How to Use Disruptive Storytelling to Thrive as a Marketer

Are your tried and true marketing tactics losing their impact? Wondering how to adapt and stay relevant with consumers?

In this article, you’ll discover why disruptive storytelling is the key to thriving in today’s marketing environment and learn practical strategies for building deeper customer relationships and making content stand out.

Why Story is Critical in Today's Marketing World

The impact of AI on marketing is both exciting and terrifying. AI unleashes new levels of creativity, enabling people who aren't artists to become artists and those who aren't writers to become writers. People with disabilities suddenly have new capabilities. It's a magical time that we all need to embrace.

Despite the enthusiasm, there's reason for concern. 

“We're living in a time of existential reflection for marketers. As AI advances, it's nipping at the heels of our skill sets and potentially our careers”, says Mark Schaefer, futurist, social strategist, and author of multiple books.

The reality is stark: if you're creating merely competent content, you're vulnerable because AI is already competent—and, in many cases, more than competent. As Schaefer explains, “Competent is ignorable.” 

The key question becomes: Where are the uniquely human spaces that marketers can own?

One such area is storytelling—bringing a unique perspective and humanity to your narrative. This is where marketers can differentiate themselves from AI-generated content and other brands.

Where It All Began for Mark: The South by Southwest Drone Show

The inspiration for Schaefer's latest book came from an experience at South by Southwest a few years ago.

While dining with friends, Schaefer noticed people quietly standing up and walking to stand outside the restaurant. Curious, he and his companions abandoned their food and drinks to see what was happening. Outside, they discovered a drone show lighting up the night sky—an animation promoting a new television series that concluded with a QR code. Activating the QR code on a mobile device led the viewer to a trailer for Halo.

This experience captivated Schaefer and made him wonder: Could he create a story so compelling that people would leave their meals to view, record, and share it with their social networks? The answer was no—and that realization sparked his journey to understand how businesses can stand out in an increasingly noisy world.

Schaefer tracked down the agency responsible for the drone show, Giant Spoon, and asked to sit in on their meetings to learn their secrets. They agreed, leading him into a whole new world of creative marketing and into writing his new book, Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World.

The 3 Elements of Disruptive Storytelling Techniques

In a marketing landscape increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence, the path forward for human marketers is to embrace disruptive storytelling that showcases uniquely human creativity, instinct, and emotional connection.

Schaefer identified a pattern—a system for creating a disruptive story that demands attention. This system revolves around three key elements:

1. What is your story? (Your narrative)
2. Where do you tell the story?
3. Who tells the story?

To thrive, you must disrupt your narrative, where you tell your story, or who tells it—ideally, all three.

#1: Disrupt Your Narrative

The strategy here is “breaking bad rules for good reasons”—pushing boundaries and industry norms to create something memorable for consumers.

One of Schaefer's favorite examples comes from two Australian brothers, Andrew and James McKinnon, who run an agency called Taboo in Melbourne, Australia. During an on-stage presentation called “Taboo by Design,” they announced that they would remove a piece of clothing whenever someone left the room during their talk.

Andrew shared that they'd been told numerous times this was a bad idea but told the audience, “I would rather be humiliated today than be forgotten.” By the end of their presentation about breaking industry norms, they stood on stage in their underwear, showing their company name across their undershirts.

This approach taps into what researcher Jonah Berger identified in his book Contagious: stories that go viral have a strong emotional impact. While marketers often focus on creating positive emotions, the McKinnon brothers demonstrated the power of creating anxiety—an emotion that gets internalized and remembered.Other examples include Liquid Death, a water company that breaks all marketing norms by associating its product with death (its mascot is called “Murder Man”), and Nutter Butter cookies, which has created horror-movie-style content on TikTok that has quadrupled its sales.

#2: Disrupt Where You Tell the Story 

The second element involves telling your story in unexpected places. 

A prime example is e.l.f. Cosmetics, which has been one of the fastest-growing stocks on the New York Stock Exchange in recent years.

e.l.f. Cosmetics's marketing philosophy is to lean into the signal”—studying where their customers are showing up and how they're behaving differently, rather than obsessing over-optimization and metrics that every brand has access to.

For instance, while most cosmetics brands advertise in magazines like Vogue, e.l.f. Cosmetics created an experiential world in Roblox. Why? Because many of their customers—generally young women and preteens—spend time there. Similarly, recognizing their customers' love for music, e.l.f. created a music video on TikTok that generated five million challenge videos and billions of views. The song even ranked on Spotify.

