TBPN Live - Do Companies Need Storytellers, Ford’s EV Flop, Kushner Paramount Pullout | Diet TBPN

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

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You're watching TVPN! You know what else is the gift that keeps on giving? Hiring a storyteller, which apparently is the hottest topic in Silicon Valley, thanks to our friend Katie Dayton over at the Wall Street Journal, who made this go mega-viral by posting an article in the Wall Street Journal, all about how startups are hiring storytellers. Companies are desperately seeking storytellers, is the headline, of course. We are going to dive into it.

to it, Geordie wrote a take. Storytelling is the only way to impose meaning on abundance, says signal. Coherence on noise, legitimacy on power, strategy ops and capital are all downstream. Without narrative control, none of it will ever stick. This has been one of the core premise of my account in a world of infinite output. Story is the scarce primitive. Whoever can compress chaos into something people can feel, remember, forgive, and rally around actually runs the system.

This skill is worth more than the entire C-suite combined. Okay, so lay off the CEO, the CFO, the CTO. You just need a storyteller, you're good to go. No, people are having fun with this one. What was your take, Georgie? Break it down from you? How do you frame this? How do you process this?

I mean, should we read through the article briefly or at least summarize it? Yeah, yeah, for sure. So Katie writes, companies are desperately seeking storytellers, brands trying to rest greater control from their narratives are seeking storytelling skill sets without a campfire in sight. maybe some of them have a have a warm hearth like we do anyways corporate america's what is the later thing what is normally you'd be telling a story oh around a campfire yeah that makes a fire and be telling a story that way i usually think of smoking cigars around uh campfires

that's what i associate mostly focused on the cigar but you like to yap between puff i do i do corporate america's latest hot job is also one of the oldest in history storytellers some companies want a media relations manager by a flashier name others need people to produce blogs case studies, and more types of branded content to attract customers, investors, and potential recruits, all seem to use the word differently than in its usual application to novelist playwrights. As storytellers, a Google job ad said last month, we play an integral role in driving customer acquisition and long-term growth. The listing sought a customer storytelling manager to join the company's Google Cloud storytelling team. That sounds like a fantastic

opportunity in another life personally. I'd be on the Google Cloud Storytelling team. In some ways, in some ways we are. One article the unit published this year was titled Lowe's Innovation, How Vertex AI Helps Create Interactive Shopping Experiences. Microsoft Security Organization, meanwhile, is recruiting a senior director, overseeing narrative and storytelling described as part cybersecurity technologist, part communicator, and part marketer. Vanta is also hiring a storyteller. Notion recently. That's right. Productivity apps, Notion recently merged its comm, social media, and influencer functions into one 10-person team, a so-called storytelling team. Katie goes on and on.

She talks about how more and more of these listings are popping up. They're growing year over year. They're showing up in earnings calls. And I have a different take on this. I think as soon as as there's a Wall Street, I mean, we love Katie, but as soon as there's a Wall Street Journal piece about a trend, the trend is effectively dead. And so there is no more alpha in hiring storytellers. You need to hire a yarn spinner. You need to hire a fabulist. Someone who will go around to group chats and tell wild lies about your product, your company, how successful you are. You recruit this person, and then they go around seating little anecdotes, little tall tails.

And they spin yarns. I mean, that's called securities fraud. I don't know. It certainly depends. Maybe if there's no securities changing hands. I tried to find a storyteller from a long time. Okay. And I found none other than the legend, Steve Clayton, currently the vice president of Microsoft's communication strategy. But back in 2010, what was he hired for? The chief storyteller. No way.

