Narrative as Strategy

The communications industry is constantly inventing new buzzwords to describe—and reinvent—its own work. In recent years, narrative has enjoyed a rapid rise as a favored concept. In many ways, it has taken over from storytelling, but also goes much further. Literally, narrative means nothing more than a story. Yet it carries echoes of what the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard once called the “grand narratives” of modernity—freedom, enlightenment, science.
In the agency business, we usually think on a smaller scale. But when we talk about narrative, we’re still reaching for the big themes of our time. Purpose—another buzzword, inadequately translated as “reason for being”—drives many brands and agencies for the same reasons. There has to be something that gets us out of bed in the morning, and it should be about more than profit as an end in itself. After all, money doesn’t buy happiness.

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A narrative, then, is a story that helps us answer questions of meaning. It has a structure that stretches across past, present, and future—a dramaturgy equipped with heroes and their antagonists, the anti-heroes. A narrative demands to be retold. In the world of social media, we’d call that “shareable content.” It is far more complex than the “simple message” of the reductionist models of classic planning.
In the age of mass communication and interruptive advertising, we were forced into such simplifications—after all, more simply couldn’t fit into a 30-second spot. Today, attention spans may be even shorter, but niches have opened up in abundance. Take this very podcast as an example: we spend around 60 minutes discussing niche topics for a niche audience. The explosion of digital channels and formats now makes it easier than ever to carry narratives across.

But successful strategic narratives existed long before the web. A classic example, once again, comes from Apple. The legendary 1984 spot introducing the Macintosh worked by casting a clear antagonist: IBM, elevated to Orwell’s Big Brother, and the dull conformity of the world as the foil to the Apple community—those who stood for creativity and for the misfits who refused to conform. This narrative, extended through later campaigns, still resonates 40 years on and continues to shape the Apple brand today.
In episode #119, I spoke with Ralf Schmidt-Bleeker about what he calls “strategic narratives.” In 2012, together with Frank Otto Dietrich, he founded Waald, a hybrid of agency and consultancy that develops strategic narratives for business, politics, and culture. What’s new and powerful about narratives, in his view, is their authentic foundation—as opposed to a story that could be entirely fictional and detached from reality. Narratives, he argues, are found, not invented.

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At the same time, the inflated use of the term—criticized even by Jan Böhmermann in a podcast with Olli Schulz—creates its own problems. Too often, things get labeled as a “narrative” that are really nothing more than a story, or a polished articulation of a brand’s core. A true strategic narrative points to larger, society-wide questions—and offers answers to them.
At Waald, this is called the Cause. Others might call it purpose or simply the why. In an age of sustainable transformation, it often has an ecological focus—climate change being the most obvious example—but it can just as well be hedonistic. It finds expression in its own semantics, which often stand apart from press releases and talking points.

The remarkable rise of the term began with storytelling as part of communications tools like campaigns—telling stories with narrative qualities. The second stage added brand management, with the idea of designing the brand itself narratively, rather than just the product or the campaign. In this model, the narrative replaces frameworks like brand wheels, brand essence, or positioning. The goal is no longer to impose order, but to create meaning.
The third stage begins when change and transformation within an organization are accompanied by a narrative. At this point, it already extends beyond marketing into the business and the organization itself: strategy as story. How do we tell our strategy? The ultimate discipline is the fourth stage, where the narrative itself is understood as strategy. At that level, strategic decisions are made not only from an Excel spreadsheet, but through the lens of the narrative.

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This is where the circle closes with the market: meaning-making happens not only within the organization but also outward. People find the narrative compelling and pass it on; the media pick it up. It works internally for the business and externally in public discourse. Underlying this is an anthropological truth: humans need stories to make sense of the world. As Samira El Ouassil and Friedemann Karig describe in their book of the same name, we are “storytelling apes.”
Our brains are wired to connect through narratives. Stories are how we pass on the experiences and lessons necessary for survival. That’s why narratives are never static but always evolving. It’s less about rewriting than about carrying the story forward—adding new insights and experiences along the way.

At their core, narratives function as long-term foundations for brands, much like a communications platform (to borrow another buzzword). This sets them apart from the kind of short-termism often dressed up as “agility,” but in reality driven by FOMO—fear of missing out.
Narratives respond to the yearning for long-term strategic brand management by building a dramaturgy. Alongside the protagonists, there are also antagonists: Where is there a lack, and what are the opposing forces that prevent us from addressing it? From here, communications planning can take shape, guiding campaigns and giving the story depth and temporal structure.
The most important thing our industry provides is differentiation. Perhaps the agency world itself needs a new narrative—a fresh answer to what we contribute to society and how we remain relevant in the meaning economy. That requires looking beyond the creative side and engaging more deeply with the business itself. Marketing can no longer be viewed in isolation from areas like product and service development.
Ultimately, the role of agencies is to provide answers. Narratives answer the questions of the time.