story, whether they're a product marketer or not. How do you approach um, you know, as you're thinking about if if if the role of head of storytelling is truly going to be here to stay, um, whether that's a net new role or is folded into an existing role. We we'll get to that in a minute. How do you how does your approach kind of help those folks really develop the right path to getting their story nailed down? I know you have a great framework that you apply. So tell us about what you feel were the essential components.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you almost have a unique advantage as an outsider. And it's very frustrating for the people who work at the company because someone can come in from the outside. But the advantage you have is that you you don't get overwhelmed by the information. And I think most companies have it's not a lack of data or a lack of information or lack of insights that's causing this. It's it's usually the opposite. So, what I started to learn after doing it so many times is what is the least amount of information I need to know to be able to write a great product story? And that's where I got really links back to the name of the book, The Story Engine, because I worked out that actually I just need a solid understanding of your product, solid understanding of your audience, and a solid understanding of your market. And if I have those three things, that's enough to create a product story. And when I think, well, who in the company has those three things? Uh, I'm biased because I'm a product marketer at heart, even though I've worn a lot of hats. Um, but that that's product marketing. And that's why I think that they're so well situated to help. Um, it's not about crafting the stories, but that being in charge of the overall narrative to make sure everyone is singing from the same hymn seat. The way I work is I simply ask three questions. So, three things I want to know. And for any of your listeners who are who are thinking, how can I do this? This is what I would encourage you to do is ask um, what value does my product create? Not what it does, not how many features it has, what value does it create? Number two, who cares most about the value? Not all of your audience, but who's gonna say yes quickest and who's gonna pay the most? That's your ICP. Yes. And then number three is how can I make you believe that we are the best at creating value? That's your social proof. And that comes from an understanding of the market. If you can answer those three things, then you can pretty much create a great landing page, great sales scripts, and everything in between. And I mentioned it in the New York Summit in my workshop, which I know a few of your team were there. But I'm gonna ask you if I was to ask those three very simple questions, I've asked them a hundred times with a hundred different companies, what percentage alignment do you think I would get?
SPEAKER_00Ah, across their teams, you mean? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So if I went in and asked a hundred people in your company, 30 product people, 30 marketers, and 30 salespeople, what value does your product create? Who cares most and why you the best? What alignment do you think you would get as a percentage?
SPEAKER_00Oh, are you asking me?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm asking you, sorry.
SPEAKER_00But we don't have that many people yet. But if I think back to where I've worked before, where we do did have, you know, where I worked with a much larger team, I would say it would be quite low. Now I would say it varies from company to company. Um, but it's usually, you know, I I feel that sometimes marketing g bestows the company with a messaging plan without necessarily really staying engaged with sales, so that there's a disconnection that grows and it it it it increases over time if you let that happen.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, absolutely right. And for me, on average, 100 times I've got 19%, which is it sounds yeah, uh, of alignment. Of alignment, yeah, which is you know, it sounds really low, but then if you really think of every place you've ever worked and and and think about the the teams you've worked with, how aligned were you really? And I don't think it's as high. And the thing I like to do is go and ask your CEO, your CMO, your head of brand, and they will give you a much higher answer. They'll say, I think on average we're around 75%. And then it's a great method to go and show them the real results because if you want to get budget signed off to improve your storytelling or do your alignment, nothing's gonna send a shock to the system than showing them on paper. Because the one thing I always come back to, how can we possibly convince people outside of our company of our value if no one inside of the company or 19% of it is aligned on what that value is? So the first thing you need to do before you do these big campaigns and and and spend a lot of money, make sure we're all aligned. And the great way to do that is to develop your product narrative and improve your storytelling.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, definitely. I I think you know, having having uh and having a process that people feel like they have some transparency into how it, how you got there, how you got to the messaging. You know, when I think about the jobs to be done for the head of storytelling, you've already talked about a number of those things, but I also feel that they need to also be a great internal communicator. Not just about an external thinking about the external story, but internally, how do you develop that buy-in and how do you get people to trust the message?