about me
& political NARRATIVE
I work with progressive candidates and causes, setting narrative strategy and telling stories that win. i apply creativity, guided by a unique approach to MULTIDISCIPLINARY research that leverages advances in brain science to locate narrative insights.
Recent work includes co-authoring “The Storytellers’ Guide to Changing Our World” for Culture Surge, a national women-of-color-led coalition of storytellers, artists, organizers and researchers working for democracy. I headed up narrative for Story at Scale, a national narrative research project to advance gender justice, and for the Midwest Culture Lab, a national project of the Alliance for Youth Organizing to build civic participation and voting by young people, especially youth of color, particularly in the Midwest. I was also a senior advisor to Tom Steyer on narrative strategy and storytelling, and — working alongside veteran political advisors Doug Rubin, Kevin Mack and Chris Lehman — set the narrative direction of his presidential campaign, focusing on ending the corporate stranglehold on our political system and elevating climate disaster as critical issues of the 2020 elections.
The story platform we set for Steyer — essentially a core story of fighting for economic justice to win true freedom — was the key to winning a third-place finish in the pivotal South Carolina primary, the first primary with a sizable percentage of Black voters and other voters of color. The previously obscure Steyer beat Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg in that primary.
Securing economic rights for everyday people of all races, genders, creeds and levels of ability is the necessary next step in providing justice for all and winning freedom. This will require ending the corporate stranglehold on our political system.
I also created significant pieces of content for the campaign, including writing and helping to produce all the campaign’s endorsement TV spots.
My experience: journalism,
marketing, politics
I SPENT ROUGHLY TWO DECADES IN JOURNALISM and another two in advertising. I’ve been a reporter, editor, publisher and CEO in the news business. Most significantly to me, I was City Hall Bureau Chief for the Detroit Free Press in the ‘70s, which made me the de facto urban affairs and racial politics reporter for Knight Newspapers.
In advertising, I was a senior executive for global agency McCann WorldGroup, building a new content division, the world’s first international group of storytelling agencies. I pioneered in spreading content marketing across the world. I next founded and ran my own storytelling agency, Story Worldwide, creating integrated narrative-driven campaigns for clients like Unilever, Nestlé, Lexus, Bank of America, Google and many more. I sold Story in 2015.
My work has always focused on a close reading of personal and public narratives, nonfiction storytelling, research-driven narrative strategy, innovative social/digital advertising. I was one of the creative entrepreneurs who invented content marketing and figured out how to organize content-creation at scale. (You can find the job-by-job version of my life on LinkedIn.)
I invented and popularized the term “post-advertising age” and led the multi-year effort at my agency to create and perfect a rigorous process for locating what I called the “story platform” — the core narrative to guide effective brand storytelling. Over the last few years, I’ve adapted the story platform process for political causes and candidates. The method is in wide use now by progressive practitioners of narrative and cultural change.
I've worked with multi-brand holding companies. Individual brands. Non-profits. Media companies. Local and national political campaigns. Regional and national causes. (You can see some examples in Projects and a piece that describes some of my work with the Steyer organization — “How to Stop Mismeasuring the People.”)
My work has focused on a close reading of personal and public narratives, nonfiction storytelling, research-driven narrative strategy, innovative content marketing…
Story Platform Workshop Process:
A Data-Driven Path to Successful Persuasion
Beginning in 2005, I led a multi-disciplinary effort at my agency, Story Worldwide, to create a research-based process for locating the most effective core story — what we called the “Story Platform” — for a brand. A Story Platform is the emotional heart of a brand and the most powerful connection with the audience — the narrative that should guide all communications. Over a period of years, we perfected a collaborative, research-driven workshop process that consistently yielded powerful results.
The workshop process as we used it for corporate clients is described in the video here by me and some of Story Worldwide’s senior people:
Beginning in 2016, I’ve collaborated with numerous partners to adapt and perfect the Story Platform Workshop process for social justice and progressive political work. These co-creators are an ever-expanding group of incredibly talented and experienced practitioners across the range of fields necessary to do successful political persuasion, narrative change and cultural change work. Their disciplines include marketing, storytelling, cultural organizing, psychology, data science, film making, and more.
Where I’m going
I WANT TO HELP MORE SOCIAL JUSTICE and political organizations understand and create narrative strategy and tell effective stories that get traction. I want to spread the use of integrated processes to create and sustain effective multi-channel content for informing and persuading.
The modern science of the mind has conclusively found that the concept of “rational decision-making” is an illusion. Virtually all human reasoning is conducted outside our awareness in the unconscious, science has found. Even the most logical-seeming decisions are deeply swayed by emotion.
I want to educate the field about how to do meaningful research — how to combine traditional research tools such as polls and focus groups with 21st-century tools that leverage modern brain science. The traditional tools, reaching only conscious ideas, are all but useless or even misleading when it comes to developing storytelling that can persuade and activate in the short term, while changing the culture in the long term. Polling may tell you what people are saying and doing, but they never explain the reasons. The acknowledgement of the problems with traditional research were evident following the 2020 election when virtually every data scientist working for progressive politics began referring to the exit polls alleged explanations of the voters’ choices as “fiction.”
Only the newer tools can reach into the unconscious to discover why people think and feel as they do. Only this non-traditional, multidisciplinary research can produce the metaphors and storylines with the potential to shift people’s thinking, change behavior, and, ultimately, create big cultural shifts.
Specifically, I want to continue spreading the knowledge and skills needed to find the core story — what I call the "story platform" — that connects most powerfully with the audiences that causes and candidates need to reach. I want progressives to be able to formulate effective strategies based on such core narratives, and to plan, create and produce the audience-facing content that drives campaigns across digital and physical media.
I also intend to keep writing speeches and helping wash the dishes for the right causes.
Want to know more about me? (It's hard to imagine you do, but you'll find it here: Me and the Media Revolution)
AN HISTORICAL DOCUMENT
THE POST-ADVERTISING AGE: An interview
I feel I’ve been talking about the end of traditional advertising forever. This interview proves it. The interview was done in Fall 2011 by Larry Asher, creative director of Seattle’s Worker Bees agency. It was featured in “Do or Die,” the ebook about digital marketing written by Larry and Clark Kokich, then chairman of the pioneering digital mega-agency Razorfish. With one exception, what I said a decade ago remains true. (See if you can find that exception and send me your answer here)
