Do You Need a Brand Storyteller or a Brand Architect?
It seems everyone wants a brand storyteller these days. But, perhaps what they really need is a brand architect?
In the year to 26 November 2025, the proportion of US LinkedIn postings using the word “storyteller” doubled, covering roughly 50,000 marketing roles and a further 20,000 in media and communications. Chime received over 500 applicants for a single storyteller opening. In the US, Google, Microsoft, even the National Wild Turkey Federation are all recruiting into the category. Accenture have an entire “storytellers team”, who exist to help C-Suite execs gain clarity on business challenges using a narrative framework.
And, according to WSJ, executive mentions of “storytelling” on earnings calls climbed from 147 in 2015 to 469 in 2025. That’s a 3.2x increase over a decade. It’s a steady upward trend for yarn spinners. When CFOs start using a soft word like “storytelling” in front of financial analysts, the narrative has clearly moved from the marketing department to the boardroom.
Most of the commentary around this trend has framed it as a communications story. Google frame it as a business development role: “As storytellers,” a recent Google Storyteller job ad said, “we play an integral role in driving customer acquisition and long-term growth.”
Either way, earned media is shrinking. Newsrooms are contracting. Brands now own their distribution, so they need to produce their own content. AI has flooded the channel with sloppy generic output. Audiences, particularly Gen Z are digital natives who value authenticity over all else.
And all of this, though true, is only one chapter of the story.
Risky Business
In our increasingly complex, interconnected, always on, multi-channel world, narrative is the only thing that holds a business together. It connects customers to suppliers, the through-line from front to back room staff, from C-suite to facilities.
Story is the connective tissue of a complex system. The corporate instinct to hire for storytelling is a reaction to the pressure modern business is under.
And reaction is where the risk lies.
Dropping a journalist into a campaign-driven marketing department is a 20th century response to a 21st century problem. It treats storytelling as a single-set problem with a single-set solution. Buy the skill. Fill the role. Produce the content.
“every piece of content a storyteller produces will read well in isolation and contradict itself in aggregate”
A storyteller can write an excellent case study. They cannot produce coherence across a complex organisation, if that organisation does not already know what it stands for. Without a clear strategic foundation, every piece of content a storyteller produces will read well in isolation and contradict itself in aggregate. The podcast will pull one way. The investor narrative will pull another. The internal comms deck will pull a third. Six months in, the business will have more content and less coherence than ever.
The need for a storyteller is the canary in the coalmine. A symptom of the failure of brand architecture.
Strategic brand architecture is the infrastructure that lets narrative survive contact with complexity. Providing positioning that is distinctive rather than descriptive, specific enough to brief every story the business tells. The set of strategic pillars that filter on-strategy stories from noise. It is the architecture that holds meaning across divisions, projects, platforms, and audiences.
“Strategic brand architecture is the infrastructure that lets narrative survive contact with complexity”
This is upstream work. It does not replace the storyteller. It makes the storyteller effective. Given architecture, a journalist can produce content that compounds. Without it, the same journalist will produce content that at best cancels itself out. At worst is completely dilutes and undermines the brand.
Happy Endings
Adura, the joint venture between Shell and Equinor, demonstrates this principle. Two complex, multinational parent organisations integrated under a single brand architecture with one coherent narrative. This start up JV was solid enough to unite multiple stakeholders and authentic enough to land a £3 billion credit facility, within months of launch. This is because every communication has a coherent brand platform to stand on.
“the brand story told itself once the brand architecture was right”
3Sixty Duty Free is the commercial transformation version of the same strategy. Founder Benny Klepach had a sprawling company on his hands. Designhouse created a coherent brand story and identity to support aggregate growth. Disparate brands, DFASS, Duty Free Air and Ship Supply, became 3Sixty Duty Free & More. A comprehensive brand designed to signal scale and increase market visibility.
Twelve months after the award-winning rebrand launched, Hotel Shilla, the Korean operator behind the world’s third largest travel retailer, announced a subscription to 44% of the share capital of 3Sixty Holding LLC. Industry analysts at The Moodie Davitt Report valued the deal at upwards of US$140 million. Shilla Travel Retail President Ingyu Han specifically cited 3Sixty’s “continued commitment to its strategic approach” as the trigger for finalising the investment, after previous negotiations had broken down two years earlier. The architecture did not just support the story. It unlocked the capital.
In both cases, the brand story told itself once the brand architecture was right.
The Moral Of This Story…
The WSJ numbers suggest that corporate storytelling is firmly on the boardroom agenda in 2026. The consideration for brand and marketing leaders is more fundamental than simply hiring a storytelling into the marketing team.
“turn a complex organisation into a coherent one”
The first question to ask – and answer – is whether the business has the strategic infrastructure to make the hire worthwhile. If you are applying 20th century brand architecture to solve for a 21st century complexity problem, a new hire, no matter how talented, will not help.
The storyteller is not the answer. The work is much further upstream, in the positioning and the architecture that turn a complex organisation into a coherent one. Get that right, and the stories take care of themselves.
written by Sam Steele, Marketing and Communications Director
Designhouse has partnered with FTSE 250 companies and global enterprises for over 55 years. We also work with start ups and scale ups to create brand identities that can grow with their business. If you’d like to discuss your brand challenges, we’d be glad to talk.
