Early in my career, a boss told me we should never call people "consumers." They said it made them sound like pigs eating slop, mindlessly ingesting whatever gets put in front of them. And it cast us, the people in marketing and communications, as the ones coldly shoveling more of that slop just to move product. I've never shaken it, because they were pointing at something I've come to believe about this whole business, and honestly about people.
The people we serve are not mouths to feed. They are people to value and find meaningful connection to. And you do not value people by simply selling harder to them. You value them by finding the higher story: the one that connects what you offer to what actually matters in their lives.
Everything has two stories.
There's the surface story. The transaction. The stereotype. The fear. It's the easy one, and it's the one most marketing settles for.
Underneath it sits the higher story. The human truth. The reason it actually matters. The outcome worth wanting.
Finding that higher story and telling it well has been my job in every role I've held, across brain health, eating disorder recovery, an intimacy brand, and a Broadway icon we lost too soon.
A supplement company wanted noise. We didn't sell a pill. We told the world that brain health belongs to everyone, not just the football players in the headlines.
An eating disorder network wanted awareness. We stopped showing the thin young woman in a hospital bed. We showed what hope actually looks like, in every kind of body.
Same move, every time. Look past what's being sold to what's actually true, and lead with that.
So I'm starting something here, and I'm calling it The Higher Story. Some posts will be about marketing and brands. Some will be about work, leadership, and the human moments in between. All of them come back to one idea:
The real truth is in the higher story.
So, what's the higher story? That almost nothing is only what it appears to be. The people worth trusting, in a brand or in a life, are the ones who keep looking for the truth underneath. That's what this series is for.
I want this to be a conversation, not a broadcast, so I'll always end with a question. What's a brand, a headline, or a moment in your own life where the obvious story wasn't the real one?
The Higher Story is a series about looking past the surface to the truth underneath: how that shapes the way we see the world, meet our challenges, and, in marketing and communications, do work that lands with more honesty and impact.
Originally published on LinkedIn.