You can’t help but notice the rise of ‘brand storyteller’ roles, some of which are paying high six-figure salaries. Also, you may have seen more chat around ‘personal branding’. Why now? For me, it’s all about differentiation in an age of AI slop and ‘comfortable sameness’ (my definition).
When you’ve been around the block as many times as I have, you get used to seeing things come around again. For example, all the boys seem to have the same curtains hair that I did at their age back in 1992; or explaining AI to the C-suite is just like describing social media to the same cohort in the late noughties. And so it is with two terms that are enjoying something of a moment, ‘brand storytelling’ and ‘personal branding’.
If you look at these Google Trends charts (screen-grabbed on 24 February 2026), you can see the recent explosion in comparative popularity of both in the last year. I remember ‘brand storytelling’ being a thing around 2014, although this chart doesn’t seem to imply it was as big a deal as I remember.
Differentiation in a sea of sameness is key
The challenge with AI-generated written content is that much of it looks the same. For B2B content strategy consultants and copywriters like me, the move towards generative AI has been a painful watch. Many brands and agencies believed they could generate the same quality of content via machines as they could with expert human copywriters. While some efficiencies can be found, often the result is samey-looking content, to the point where the media is sceptical of many PR approaches and associated content.
And, given the many and diverse channels that brands must find/establish their voice on nowadays, it’s no surprise that many brands are looking for someone to lead that ‘brand storytelling’ in an era when there’s so much content out there, and so much of it feels the same.
I am hope we are either near, or over, the hype cycle when it comes to AI-generated written content.
What is ‘brand storytelling’ anyway? For me, it’s a handy (if Marmite/divisive, I’m not a fan personally) term to communicate a company’s core mission and showcase its value through human stories, in a way that resonates with audiences and drives engagement and sales while improving sentiment. The best device for brand storytelling, in my opinion, is the customer case study; show, don’t tell.
‘Personal branding’ is the other one that’s gaining traction. Again, promoting oneself has always been important, but more so now than ever, because of the reasons above (standing out) alongside the benefits of being perceived as an expert by large language models (LLMs) for AI search reasons.
We all have a personal brand. We’re all unique. We just need to get out there and tell that story in our own way.
The challenge for many B2B companies is that they don’t have the time or the resources to plan and create that brand storytelling content or develop personal branding in-house.
That’s where people like me come in… If you need a human expert to help you with your brand storytelling or to develop the personal brand of your senior executives, please drop me an email or DM me on LinkedIn.
