Unlike most Americans, and most humans, I read newspapers – three to five a day, albeit online. Fewer than one out of four Americans reads a daily newspaper in any format and less than one out of three people worldwide do. The world is crowded with information sources just a click away and all of us have our favorite.
And it would seem AI is only accelerating that rapid content stream.
So I was jarred to see an article in The Wall Street Journal showing not just an increase but a surge in storytelling as a corporate function. Job openings on the LinkedIn platform, including the term “storyteller,” have doubled over the last year to a combined 70,000 in marketing, communications and public relations. And it hits the bottom line: the term “storytelling” appears over and over in earnings calls – 469 times so far this year.
What is corporate storytelling? It is finding the emotional hook, or the human connection to your targeted audience. I’ve been doing it for years (see: Vox Optima). I like to think I do it in this column. And companies, as they see their customers worn down by information overload and “AI slop,” realize they must connect at an emotional level to differentiate themselves from competitors.
Early in my career, when I worked as a press officer on very difficult issues, I recognized this need quickly. When you have to convey a complex and controversial issue to a skeptical press, you have to humanize the relationship to gain credibility. You have to care about the issue yourself, you must make the correspondent believe you care, and you have to find a way that you can care about the story together through shared values.
One notable example I remember was when I was working in the Pentagon. In one of the first stories of its kind, a local D.C. area reporter posed online as an underage girl and got a senior Navy officer to start an inappropriate online relationship with her. The officer was arrested by Navy authorities as a suspected child predator and the reporter was the primary witness.
The reporter, of course, wanted to be doing constant “gotcha” news pieces on the case. I wanted to shift her focus and get her motivated toward a criminal conviction. So I explained the entire military investigation, arraignment and court-martial process and her role in each step. I wanted to put her on the same side as the Navy.
Over the next few weeks, we became colleagues. We were working together to get her her stories and also protect the integrity of the investigation to preserve the prosecution of this very bad guy. Her stories wound up being mostly updates of the criminal justice process and summaries of the sting; she agreed that additional evidence had to be withheld from the public for now and saved for trial. We were on the same side.
That’s how storytelling works.
I left active duty shortly after this episode and became a contractor supporting the Navy in a very arcane and specific field: corrosion control. That means rust. And with all the metal real estate the Navy has sitting in salt water, there’s plenty to go around. I was heartened to discover my portfolio also included shipboard toilets – the saltwater flushing system and other generally corrosive materials sloshing around are hard on the surrounding decks and hell on the piping (ask me about the superiority of standard commodes over urinals if you’re curious).
Not everyone gets excited about rust. I did. I found every statistic about rust and the smart containment thereof and turned them into talking points. How much labor could be saved? How much money could be saved? I sent them to the Secretary of the Navy’s speechwriter. I sent them to the admirals’ public affairs officers. When new products that were saving more labor and more money were launched, I sent that information out. I maintained a dialogue telling the story about how Sailors’ workdays could be made more productive and they could be better warfighters if only they weren’t fighting rust every day.
After a few months of this, I had the Secretary of the Navy, CNN, the Associated Press, all the Norfolk, Va. area press and other news outlets on the forecastle of the USS Mitscher on the Navy’s birthday to watch some contractors chip some rust and paint the ship. Secretary Danzig held a press availability extolling the folks in white coveralls and explaining that Sailors’ time was too valuable to be messing with rust.
I had been telling a story for months and now the Secretary of the Navy was telling it. About rust. More importantly, after that event, he committed to doubling the funding for contractor paint teams.
(And yes, I turned Navy “heads” – shipboard toilets – into a human-centered narrative. Google the headline “Sloppy Sailors Threaten Navy Urinals.” It’s newspaper gold. You’re welcome.)
There are many innovative ways to reach people in 2025: infographics, video, carousels, mind maps and more. All of them start with a story. And all of us, as consumers, know when that story isn’t genuine or starts from AI slop. My company absolutely uses AI tools to generate content faster, but the AI has to be schooled and coaxed to sidestep the slop.
It is so refreshing to see in black and white statistics that consumers still demand authenticity from corporations. More importantly, we see that corporate America is scrambling to recruit its storytellers. In the strangeness of the information landscape of 2025, this is a true north star.
Merritt Hamilton Allen is a PR executive and former Navy officer. She appeared regularly as a panelist on NM PBS and is a frequent guest on News Radio KKOB. A Republican for 36 years, she became an independent upon reading the 2024 Republican platform. She lives amicably with her Democratic husband north of I-40 where they run one head of dog, and one of cat. She can be reached at news.ind.merritt@gmail.com.
