In February 2017 I wrote a piece for The CEO Magazine called Tell Me A Story, a practical guide to storytelling in content marketing. Rereading it this week, one line stopped me. “For those less gifted, there are ways to fake it.”

The advice that followed was a formula. Plan the who, what, when, why and how, then find an angle that shows what makes you or your business interesting. Write in the first person, because people identify with people more than they do with companies. Lean on emotion, the way Klennex did with its Labrador puppies and Qantas did with Feels Like Home. And use the rule of three, because ideas are catchier and more memorable when they come in threes.

None of that was wrong. In 2017 it was useful, and for many business leaders who had never thought of themselves as writers, a formula was a way in.

The formula has been automated

Nine years on, the formula is no longer a technique. It is a setting. Ask any AI tool for a story about your business and it will hand you a first-person narrative with an emotional hook, a clear beginning, middle and end, and a tidy trio of benefits, in seconds and at no cost.

The rule of three shows the change most clearly. It used to be a device that made writing memorable, and now it is one of the quickest ways to spot copy nobody really wrote. Editors notice it, journalists notice it, and increasingly so does the reader scrolling LinkedIn on the train home. When everyone has the same structure, the structure stops signalling effort and starts signalling the opposite.

So faking it is no longer a shortcut. It is the default, and audiences have learned to tune it out.

What still holds up

What surprised me on rereading wasn’t how much of the article had dated. It was which part hadn’t.

In the middle of the piece, to show what first-person writing could do, I described the day I resigned to go out on my own as a consultant. I had two babies at home and no paid holidays, sick leave or regular pay cheque to fall back on, and I felt a real fear of failure alongside the sense that a lid had been lifted on what I could do.

“Feeling a sense of excitement for the unknown and relief leaving a role that I had grown out of, I was also feeling the pressure of having two babies at home, and no corporate perks like paid holidays, sick days and that sense of security that a regular pay-cheque provides. Most importantly, I felt a devastating fear of failure. If this doesn’t work out, how will I ever cope with failure? But the energy I felt that day was un-paralleled to anything else I had experienced in my working life. The lid holding in my creative capacity had been lifted. That’s how I knew that I would make this happen; this would work.”

That paragraph still works, and not because it follows the formula. It works because it is true and specific, and because it could only have come from me. No tool could have generated it, because it happened to one person on one day.

That is the shift. In 2017 the hard part of storytelling was structure, and the formula solved it. In 2026 structure is the easy part, and what’s scarce is the material that goes into it.

What this means for the work we do

At Popcom we see this every week, across corporate profiles, media pitches, award submissions and thought leadership. The drafts that fall flat are rarely badly structured. They are usually well organised and reasonably written, and interchangeable with something a competitor could publish tomorrow. They just lack feeling.

The drafts that land have something in them that only that person or that business could say. It might be a detail from a client engagement, a number from their own operations or a view on their industry they would defend in a room full of peers. (Yes, that’s three. Old habits.)

Journalists respond to it because they are looking for a source with a perspective, not a summary of the obvious. Clients and prospects respond to it because it gives them a reason to choose you over someone who sounds exactly the same.

Having a story worth telling

If I were rewriting the piece today, I would keep the advice to write in the first person and to find what makes you genuinely interesting. I would drop the promise that anyone can fake it.

The craft hasn’t disappeared. It has moved upstream, from shaping a story to having one worth telling, and that is a job that still belongs to people.

One final point, if you are still reading this far – those babies are now teenagers and the fear of failure has never gone away!

The original 2017 article is here for anyone feeling nostalgic.

Amanda Lacey – Founder/Director Popcom PR