Why Company Storytellers Are Growing in Popularity

As journalism jobs disappear and earned media becomes harder to secure, more U.S. companies are hiring their own “storytellers.” 

The Wall Street Journal recently noted that some organizations want a media relations manager by a flashier name. Others need people to produce blogs, podcasts and branded content to attract customers, investors and potential recruits. All seem to use the word “storyteller” differently than its usual application to novelists, playwrights and raconteurs.

Microsoft was recruiting a senior director of “narrative and storytelling,” described as part cybersecurity technologist, part communicator and part marketer. Vanta, a compliance technology firm, was also looking for a head of storytelling, with an annual salary of up to $274,000. 

The percentage of LinkedIn job postings that include the term “storyteller” doubled in the year ended Nov. 26, to include some 70,000 listings, according to the platform. 

Meanwhile, executives said “storyteller” or “storytelling” on earnings calls and investor days 469 times this year through Dec. 11, compared with 359 times in all of 2024 and 147 times in 2015, according to data from FactSet.

These increases come despite critics rolling their eyes at the term for many years.

“People who actually tell stories, meaning people who write novels and make feature films, don’t see themselves as storytellers,” designer Stefan Sagmeister said in a 2014 interview. “It’s all the people who are not storytellers who… suddenly now want to be storytellers.”

Since 2005, print newspaper circulation across the U.S. has dropped by 70%, while views of the 100 largest newspapers’ websites have fallen on average by more than 40% in the past four years, according to the annual “State of Local News” report from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Meanwhile, brands are publishing the narratives that they want the public to hear, via social media accounts, YouTube channels and Substack newsletters.