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I as a I consider myself more a fractional head of storytelling because I I go in, I spend six months with the team, get them set up, once they're aligned, and let them go. And basically I split those six months into three stages: discovery, definition, and delivery. So I go in and do the discovery to understand those three things of what your product narrative is. Then we need to define it. And by defining it, I mean not that I define it and love it, that when it's done is when all the most difficult people in the company all agree that they like it. And only then do you move on to the delivery, which is updating all your sales enablement and all of those things. The way I make sure that um I have a good success rate and getting everyone behind a story, which is not easy because you know, Jennifer, everyone has an opinion on a great story or a brand. It's I've always never envious of my brand colleagues when I was at Adidas or any other company, because everyone can have an opinion on what's good or bad when it comes to uh to brand. But that's why I do the workshop format is to get all of those people in the room from the beginning and giving them an opportunity to uh share their insights, share their experiences to make sure that they're represented. What happens then is that they're able to see their fingerprints on the narrative that's been developed. And that's so helpful because they don't no longer see it as a marketing thing, a marketing story, they see it as our story.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_01Through the workshop um experience, what I try to show them is that this is gonna make your life so much easier. And especially when it comes to someone like sales, where they're competitive salespeople, that's they want to make more sales. If you can show them with the science of storytelling that you're gonna be able to sell more if you've got your story straight. And if the customer from the first landing page to the first, second, fifth, whatever meeting to signing the contract is hearing the same thing, your success rate is gonna go through the roof because it's that misalignment and that inconsistency is where deals are lost. And so that's why I feel if you explain that in the in the process, your your ability to get everyone to go, okay, let's do this, is gonna really increase.
SPEAKER_00So that's a good, that's a good point for me to now mention troop, I guess, because you know, not to belabor it because that even though this show is about, you know, sponsored by Troop, it's not about Troop, but measuring and having the data to be able to help those teams see it objectively rather than subjectively, helps them understand that okay, now I see the data about when we are more aligned. Here's what happens to conversion rates from one stage to the next. Here's the lift that we see in our win rates. But with that in the absence of data, it still stays just opinion, does it not?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I suppose so. I mean, it's always been a very difficult thing for me because the question is, okay, well, this all sounds really great, but how do you prove it? Yeah. And you know, my answer was always probably not that great because I would always just think, well, it's the same way we measure anything. That's why we have performance marketing, we can A B test and we can do these things. But my next thing was the alignment. I I honestly think if I can show you that everyone in the company is on the same page by taking you from 19% to 39% and be of and above, then that's a really good indication. But that's to be honest, why I got really excited when I met you guys, because this is the first time I've seen something that um could really kind of demonstrate the success of what a head of storytelling does. Because for a head of storytelling to be able to exist and and be something that's still around in five years, you know what it's like. You have to own a KPI. You have to be able to go to the C level and say, look, this is what I'm the needle I'm moving, and this is how I'm doing it, and by how much. And it's not going to be enough to to go on um on brand figures. You're gonna need something, and I think that's where Troop is gonna have a really interesting few years to see what you guys uncover, to see what the data shows us on what works and what doesn't, and more importantly, as me, as someone who's into the science of storytelling, it's exciting for me to see, well, why is that? And and I think the the you'll be able to draw a clean line to the neuroscience of it of why we love stories. And it's gonna be exciting to see uh, you know, over the hundred different uh sections of messaging that you've created, why does that one just do 10% than the others? And and I think the secret will be in the behavior and the understanding of how people make decisions, which is something that I think is at the heart of marketing, but we maybe don't take it as serious or spend as much time on it as we probably should.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so the role I know you come in with your to the clients as you mentioned a six-month engagement. Um but for those who are looking at having a full-time ahead of somebody who's in charge of storytelling, I'd like to get your take on maybe this is more prediction market because this is a newer role. Um so we're we're just being speculative here. Um but what does that is do you think it's a full-time dedicated role? Does it or does it fold into existing roles? Can it exist? You know, we when you hear that people are developing entire teams around narrative, like maybe that's for a really super large company, but you know, what's your take on that?
