Bridging the Gap

Marketers are facing bigger goals and tighter budgets. Here’s how storydoing bridges the gap. 

When we stepped off the plane from Cannes Lions earlier this summer, we were reeling. 

The festival was a brilliant display of how brands are responding to AI, leaning into the creator economy, and finding new ways to partner, produce, and progress. 

It also confirmed that the role of marketing has never been more complex – or more critical. 

Today’s CMOs are asked to define their brand’s story and how it connects to their creative strategy, partnership strategy, and AI strategy… all while facing budget cuts and pressure to prove ROI. 

Marketing has become about doing more with less. The bar is constantly being raised. And the need for storydoing is greater than ever. 

To succeed, marketers need to get clear on their story and align everyone behind it, from their c-suite to their investors. They need to translate it into action principles that are understood and internalized by everyone in the room. 

Because in today’s hyper-connected ecosystem, a brand’s story isn’t a to-do for marketing alone. It’s a to-do for the entire organization. Once your organization rallies around your story, you have the emotional and financial investment required to make it real. 

One recent example of this: our multi-year partnership with Reju.

• Reju started with one of the hardest problems of our time: over 85% of textiles end up in landfills.

• They couldn’t solve it through technology alone. They needed a movement that could change the ecosystem from the ground up. 

• Getting there took more than a vision statement. It took an idea that was grounded, strategic, and emotionally connective for everyone in the room – showing marketers, engineers, and investors the impact Reju could have. 

• We used human creativity to build Reju’s brand foundations and tools like AI to render the possibilities they unlocked, from future facilities and activations to global behavior change. 

• Today, Reju is scaling. Regeneration hubs are underway. Major partnership agreements have been signed. An industry is starting to transform in, real time.

This is happening thanks to a story that every stakeholder was able to believe in, act on, and build towards from Day 1. 

So yes, marketing has gotten more complicated – but the job is as clear as ever: align your people on your story – then go build it.