Branding and marketing have no shortage of self-proclaimed “gurus.” Unnecessarily complicated frameworks. Assertions without evidence. Recycled memes purporting to be killer insights into how branding really works. A stroll through LinkedIn these days leaves me feeling skeptical, at best.

So it practically pains me to agree with a marketing expert so often. But Mark Ritson* keeps getting things right, and he’s done it again in his latest article for Adweek, “These Marketing Concepts Have Become Meaningless—and They’re Sabotaging Your Strategy.”

Here’s what Ritson and I agree on this time around: he calls out storytelling as a concept that’s lost its meaning in the marketing world.

I’m so tired of how this word gets abused by marketers. I thought its usage had plateaued, and was relieved—but in the age of AI, it’s back with a vengeance. (Have you heard the one about big tech companies paying marketers $750k/year for “storytelling”?)

Disagree? Tell me what it means.

I asked a client of mine to do this a few years ago. I was doing strategy work for his company, and he asserted that all great brands tell a story. He wanted to make sure the strategy I was working on would do the same. So I asked for examples.

He sent me two things:

• A celebrated television commercial that used somewhat of a story framework
• A different company’s About Us page that included a story-like company history

I wasn’t sure what to say. These are just tactics—individual touchpoints. And they’re not even similar to each other. Also, plenty of great brands don’t tell stories.

Ritson, in his article, is referring specifically to adland’s use of the word. “Most modern advertising is structurally incapable of telling a story. A 6-second bumper has a logo and a prayer.” He calls it “creative cowardice dressed up as craft.”

But in brandland, it’s far more insidious. Here, it’s used to mean something closer to “narrative as identity.” For example, Dove‘s Real Beauty tells a “story” about the beauty industry’s impact on women and girls—and the brand’s rebellion against it. That’s not storytelling—it’s positioning. It might be brilliant positioning. But calling it a story doesn’t make it one.

And that’s the other problem with this word. It’s bandied about with no concern for what a story actually is. Real stories have characters, arcs, and endings. Most of what marketers call storytelling has none of those things, much less all of them. The people who actually make stories for a living (novelists, filmmakers, children’s book authors) would probably like their word back.

What do I propose instead? When you find yourself reaching for “storytelling,” ask yourself which of the following you actually mean:

• Narrative structure: a genuine story arc in an ad or piece of content. Beginning, conflict, resolution. Characters the audience cares about. As Ritson points out, this is not the norm in modern advertising. I’m not sure it should be. But it exists. It’s the closest thing to real storytelling in marketing. (But again, this is just a tactic.)
• Brand worldbuilding: coherent, story-like themes and elements sustained across touchpoints and time. Consistent characters, recurring tensions, a recognizable aesthetic. It doesn’t require actual stories. Most brands don’t do this, and again, maybe most don’t need to. But when it does happen, let’s not call it “storytelling.”
• Brand point of view: this is where “What’s the brand’s story?” means something closer to “What’s its position, perspective, or take on the world?” This is simply a different definition of “story”—one that falls a bit further down the page in your Merriam-Webster. It makes sense. It’s just not storytelling.

Three different things. None of them are served well by collapsing them into a single, overused word.

What do you think? Do you still use “storytelling”? Will you continue to? If so, what do you mean by it?

* Yes, I took Mark’s MiniMBA. No, this is not a paid endorsement.

This post was originally published on LinkedIn.

Rob Meyerson is a brand consultant, author of Brand Naming, and co-author of the sixth edition of Designing Brand Identity. He runs Heirloom, a brand strategy and identity firm, and hosts the podcast How Brands Are Built.