SPEAKER_01So I think that we're actually gonna see two paths come up about. We're gonna see one, which is the brand seeing the chief of storytelling officer or head of storytelling being brand or creative related, and the other one gonna be more product marketing related. And so the brand ones I think are gonna be more judged on those, you know, take. Taking what's already there and polishing it to be, you know, a campaign, and that will be measured by you know the typical brand statistics. So it'll just be an evolution of the brand role. Um, and I think you can see that in some of the job descriptions. Is that what they're going for? But then, as we discussed, I think you'll see that second one, which they'll be expected to do something different, uh, they'll be respected to deliver on something that's different to brand. And I think that's where narrative comes in. And I think that's where how can we build consistency? And you know, there hasn't really been a metric for that uh in the past, but we know that the most consistent brands are the most successful ones. Uh, so how do you get everyone saying the same thing or understanding the brand? It's a very difficult thing. It works very well for a young scale-up when you've got a really um, you know, uh uh really great founder who has a really easy job of explaining why the company exists, then he can really rally 30 people in a small uh office. This is why we're here today, this is why we're the best. Um, but as that company grows to hundreds of employees and multiple products and many countries, of course, that's gonna get lost. And I think that's where this head of storytelling comes in to make the story simpler so that everyone in the company can go back to what it's like when you were at that scale up and be able to tell your parents when you go back for Christmas or Thanksgiving, what is it you actually do again? And you can respond in 10 seconds. And I know a lot of product marketers suffer from that because we all work on very complicated things, but that's what ahead of storytelling should be able to change.
SPEAKER_00I love that. I'm gonna throw you a question we didn't plan for. I sometimes like to do this with my guests and just throw throw something at you and let you respond. AI is at least it is especially in the software industry, is allowing the product velocity to, you know, new features are getting shipped faster than ever, right? And so there can be this urge to want to be shipping new messages, maybe not just as fast, but much faster, right? But as you said, consistency. So you have to figure out that consistency balance and the the shelf life of your message, because if you're constantly changing or evolving the message, so how how do you think chief storytellers are gonna be able to find that right balance um as products are evolving much faster?
SPEAKER_01I like to think that that's the difference between a narrative and a story or a product narrative and a product story. I I the the distinction I like to make is that you want to give the freedom that all of your salespeople and marketers have the freedom to evolve their story. You know, if you go in and say, this is our story and you need to all repeat it, that company and products are gonna die pretty fast because as you mentioned, Jedi, everything's changing quickly, so your stories have got to change quickly. But they shouldn't change so much that the product's unrecognizable or that the customer is feels like they're speaking to three different companies, and that's the difference. So the narrative is is kind of the wider message and it's the structure that should be put in place, and when it's done right, it should be true for many years. Uh, the story can then be changed to be something different, and I think that's the distinction of make sure everyone in your company it feels like a confident storyteller. They understand the science of storytelling, they know how the difference between a good story and a great story. They have the tools to be able to do that. And that's one half of my job is to make everyone a better storyteller. The other part is to build a product narrative, something that everyone can believe in and get behind, and is going to be true now, true in six months, and true in a year's time.
SPEAKER_00Great. Well, Elliot, I really um appreciate you having um taking the time to be on the show here and talk with us about this. Uh, tell us a bit more about what how folks can engage with you. Like what are some resources that you can provide to them, even if they're not a client, and what type of clients do you like to work with today?
SPEAKER_01Well, I've said the term product narrative a lot of times, so it'd be very important that I own the domain productnarratives.com. So everything I've mentioned, yes.com. So if you go there, everything was mentioned. So the canvas. So if you want to fill out the canvas and do it for yourself, you can find that for free there. Um, you can um find the um the survey. Remember the three questions that you can ask. I have that there. So if you want to test, don't get scared if you're around 19%. Like I say, that's average. Uh test your CMO and CMO if you're trying to get your budget. And like I said, you can find my book. So my book, uh, I don't sell it, it's a it's a it's a resource I use as part of my workshops. So if you are interested to learn more, you just go, you can sign up for my newsletter and my book will be sent to you for free there. And like I say, if you are looking for someone to come in and help, that's what I do. I'll run a workshop with your team, or you can bring me on to help get your story. But yeah, go to productnarratives.com and you can find everything there to hopefully get you excited. And yeah, maybe there's a lot of people out there who thought, oh, head of storytelling, I would like to be one of those. Um, I think a lot of the information I have can can be maybe the start of that journey for a new career for a lot of uh product marketers and a lot of the other marketers as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I I hope so. I hope it's here to stay, unlike some other job roles that have been fleeting trends. But yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, let's see.
SPEAKER_00Oh, great. Well, wonderful. Thank you so much, Elliot. I appreciate you, and thanks, everybody.