Dear academics of the story economy, from story consultants in the attention economy.

Hi.

We hear you. And we are right there with you.

We are competing against Facebook feeds of kittens and TMZ of a Kardashian wearing a shoe. We are competing against housewives who are so real while real housewives don’t have any time to be doing whatever it is they’re doing. We are trying to draw attention to big, overwhelming topics when someone could instead spend that 5 minutes thinking about whether Harry Styles did in fact spit on Chris Pine. We are dying in the attention economy.  We work months and months on a long-form piece that gets put on ice because died and so the retrospectives of their life that were sitting on-hand can be played, fueling the appetites of people who had no idea they were so hungry for content that is decades old about someone who had not much relevance anymore and probably just wanted to be left in peace when they passed; they weren’t important before they passed but suddenly their importance is the most important the second they are not there, the retrospectives answering “who was that again?” for absolutely no-one who asked.

So yes, we’re using stories, because otherwise we’re not even in the game – and as a reminder, the game is for your attention, your consideration.

But that doesn’t mean that we don’t know how weird it is. If we want to say something, we can’t say it. We have to have someone else say it, who will hold your attention. We really aren’t anyone to you. We have to speak in your language, which is drama and spectacle. How many times have you seen someone watch a video and if there is no tension within the first 10 seconds they sigh as though they’ve just lasted a 2 hour lecture on quantum theory and click next. So we have to translate everything we want to say into the language you understand. Which… is narrative.