They were using that term 15 years ago. That's crazy. It feels like a very modern term. He held that title from 2010 to June 2021. I was trying to also kind of understand the, uh, from like the early 1900s to the 1950s, you had copywriters, like that it was, it was like pretty elite to be a copywriter. This was like a high status job. You were using. Don Draper. Isn't Don Draper? He was a creative director, but also a writer and the people that he worked with were copywriters, because at that time, print media, being able to use your words to get people to take action that you want, that you benefit from, is a very elite skill set. One more example that I mentioned earlier, early storytellers in Silicon Valley, Guy Kawasaki, he was one of Apple's employees originally responsible for marketing

their Macintosh computer line in 1984. He actually popularized the word evangelist in marketing the Macintosh as an Apple evangelist and the concepts of evangelism marketing and technology evangelism slash platform evangelism in general. And he became this idea of like word of mouth marketing, not quite storytelling, different keyword around it, but he was also sort of, you know, one of the early, you know, turning points in tech marketing. Anyway, yeah, and around that time, you started to get content strategists, right? Yeah. And if you look back to the, to the 80s and 90s, it was about, that was kind of like the boom of brand strategy, brand identity, think like the Nike kind of era of marketing. And Bology recently went viral, because,

there was a clip from an older podcast that was reposted on acts went viral and it was his take a few years ago during the creator economy boom arguing that companies need a founding creator or like a or like a creator and resident create no it was it was higher than creator and residence it was like it was like on the co-founding team you should have a ctow and then you should have a creator but it went viral and everyone was saying like oh this is so it's he's so behind And I had to correct someone. I was like, no, no, no. Like that clip is actually a couple of years old.

When he was saying it, it wasn't. So it was sort of interesting that way. Early insight. Yeah. I wrote a piece for the newsletter today at tbPN.com. And of course, I titled it, you don't need a storyteller. Said, according to a friend of the show, Katie, at the Wall Street Journal, companies are desperate

to hire storytellers. Hiring a storyteller is not a new phenomenon. But it makes sense that companies feel the need to hire them right now. Why? Because it's never been more obvious that the best storytellers in the world, create billions of dollars of value for their companies, and create massive advantages using only their words. Their words are so powerful that no matter where they appear on the internet, they draw

millions of views and create a vortex of talent, capital, and customers. Yeah, there's this thing where, like, if you have a hot take, you don't actually need to own the platform. You can just go do a circuit of appearances. A podcast tour. Anyways, I'll continue. So the reality distortion field that emerges often results in 100xpe. Of course, every company in the world wants this.

The problem is that it's impossible to hire the most elite storytellers because they are founders. Think Elon, Karp, and Palmer. New coinage alert, I call these types Joe Rogan CEOs, right? You know if you have a Joe Rogan CEO. It's fine if you don't. There's great CEOs that are not Joe Rogan CEOs, but there's a certain type of CEO that's a Joe Rogan CEO. And to be clear, you're not saying that the CEO has to have the same aesthetics as Joe Rogan or the

same style. Well, even carp has not been on Joe Rogan. That's true. You know that if he went on, you would crush. It would be a, it would be an electric moment. It'd be electric. Yeah, yeah, no, no. So it's more about being able to put on a performance in that particular environment.

Yeah. Can you capture people's attention for three hours? Yes. Just like rambling, basically. Whereas there have been CEOs that have gone on Joe Rogan successfully, but they just haven't delivered a Joe Rogan experience. And I think if you think about, I think if you think about, uh, like early stage founders, who would go on and just crush Joe Rogan?

Augustus Dugus. It just like immediately comes to mind. You know who these people are. And there's CEOs, founders, CEOs of his generation. He's a JRC. That are amazing, even though they wouldn't necessarily, they're not necessarily a JRC. So I continue, the internet is noisier than ever with thousands of startups competing for Mindshare. When every startup has a great launch video, no one does.

