We often forget, down here in the weeds, how others perceive our big picture.

Smart, highly technical founders are usually annoyed by this: your words are more than mere information; they are like the brushstrokes on a canvas, always (whether you know it or not) painting a vision. Stakeholders support a venture (or don’t) based on how much they want to be part of that vision (or not).

Let’s bridge that gap with an example.

An Advertising Client Needed to Paint a Picture

We had a client in advertising technology. Their story was falling completely flat to their stakeholders. They were all about how the technology worked. Maybe there was something exciting in there, but all their stakeholders saw them as, “We are yet another technical media marketing firm in a sea of media marketing firms.” Not so good.

“To truly sell the idea that they were going to change the world, the story needed a narrative that connected what they were saying to how they made us feel.”

To truly sell the idea that they were going to change the world, the story needed a narrative that connected what they were saying to how they made us feel. Our client wasn’t just developing another advertising tool; they were leading the charge in a shift in the industry.

That’s just not the picture a highly technical pitch paints.

To change this, we put the technology aside for a moment. Instead, we told a story.

To do this, we placed them in the history of advertising. Real advertising started in the 60s when storytelling became king. Picture the famous lipstick ad from the TV show ManMen “Mark your man.” Then, the 80s and 90s followed, with their focus on glamor, big spending, and brand awareness. But then, in the early 2000s, suddenly you could get data on how your ads were working. That was huge. What’s the next big shift in ads in 2024? That’s where our client comes in. They are using machine learning not just to analyze, but to understand and predict real intent to buy and then to feed that data back into the recommendations to make stronger predictions; rise and repeat. For the consumer, this looks like nearly clairvoyant ads, where you always see what you are interested in, and never see what you’re not.

Now we’re telling a story that makes stakeholders go, “Tell me more.”

Storytelling Makes a True Impact

No longer seen as just another highly technical commoditized tool, our client was a potential multi-billion-dollar juggernaut.

It’s about creating a context, an emotional urgency that compels action. It’s about showing not just where you fit in the current scene but how you’re going to redefine it.

At CREATIVE BLUE, this is our forte – transforming your pitch into a compelling portrait of your vision, making stakeholders not just technically understand, but feel the potential of your venture.