Almost everybody thinks that marketing is easy, that just about anybody could be a marketeer if given the chance. People figure that because time watching TV and scrutinizing ads in the subway that this gives them a qualified opinion on the subject. Unfortunately, not everyone can be a marketeer they spend a lot of because having on opinion on marketing isn’t the same as marketing.

Fundamentally, great marketing is about great storytelling. We’ve all had the experience of being enthralled by the power of a good storyteller, their ability to bring their subject to life and create an experience.

Conversely, we’ve all also had the unfortunate experience of having to endure some really bad storytelling. The kind that a lot of the times begins with “So have you heard the one about…..”. More often than not, we are the victims of boredom inducing, daydream inspiring stories during which we retreat to our mental play-garden and indulge our fantasies of being He-Man or She-ra.

That’s why we pay good money to hear and see good storytellers. We pay to hear them in the form of speakers and we pay to see them in the form actors. Companies pay for them in the form of good marketeers.

In a way, marketing is something that we all do because we all tell stories. So yes, in a sense everyone is a storyteller, the problem is, most people are only good at telling stories about themselves an not telling stories in general.