And yet these storytellers consistently break through and dominate the timeline, even though Gen AI allows marketing teams big and small to massively increase their output, it is often not even 1% as effective as one of these elite storyteller founders going on a podcast or just posting stream of consciousness on X. The white pill for savvy marketing teams is that even as we're seeing an exponential increase in content production, I'm not sure we're seeing an exponential increase in great ideas. That means that companies large and small that don't have the luxury of having an Elon or Palmer on the payroll still have a chance to break through the noise and be remembered as I was personally reflecting on 2025 there were only a handful of like truly corporate storytelling moments

that I remember and each of them worked for different reasons one don't work at anderle iconic campaign Palmer makes like a cameo in it but he's not the star he's just like a he's he's like a kind of he's just like a character in it but it's you could remove Palmer and that and the ad would like still carry weight. I thought that was one of the best campaigns of the year. The other one was astronomer. Their reaction to the crisis and the viral moment they had, the campaign is titled, Thank You for Your Interest in Astronomer.

It obviously featured Gwyneth Paltrow. I think this one will be studied in 10 years. It was like really a perfect reaction to that moment. And I did not know astronomer. before then I do now I will never forget them I thought ramps expenses should do themselves with sayquan that one was this combination of like luck incredible execution and timing and and ultimately it just like having the Eagles got it done and that like was the cherry on top it was a great campaign it

was a great you know first Super Bowl commercial for them and then finally Avi Schiffman's campaign which I call buy every billboard he literally every billboard. A friend did something absurd, which we can call it by every billboard strategy. Many people criticize a campaign in the product, but the results from an awareness standpoint are undeniable. Avi spent $1 to $2 million, was my estimate, and became a household name, at least on the coast. And a lot of other brands have spent like 10 times that amount, and you don't even know who they are. And I think, like, it's very possible that billboards can have increasing returns to scale. So you might buy two billboards, not really see any noticeable, like, lift

and awareness and attention and traffic but if you buy like 200 it's sort of undeniable you can't miss it when he came on the show and was like it's the biggest billboard campaign in history I was like there's no way and then I saw it everywhere and I was like okay maybe it is anyways I said hiring a storyteller to craft narratives and tell your story internally and externally is fine but if the goal is to be remembered and you lack a Joe Rogan CEO remember that one great campaign is worth 10,000 posts yeah I would just like like to see companies instead of, you know, frantically just trying to make a lot of noise in a

bunch of random ways as you go into 2026, how do you have one breakout moment campaign and truly be remembered? I'm trying to square like the problem that these job posts are trying to solve. So in the Wall Street Journal article, it's the percentage of LinkedIn job postings in the U.S. that include the term storyteller doubled in the year ending November 26, I guess, to include some 50,000 listings under marketing and more than 20,000 job listings under media and communications that mentioned the term storyteller, storytelling. Clearly people are, you know, business leaders are interested in storytelling, both as a, you know, a narrative for investors, but also as an actual physical job. But I'm wondering, like, you get in the seat, it does feel like a little bit of

what this journal article is saying is like, is like, you're going to be storytelling every single It's kind of counter to what, which I guess is what your whole point was, but it's very much counter to your point of like one big campaign, one breakthrough idea. I don't know. Is there a world where you need both, where you need inspiration, but you still need like, you know, at a certain point, you know, there was an example here. It's like, you know, they did a Lowe's case study on how Vertex AI helps create interactive shopping experiences. Like, is that going to be the major breakthrough? for me this year from Microsoft was Satya saying, I'm happy to be a leaser.

And I'm good for my, I'm good for my 80 billion. So when you think about when I, you know, I think what does that do for Lowe's partnership, you know? This was actually Google's cloud storytelling team. They published an article. And so if they just have to get out a blog post, maybe there is some benefit to just like shifting their mindset to at least being like, hey, instead of just doing like a list of facts,

like why don't you try and like tell it like a story? Meaning like the React structure, conflict, resolution, characters, antagonists. Like, you know, like, it sounds like a low bar. They didn't want lows to have efficient cloud infrastructure. They didn't want the shopping experiences to be interactive. But then Google came in and changed it up and changed up the game. You know, if I'm at a big company, if I'm a employee at a big company, it would be cool to have a, like, a centralized resource that's like,

