Anthropic not too long ago posted a job opening for a Head of GTM Narrative. Not a content material lead. Not a model director. A go-to-market narrative strategist. The corporate that has spent years constructing among the most succesful AI on the planet determined that the factor it wanted a human to personal was the story.
Anthropic isn’t alone. Based on The Wall Street Journal, LinkedIn job postings mentioning the time period “storyteller” doubled in 2025, reaching roughly 70,000 roles throughout marketing and communications. Firms together with Google, Microsoft, and Notion have all created or restructured groups round narrative and storytelling. Executives talked about “storytelling” on earnings calls 30% extra usually in 2025 than within the prior 12 months.
We’re two or three years into mass adoption of generative AI in advertising and marketing, and the outcomes should not what the pitch decks promised. The knowledge atmosphere has been flooded with what some researchers now name “slopaganda”—mass-produced, low-quality content material that overwhelms and manipulates.
By our advisory work—Jenny as an government coach and studying and growth knowledgeable, and Noam as an AI strategist—we see 4 practices that distinguish organizations constructing genuine narrative from these producing content material that doesn’t land.
1. The Half That Can’t Be Prompted
Probably the most harmful false impression in AI-era advertising and marketing is that creativeness is a function you possibly can dial up with a greater immediate. It isn’t. What AI produces is believable. What people produce, at their greatest, is shocking. These should not the identical factor, and audiences know the distinction even once they can’t articulate it.
The groups navigating this nicely use AI to maneuver sooner by means of the work that doesn’t require a lot judgment—analysis synthesis, format adaptation, first‑draft scaffolding—after which defend time and house for human judgment on the elements that do: the angle, the entry level, the emotional logic of the argument. This displays what many practitioners at the moment are seeing—with out robust human storytellers, AI‑powered content material turns right into a noise machine that amplifies the unsuitable concepts and tone.
The Strategic Transfer: Earlier than utilizing AI to draft any exterior communication, write one sentence by hand: What’s the one factor we wish this viewers to imagine after studying this, and why are we the suitable group to say it? In case you can’t reply that with out the device, the device gained’t reply it for you; it’ll simply make the hole more durable to see. This aligns with research exhibiting that generative AI is simplest when people set a transparent narrative and strategic intent, and AI is used to adapt and scale that message moderately than to outline it.
2. Write like an individual, not a machine
Genuine narrative is just not one thing you possibly can self-assess. The nearer you might be to the message, the much less you possibly can see the way it lands.
Jenny noticed this play out immediately whereas main a workshop—”Speaking With Affect and Affect within the Age of AI”—with senior leaders at a midsize skilled companies firm. When the AI adoption mandate rolled out, management tracked utilization: by division, by staff, by particular person. Because the saying goes, you get what you measure. Groups optimized for AI utilization, not high quality of output. The consequence was polished, well-structured communications completely indistinguishable from any competitor. Errors have been slipping by means of as possession evaporated. And, if AI wrote it, who was accountable?
The lacking ingredient wasn’t talent or staff capability. It was course. Leaders have been stretched managing quarterly efficiency targets and competing priorities, and so they had no bandwidth to articulate what the model ought to sound like. Groups crammed that vacuum the one manner they may: They let the device resolve.
The train that shifted issues was easy. Every chief was requested to explain, out loud and with out notes, an important factor they believed about the way forward for their business that the majority of their friends had unsuitable. Each reply was particular. Each reply was fascinating. None of it had made it into the communications their groups have been producing, as a result of nobody had put it on the desk clearly sufficient for groups to hold it ahead.
The Strategic Transfer: Earlier than any important communication goes out, ask your self: Is that this ownable? May this have come from any of our opponents? If the reply to the latter is sure, the issue begins upstream. What particular standpoint, earned by means of your group’s precise expertise, needs to be guiding this? Discover that first and provides your staff one thing actual to work with earlier than they open the device.
3. Lead With the Ache Level
Most communications fail not as a result of the message is unsuitable, however as a result of it arrives earlier than trust does. The intuition is to open together with your strongest argument. The simpler transfer is to open with the clearest proof that you simply perceive who you might be speaking to.
A number of years in the past, Noam was making ready communications for classes on the United Nations making the case for digital infrastructure funding in lower-income nations. The logic was sound. The info was compelling. And each model fell flat, as a result of the staff saved writing for the argument they needed to make moderately than for the individuals who needed to obtain it.
The ministers in these rooms weren’t proof against progress. They have been accountable for populations who had watched foreign-led initiatives arrive with compelling arguments, take credit score for outcomes, and go away earlier than the issues began. As soon as the narrative acknowledged that actuality earlier than asking for something, the dynamic shifted. Questions moved from pushing again on premise to asking about implementation.
The story didn’t change. The entry level did. And that’s nearly all the time the place narrative succeeds or fails.
The Strategic Transfer: Write the empathy paragraph first, even when it by no means makes it into the ultimate model. Draft two to 3 sentences that identify what your viewers is carrying proper now: the stress, the worry, the unstated concern already within the room. It’ll reshape every little thing that follows, and it’ll present within the tone of what you publish even when these sentences keep inside.
4. Title the elephant within the room
The very best-value factor a communicator can do is just not verify what an viewers already believes. It’s to call one thing they’ve been carrying however haven’t put into phrases—a frustration, a worry, an unresolved pressure—and to take action earlier than they do.
Recent guidance for leaders in high-stakes conditions emphasizes the identical precept: Your viewers is already holding an unstated “What’s in it for me?” query, and in case you don’t floor and reply it, others will.
The Strategic Transfer: Earlier than any important communication, ask: What’s the one factor our viewers is carrying proper now that nobody in our business is speaking about? In case you can reply that with specificity—not a demographic assumption, however an experiential one—you might have the opening of a story price studying.
Anthropic is just not hiring a Head of GTM Narrative as a result of they couldn’t discover a method to generate narrative with AI. They’re hiring one as a result of they perceive the distinction between content material that exists and communication that works.