Another creative example comes from Litographs, a company that prints the entire text of popular books on merchandise like t-shirts and blankets. They created temporary tattoos featuring individual sentences from popular books and sent them to fans. Customers applied the tattoos, took pictures, and sent them back to Litographs, allowing people to read an entire book displayed across various body parts. This unique approach created an engaging customer experience for minimal cost. Now, when the company releases a new line of products featuring a new book, they have a proven word of mouth marketing mechanism in place.

#3: Disrupt Who Tells the Story

The final element involves getting someone other than your marketing team to tell your story, otherwise known as word-of-mouth marketing.

Despite being the oldest form of marketing, word of mouth remains an afterthought for most marketers. “How many people have word-of-mouth marketing in their marketing budget? Almost nobody,” Schaefer points out. So there's plenty of untapped opportunity for this one.

Why does it work so well?

We live in a streaming economy, where people pay extra for Netflix, Disney+, and Spotify specifically to avoid advertisements. Nielsen research shows that people will believe a stranger before they'll believe an ad. They trust friends, family, influencers, reviews, and testimonials over traditional marketing.

“The marketing mindset today is really entering that space where we do something so cool that the customers tell the story for us,” Schaefer explains. “Instead of holding the mic, we kind of write a script, this cool story, and then we hand the mic to the customers and say, ‘You take it away.'”

This strategy has a significant advantage in the age of AI: “Humans own word-of-mouth marketing. It is the purest, most trusted, unadulterated form of marketing there is,” Schaefer says.

Additionally, Schaeffer quotes research by Ed Keller revealing that approximately 10% of the population across every culture consists of “super sharers”—people with a natural tendency to spread stories they find compelling. Unlike influencers who self-identify and may require payment, these everyday word-of-mouth amplifiers will organically share remarkable stories, potentially increasing a story's reach by 630%.

The key is creating something interesting enough to activate these natural sharers.

Yeti, the premium cooler and drinkware company, exemplifies this approach. For its first five years, Yeti spent nothing on traditional advertising, building its brand entirely through word-of-mouth marketing. They connected with fishing, hiking, and hunting guides—people leading others into the outdoors—providing them with merchandise and, more importantly, stories explaining why someone would pay $400 for a cooler. These guides became part of the super sharer ten percent, spreading the word to their groups, with the message continuing to cascade outward.

Red Bull followed a similar path in its early days, building its business almost entirely through word-of-mouth marketing rather than traditional advertising.

Involving employees can also be effective, but Schaefer cautions against incentive programs. Instead, he recommends making storytelling a career development opportunity. He shares an example of a Texas company that trained hourly employees to tell stories on Instagram and TikTok, creating a social media marketing club that taught storytelling skills as a benefit to employees.

Tractor Supply runs an employee-led Instagram and TikTok campaign where employees simply talk about store products as they would to customers. Macy's takes a similar approach, with most of their marketing done by department employees.

How to Persuade Your Boss to Try Disruptive Marketing

For many marketers, the biggest challenge isn't understanding these concepts but convincing leadership to embrace them. Schaefer dedicates an entire chapter in his book to this challenge and offers advice based on interviews with people working in traditional companies, agencies, and as freelancers.

His two most effective strategies:

1. Create Constructive Anxiety: Help leadership understand their vulnerability in a changing marketing landscape. If they're honest and well-meaning, they'll want to adjust when they recognize the risks of maintaining the status quo.
2. Propose a Pilot Program: It's difficult to say no to a six-month experiment, especially when modern technology allows for low-cost trials.

How Mark Schaefer Is Using Disruptive Storytelling: The World's First Infinity Book Cover

True to the principles outlined in his book, Schaefer created an audacious element for his latest book. The cover features a large QR code that, when scanned with a smartphone, creates an augmented reality experience where the cover transforms with abstract, colorful art informed by stories in the book.

This innovation took six months to develop and represents the first-ever implementation of this technology on a book cover. It creates a memorable, shareable experience that extends beyond the content inside.

“It's the first time anybody has ever done this,” Schaefer says. The innovative cover has resonated with readers, with some reporting that even their children enjoy the interactive experience.

Other Notes From This Episode

• Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Instagram and @Mike_Stelzner on X.
• Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.

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