here's how we talk about this product. Here's how we talk about our mission. Here's how we talked about our roadmap in the near term and the medium term and the long term, right? But ultimately, when you think of the companies that are great at storytelling, it is because the CEO is a great storyteller. I would argue that Apple, who's historically been an amazing storyteller, is not currently an incredible storyteller because Tim Cook is like 11 out of 10 operationally, and he's not the guy to go on. I don't see Tim Cook popping up on a bunch of... They're also aren't paying them enough to go do extra stuff. Like, if you're making that type of money,

like, you're not going to be like, yeah, I'm going to go work on the weekends. You're going to, five o'clock rolls around. Exactly. You're bailing. It hasn't mattered. Like, he's told the story through the company's performance, which is that he is one of the most elite operators in business history. Last night, I feel like we had dinner with a great storyteller,

and he told us his entire life story. and what was interesting and why I thought it was a really great story was two things like one the facts of the story just the truth was a lot of up and down a lot of conduct yeah it was rivetive it was riveting failure wins he's the protagonist but there were antagonists and there were and there were mentors and trials and tribulations like it really did fit the hero's journey so so the facts were there and you could go fact check them and be like oh yeah there were there were these story points but then also the the way he told the story didn't hide those. There was another version of that story where he only tells you the good moments in the story. And he doesn't tell you about any of the trial and tribulations. And we're like, OK, yeah, we get it.

You're successful. You know, it's boring. Instead, we were like, whoa, like another down turn, another up, another swing. It was emotional. It was a roller coaster. It was a great story. If there's anything that comes out of like the storyteller era

of corporate marketing, it should be, giving marketers, writers, storytellers, permission to actually inject conflict into their marketing materials. Yeah, look at the way that Palmer responded to that journal piece about how Anderol had a fire at one of their test sites, right? He was like paraphrasing, but it was effectively, yes, we had a fire at the missile test site or whatever it was, at the explosive test site, right? Like, yes, and he was trying to do that, he was trying to do that in the journal article when you clearly when he was talking to them. but they pulled out moments where it was like, we fail a lot. Whereas Palmer was trying to tell a good story, which is like, yeah, we fail a lot because we test a lot.

And we're trying to iterate faster than our competitors. And through that, we'll succeed. I think tech needs to fall in love with advertising again. Advertising is amazing. Like, I want to see companies hiring advertising specialists. I think this gets lost because we're in this era of rapid testing, iterating through a bunch of assets, you know, humor. So do you think it's going to be hard for companies to hire great storytellers?

The then diagram of people who get tech, get people, can explain complex things simply, and can make people care is tiny. It's easier to be a great storyteller if you have motion and if you have aura. It is. Tech bro obsessed with storytelling but hasn't read a book in the last five years. Instead of a launch video, somebody should just write an announcement in the full hero's journey. That actually sort of works. I mean, I would use the story circle when I would write YouTube videos. It's basically like a three-act structure, but in eight parts. There's a clue.

Eric Zaworski says, there's a big clue in the middle of the viral Wall Street Journal article by Dolly Dighton that explains why the people who would otherwise crush the role of storyteller, the hot new job at hot startups, rarely get the gig in the end as designer Stefan Saggart. Meister observed back in 2014. It's all the people who are not storytellers who now suddenly want to be storytellers. Yeah, I just think a title like this, I think a good test if you're trying to hire for a role like this is would the person be, do they want the title storyteller? Or would they be okay with the title copywriter? Because in my view, if you're hiring somebody to be a storyteller, their job is to like write down words in a structured, impactful way and help the entire organization, like, share those words in a consistent manner. A lot of people, like, want the title creative director, but do they want to be a project manager?

Like, no, they want to be a creative director, right? There's just, like, a status associated with that. There's maybe a status associated with storyteller. But at the end of the day, if you're trying to hire for this, do you want somebody that is obsessed with writing? You should be willing to take the job of storyteller. If I come to you and you say you want to work for me as a storyteller, I say, I'm going to start you off of the title Fabalist. And if you're cool with that, then maybe we'll upgrade you to storyteller. ChatGBTGBT has a new image model.

