Storytelling matters more than ever in a media environment characterized by excess, distraction, and fragmented attention spans. Learning how to capture and hold that attention is the single most important skill in marketing these days, but it’s not just about creativity. Not all consumer attention is created equal, and understanding the differences between the types of attention customers are willing or able to give you is imperative to crafting the right message.

Across all major mediums in the so-called attention economy, consumption varies widely, and any metrics should be considered within the context of their particular uses. A recent paper by McKinsey & Co analyzed levels of consumer attention across 20 mediums, and came to some startling conclusions. Among the most surprising was that even in the throes of our global digital standard, print media still managed to beat all but the gaming consoles when it came to monetization and conversion.

Legacy media such as print newspapers, magazines, and books, outperformed streaming video, web content, social media, audiobooks, and even mobile games, like Candy Crush. Perhaps more surprising was the fact that podcasting came in dead last on the list, averaging a paltry monetization rate of $0.07 per hour of media consumption.

What McKinsey & Co’s numbers really tell us is that technology does not replace storytelling. Despite the explosion of content and ways to consume it, all of these social media platforms, video streaming services, and digital audio products cannot really compete with the highly-skilled storytellers working in the legacy media creative industries. These are people who have honed their storytelling abilities over decades and understand how to grab our attention, while the digital platforms are choc full of rank amateurs trying to farm clicks and doing whatever the algorithm dictates. Consumers will watch both, sure, but only one will get them to open their wallets.

In terms of branding, the lessons are even more pertinent because telling a brand’s story is a much more nuanced and requires a level of expertise that is even more rare than a Hollywood screenwriter. At the same time, graphic design and photo editing software is so ubiquitous, that almost everyone thinks they can create a brand. Even worse, generative AI has fostered the illusion that you can run your entire marketing department out of ChatGPT.

Branding is a conversation between you and your customer. Not between you and a computer. Without knowing how to speak to them, you cannot ever hope to get them to look at you, let alone carry on the long conversation about your brand’s story. In fact, a brand doesn’t exist until it has communicated its purpose to the consumer.

Why does your brand even exist? Competent brand consultants let the customer answer that question and craft the brand’s story around that. It is the only way to establish the pillars that support a solid brand, which are connection, trust, and loyalty. These elements are the holy grail of any brand, but you have to know how to tell the story in order to get your customer to buy into them.

62% of consumers have an emotional connection to the brands they buy from the most, and more than half of the people who are driven to buy a specific brand because of their emotional connection to it, do so because it also connects them to other people. This is an important insight that reveals the power that storytelling has in branding, and how basing your brand’s story on the customer’s needs and wants is key.

A famous case study is how Apple computers snatched enormous market share from the burgeoning PC market in the early 80s by identifying one of the main obstacles people faced when purchasing a computer: intimidation. Market research showed that most people were scared of computer technology because they didn’t understand it, and up to that point most of the brand narratives coming out of companies like Microsoft and others at the time focused on the incredible prowess of the machines and all they could do. Well, Apple crafted a story that addressed that very problem and in 1984 produced a legendary commercial that first aired in the Super Bowl that year, depicting a dystopian future full of scary technology, which alas, Apple was here to save you from.

Apple didn’t say anything about the product itself. It just spoke directly to the customer’s own experience and offered its product as a solution to that. All effective brands do the same thing, and the better you know your customer, the better you can be at telling a story that resonates with them.

How do you tell a brand’s story and how is it any different than the stories we read in books or watch in movies? Fundamentally, there is no difference. All stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. A desire, a conflict, and a resolution. These three stages are present in every (good) story ever told since the beginning of time, because it mirrors life in many respects. The Hero’s Journey is a classic mythological construct that people gravitate towards because it gives us comfort in a world that can at times feel chaotic and affords us meaning in an otherwise meaningless stream of experiences.

In some ways, a brand story can be boiled down to a story that provides meaning. Albeit in a very practical, sometimes banal way. But, just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz or Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, the protagonist of a brand story has to be something that the person watching can project themselves onto, and identify with. They have to win in the end, too. Your brand has to be the reason the problem gets fixed. And, like Apple shows us, the problem is always whatever your customer tells you it is.

It is by understanding your customer’s needs and desires that you will be able to find the right story to tell. However, just because you know what to say, doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to say it. Branding is a form of storytelling, and it is important to learn this skill if you are to create a brand that can generate connection, trust, loyalty, and ultimately, equity.