The more I think about the cognitive context modern audiences encounter content within, the more I believe content marketing is set up to fail without a narrative strategy. 

Information overload is the prevailing condition of our media ecology, not just an obstacle to capturing attention. 

Our shared epistemology — how we know what we know — has shattered. The information space (especially platforms) creates a disorienting, incoherent, perpetual present. It encourages us to offload and forget. Hell, brainrot was the Oxford Word of the Year in 2024! I barely remember the salient details of content I read a few hours ago, let alone a week ago. Do you?

The writer L.M Sacasas likens our digital environment to a database: an unstructured, ever-growing set of data points that present diverse and competing narratives, always open to revision, and where countless paths through the database are possible. The database experience makes it hard for us to step back, connect the dots, and build a compelling, integrated story about what the hell is going on. 

It follows, then, that this media ecology would privilege narrative strategy and repetition.   

As brand strategist Tim Leberecht observed of our post-truth internet dynamics during the last election cycle:  

“The creation of a new reality is centered on three tenets: narrative, curation, and repetition. A story is how we navigate the ambiguity of our environment, how we make sense of the world. It’s the promised land, a vision worth aspiring to, or a reading of the world worth attaching to. A story either inspires us to make a future destination our home or makes us feel at home in the past or present.

Curation is the strategic, intentional, and continuous filtering of information to support the narrative.

Repetition bolsters the curation, and curation bolsters the narrative. It’s a virtuous cycle.”

Whether or not conspiracy theories are more prevalent these days, their appeal is their ability to resolve the complexity and ambiguity of the world into a tidy, emotionally-satisfying story. 

In this environment, what your audience needs most is someone to articulate a sense-making narrative that resolves the complexity in their market.

Platitudes like “cutting through noise” miss that noise is the sea we swim in. Instead of cutting through noise with “high-quality content”, we have to cut through it by repeatedly imposing a narrative through-line that stabilizes a worldview.  

So, to channel my inner April Dunford: What story are you telling about your category that answers the question, why you? What do you or your company understand and believe about the market that if your ideal client believed it, they’d want to work with you?

A defensible narrative is a filter for content teams to press new information, content, and the curation of internal stories through. 

Look, I still believe helpful, insightful content can build credibility and trust and thus the conditions to win business. But without a larger sense-making story, most content may become just more noise. ■

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Brandon Marcus is a ghostwriter and editorial content strategist for B2B service firms, startups and nonprofits. He’s based in Santa Monica, CA.