They just launched this. Sam Altman teased it with a photo that at this point, you know, him and a bunch of polos. What is the actual announcement? How is this framed? I know the model got better. Elf. But what is... Elf.

It's a good model, sir. Today we're releasing a new version of chat GPT images powered by our new flagship image generation model now whether you're creating something from scratch or editing a photo You'll get the output you're picturing it makes precise edits while keeping details intact and it's four times faster you know that's a big deal there's a soar video from ramp capital. Let's pull it up impressive oh very nice that's pretty funny I like now let's see more slop ability to use SORA to make jokes at Sam's expense is truly new territory for I mean I guess there were probably people that were in MS paint making fun of Bill Gates so these transformations work on both simple and more intricate concepts and are easy to try using preset styles and ideas in the new chat GPT images feature no written prompt required in an in an effort to make it easier to prompt we are now in

instantiating more UI. So as that image shows you. As the models get better, we need more SAS. With this, it feels like OpenAI and the ChatGPT app are definitely sort of embracing this idea that you will need to bring a little bit of idea generation. Open AI hires an executive from Google to lead M&A. Open AI hire comms chief, Hannah Wong,

is departing the company. This came out yesterday. She's stepping down. She's going to depart the company at the end of January. Wong was the AI Giants first chief comms officer and guided the company through the launch of Chatsuby-T, heightened regulatory scrutiny controversies and a slew of deals and lawsuits. The bigger picture, departure comes as the company is pushing on a variety of fronts. Do you think that she asked for the storyteller title and she didn't get it so she quit in protest?

Very, very possibly, John. It's very possible. Yeah, I feel like she deserves, she deserves like a little bit of a vacation at this point. I can't think of a more stressful job since 2021. We've had some gray hair. There is a fantastic article in the Wall Street Journal. We've got to go through it. Advertisers start Christmas season early.

This was written for us. This is fantastic news. Brands chase inflation-weary shoppers with plentiful TV spots. There's a whole bunch of interesting articles or interesting stats in here. Are you tired of Santas and relentlessly cheerful snowman filling every screen? No. No. Blame the advertisers.

Advertisers kicked off the holiday season even earlier this year and they are inundating televisions with commercials. The activity comes despite continuing efforts by many businesses to rein in costs to contend with tariffs. Holiday TV ads started in earnest in early October and companies have spent a combined $1.47 billion over the past nine weeks, a 13% jump compared with the year ago, period. Guess how much holiday retail sales are expected to be this year? I'll give you a hint.

In 2020, it was 0.7 trillion, 700 billion. Then it went to 850 billion, then 900, then 950. last year came in around 99 something really close what was it it was 0.98 trillion 980 billion dollars this year it's expected to be over a trillion there are massive investments in digital promotions flooding social media email inboxes and text messages so of course the 1.47 billion that's happening on TV is just a small slice of the overall advertising that's happening this holiday season retailers spent 5.8 billion on digital ads in the U.S. from November 1st to November 7th, a 4% increase

from last year. Holiday shopping season remains a critical moment for retailers with inflation still weighing on household budgets, but brands aren't taking any chances of losing out on the action. The National Retail Federation is projecting that holiday sales will surpass $1 trillion. A handful of retailers are proving particularly busy on the TV ad front so far. Walmart's ads feature a Dr. Seuss-inspired world starring Walter Goggins as the Grinch. Target, meanwhile, brings back Chris Kay, a jolly bearded Christmas enthusiast introduced in a 2024 campaign. In Target's spot, a woman who with whom he is on a coffee date gets a peek at his gift list and leaves him confused by referencing his naughty list.

Interesting. They pulled consumers, how do you feel about the timing of holiday ads, when holiday ads starts? So Amazon, one of the largest advertisers in the country, aired its first holiday TV ad on October 13th. Okay, but you've got to give me more. Was Santa in the ad? I'm kind of a purist. I like to go full speed ahead on the Christmas spirit. Would you say that the Christmas ads are, A, much too early, B, slightly too early, C, about the right time, slightly too late, or much too late?

