According to brand strategist and author John Elbing, the problem is not how companies tell their stories. It is which story they are telling in the first place.
That distinction sits at the heart of Elbing’s work and his “story building” methodology, a system designed to help organizations craft narratives from the customer’s standpoint rather than their own. It is a shift that has profound implications for marketing, leadership, culture, and growth.
Why Storytelling Is Not Enough
“Storytelling has become a coat of paint,” Elbing explains. “You can tell the wrong story better, but that does not help.”
Most advice on storytelling focuses on delivery. More emotion, better visuals, sharper copy. Story building, by contrast, starts upstream. It forces leaders to answer harder questions first. Who exactly are we talking to? Who are we not talking to? What truly matters, and what does not?
Only after that structure is clear should companies worry about words, colors, or channels.
This emphasis on structure is what makes story building so powerful. Instead of improvising messaging across websites, sales conversations, social posts, and internal meetings, organizations create a single narrative backbone that everything else flows from.
Clarity Creates Alignment
One of the most common issues Elbing sees is internal misalignment. In one workshop, he asked a 10 person leadership team to write down what their company does. The result was ten different answers.
That fragmentation shows up everywhere. A website that tells one story, social media that tells another, and sales teams telling yet another. Customers feel the inconsistency immediately.
“When teams build a story together,” Elbing says, “they inhabit it.” The result is cohesion, internally and externally. Employees understand what the company stands for, how decisions should be made, and how to communicate consistently. Customers, in turn, stop seeing a list of products and start seeing a clear identity.
The Three Stages Every Brand Must Address
At the core of Elbing’s framework are three psychological stages people move through when they encounter a brand.
Recognition: Is this for someone like me? Before prospects care what you sell, they want to feel seen. When a brand precisely describes its ideal customer, the right people lean in and the wrong ones self select out. This does not shrink your market. It improves the quality of your pipeline.
Perception: Do I trust you, and do I understand what you do? Clarity matters here. This is where you explain your offer, establish credibility, and reduce confusion. But it only works if recognition has already happened.
Projection: What will this be like for me? Even interested buyers hesitate. They imagine friction, effort, and risk. Strong stories walk them through the experience, address obstacles, and help them mentally rehearse success. By the time they take action, they are already partway there.
Most companies jump straight to perception, features, benefits, proof, without earning recognition or enabling projection. Story building fixes that sequencing.
The Real Differentiator May Not Be Your Product or Service
One of Elbing’s favorite examples involves a plumber. Most plumbers advertise competence by saying they are the best. But customers do not worry that plumbers cannot fix leaks. They worry plumbers will not show up on time.
A simple shift, from “great plumbing” to “we respect your time,” reframes the entire value proposition. Same service. Completely different story.
The lesson is universal. Customers do not always define their problems the way companies do. Effective story building requires empathy, understanding not just what customers need, but what they feel and what they are trying to accomplish at a deeper level.
Niche Down to Stand Out
Leaders often resist narrowing their focus out of fear they will miss opportunities. Elbing argues the opposite is true.
Being meh to everyone is far less interesting than being specific to someone. A clearly defined audience leads to stronger engagement, easier sales conversations, and better outcomes on both sides.
The goal is not extreme micro-targeting. It is relevance. When people recognize themselves in your story, they listen. When they do not, they move on, and that is a feature, not a flaw.
Test the Story Before You Scale It
Story building is not guesswork, but it is not static either. Elbing encourages leaders to test narratives before rolling them out broadly. Conversations with customers, small campaigns, and language experiments reveal what resonates and what does not.
The most successful companies do not hunt for a silver bullet. They build a marketing factory, constantly testing, measuring, refining, and adapting as customer needs and trigger moments change.
Story Building in an AI Driven World
As AI tools accelerate content creation, Elbing sees story building becoming even more important, not less. AI can help brainstorm, refine language, and create variations. What it cannot do is supply authenticity.
“AI can help you express your story,” he says. “But it cannot give you your guts.”
In a landscape flooded with generic messaging, empathy, clarity, and genuine customer-centric narratives are what continue to differentiate brands.
One Final Piece of Advice
Too many organizations talk about themselves, features, benefits, and achievements, without translating any of it into the customer’s reality. Story building flips that perspective, turning marketing into understanding and messaging into connection.
And in a world starved for relevance, that shift may be the most strategic move a leader can make.