A work in progress

Not that long ago, I realized whenever people ask me what I do, I tend to reply, “Well, I used to be a journalist …” before some rambling explanation about writing and telling stories kinda sorta for companies who sell ideas rather than products and how it’s the text you see on a corporate website yada yada yada. For someone who prides himself on an a crisp, engaging narrative, it’s lousy and flabby. And it’s been nagging at me.

I’ve told myself it’s just easier. People instinctively know what journalists do, just as kids latch onto wanting to be firefighters or policemen and you never hear a three year old declare she “wants to craft thought leadership for a major professional-services firm” (most kids would probably ask “what’s thought leadership?”, which is valid and another discussion entirely about the vacuousness of that term and a lot of what passes for it).

A second reason I lead with the past may be a combination of wistfulness and pride, at least at the way journalism at its core remains an essential public service. You can rationalize thought leadership and content marketing all you like—“it’s connecting people with products and services that help them and the companies that are prime movers of the global economy, providing hundreds of millions of jobs that sustain households and communities” (see how easy it is?)—but you’re still not exposing corruption or toppling presidencies.

Of course, the reality is just a fraction of journalism has ever actually done that (but, my God, it’s wonderful when it does). And I may be nostalgic for the good old days, but they’re long gone—literally and figuratively. If journalism today bears little resemblance to journalism a decade ago, it’s positively foreign compared with 20 years ago, when news wasn’t a commodity, the profession was relatively well paid, and there was actually some cache to doing something both important and often authoritative.

My new take on “what do you do?” is, first, to privately wonder why it matters. I’m increasingly aware that defining your existence by your job is both reductionist and, at an individual level, dangerous. We’re all way more than the sum of our visible parts, and I’d like to think my kids would answer “what does your dad do?” with something like “he loves us and looks after us and builds one heck of a Lego set,” perhaps not even realizing I actually, er, work.

But I’ve noted before that my revised answer, if pushed, is “I tell stories.” I think that matters in a world where relationships are increasingly superficial and interactions increasingly fragmented. And it matters not only in the sense of helping bridge divides and provide diverse perspectives, but because it points to the broader evolution of content marketing.

That evolution can be viewed two ways. Accepting the fundamental purpose of marketing is to sell stuff, the first is storytelling as a marketing device is just plain sneaky: it’s shamelessly playing to a consumer’s emotions to seal the deal, rather than just being honest. A regular commercial? “Got hemorrhoids? Smear some of this on your butthole.” Storytelling? Plinky plinky music with a story about feeling too ashamed to go out in public or being afraid to sit down followed by “Got hemorrhoids? Smear some of this on your butthole.” Side note: I don’t have hemorrhoids, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But no one’s forcing consumers to spend money—it’s not a con. And in a world with way too many options, forging a connection with a brand (and its products or services) that shares your values or aspirations or inspires you is a legitimate, valuable way to make a purchasing decision. It doesn’t matter if the underlying purpose remains the same—of course the underlying purpose is the same. But you’re going to spend money anyway. Why not do it with someone that reflects who you are and speaks to you beyond a purely transactional level?

So … I tell stories. It’s very different to being a journalist and yet, increasingly, much the same. And for all the ups and downs and bureaucracy and frustration and everything else that often conspires to shift the enjoyment pendulum, it’s not a bad way to make a living.