I think you can start doing holiday advertising without putting snow on the ground and without... How would you do that? Wait, describe a holiday ad that doesn't at least have a little bit of snow. I would like to see Amazon do a plain text ad that's Star Wars style where the text is just scrolling, and it's like, get ready to buy stuff. This is about to be the Super Bowl of just buying stuff. Do it on Amazon.com. It's time to buy. It's time to buy.

Bucco Capital is arguing that AI is not a bubble. He says real businesses are seeing real impact from AI. Coding and tech support help are the two clear immediate role beneficiaries. Advertising is another clear beneficiary. META has talked about it in detail. Traditional boring companies like C.H. Robinson are pointing to AI and agentic workflows is making them more efficient. The market is responding quite rationally and scrutinizing these AI input companies diligently see Broadcom and Oracle this past week. So that is the sign of,

yeah, I agree with them. Like the fact, people are taking a victory lap dunking on Oracle. It's like this is how the market should be working. Like it should sort of be like, okay, we're regarding this future RPO five years out with some skepticism. We're not going to give you that much credit for it up front. You've got to actually deliver some real value. You got to get some cash flow into the business. Mag 7 minus Tesla have reasonable valuations and the hyperscalers have more demand than they can handle. He says, I've been vocal that indiscriminately gunning all AI input companies is a dumb thing to do, again, as Oracle Broadcom, Neoclouds have shown this last week, but it doesn't mean AI is a bubble. I like it. I think it's a good take. Ford learns a brutal

EV lesson. The carmaker takes a $19.5 billion right down on its electric vehicle business. And in this op-ed, they say, not long ago, automakers were touting electric cars as the future. Well, now they are slamming the brakes hard on that future as market reality has hit them like a 16-wheeler. See Ford Motors stunning announcement Monday that it will take a $19.5 billion charge on its electric vehicle business instead of plowing, quote, instead of plowing billions into future, into the future knowing these large EVs will never make money. We are pivoting Ford's CEO, Jim Harley said, as he explained the company's plan to boost its lineup of gas-powered cars and hybrids.

Ford will also scrap its all-electric F-150 lightning pickup. Full scrap. Which has been full scrap. They're not going to sell them anymore. So Ford has lost $13 billion on its EV business since 2023, with bigger losses expected in years to come. Last year, Ford lost about $50,000 for each EV sold. Wow. The truth is that the business case for EVs has always rested largely on government subsidies and mandates.

Now that is, now that this combination of government favoritism and coercion is mostly going away, most carmakers have much less reason to make EVs. More breaking news. Cushner's Affinity withdraws from Warner Bros. No way. Wow, this is breaking news right now. Jared Kushner is exiting from the takeover battle. affinity was helping to finance Paramount's bid for Warner Brothers, but now it believes the dynamics of an investment have changed since it became involved in the process. The battle for Warner Brothers

stands to reshape the entertainment industry, regardless of which bidder emerges victorious with both bids raising. Reading between the lines, I think we know what happened. Jared Kushner, clearly a foghorn, leghorn fan, when not enough Looney Tunes in the deal. Not enough Porky Pig. I'm out. I'm out. Not enough foghorn leghorn. I said I'm out. I'm out. I'm out. I can't support this. You can just do things. Go from Olympic snowboarder to head of cartel. 50 million dollar reward from FBI on your head. Life is short. Let it rip. Absolutely do not let it rip. I do not recommend becoming the head of a head of a 50 million dollar annual revenue business in a sort of legal domain. Maybe an enterprise software. Enterprise software. Life is short. Go from an

Olympic snowboarder to a SaaS icon. Let it rip. Life is short. And we'll leave it at that. day. Merry Christmas. Thanks for hanging out with us today. We will see you tomorrow. It feels like a Friday. It does. When you put on the Santa suit. We will see you guys tomorrow. Tomorrow. Goodbye.