The corporate ‘storyteller’ is marketing’s newest messiah—and just as hollow as every buzzword before it

Branding and marketing executives have always loved nothing more than seizing the latest, abstraction that can somehow bend the ever-changing Zeitgeist to their favor and tell a tale, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

In recent years, CEOs, CMOs and brand managers swooned over leverage, alignment, blue-skying, thought leadership, convergence, unleash, pivot, impact, 30,000 feet, bandwidth, best practices, innovation, breakthrough, people-first and, of course, paradigm shift.