Exploring Scandinavia

For 170 years, Guinness never advertised. The beer did the talking. But in 1929, the Guinness family agreed that the brand could run ads… as long as the advertising was as good as the beer. Its long-running “Made of More” campaign highlights the incredible true story of the Japanese women’s rugby team, Liberty Fields RFC. Brand Masters of Storytelling 2 tells the story of the Guinness “Made of More” campaign.

The Guinness “Made of More” campaign was a multi-year global marketing platform launched in 2012 by the advertising agency AMV BBDO. Designed to shift the brand’s focus from a static “perfect pint” image to stories of substance, character, and extraordinary individuals, the campaign positioned Guinness as a “beer for people made of more”.

A very simple and very effective stipulation. In February 1929, the first official Guinness ad appeared in the national British press with the slogan ‘Guinness is Good for You’.

Now, after a journey from toucans and surfers to ‘Sapeurs’ and countless ‘first sips’, it’s fair to say that Guinness advertising has captured the hearts and minds of generations. As Brian Sibley writes in his book ‘Guinness Advertising’, ‘Guinness has always been the hero of its own advertising. Quite simply, Guinness advertising has become an institution – like tea, cricket, and fish and chips.’

There are few brands that have ever reached the level of fandom and love as that of a pint of ‘the black stuff’ from Ireland.

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The film begins in 1989 Tokyo, showing the gender expectations for women at the time and how the female players defied those social conventions to represent their country at the Women’s World Cup.

The campaign expanded the brand identity to convey that both the drink itself—with its complex brewing and distinct, bold taste—and its drinkers transcend the ordinary. It became one of the most effective communication platforms in Guinness’s history, winning top honors at the IPA Effectiveness Awards. The campaign ran successfully as the brand’s core messaging platform until 2019.

Guinness’ 2024 Christmas campaign left the Irish stout unavailable in many parts of the UK and drove an 18 percent increase in beer sales for its parent company, Diageo, over the period. It is a drink that, even after 266 years, continues to attract new consumers while retaining lifelong ones.

All you have to do is search ‘Guinness ad’ online, and you will find a world of delicious creativity and artwork. That’s how Arthur might have described his beers, and with as many awards for the ads as for the beer itself, the family’s only rule has clearly been upheld!

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Niall McKee, Head of Guinness Stout Europe at Diageo, told Campaign: “We found the story of Liberty Fields and felt it captured the ‘Made of more’ campaign brilliantly. It was highly relevant to what’s going on in the world right now, especially in light of this year’s Rugby World Cup in Japan. It felt like a natural, authentic story for Guinness to tell in that context.”

Instead of focusing solely on product perfection, the campaign leaned into emotional, human-centric storytelling. Notable advertisements include:

• Cloud (2012): The launch TV commercial features a lone, unconventional cloud that defies the wind to embark on its own journey across the city, acting in extraordinary ways.
•  Sapeurs (2014): One of the most famous spots follows a group of ordinary working men in the Republic of the Congo who transform into dapper, vibrantly dressed gentlemen. It highlights their choice to exude elegance, positivity, and extraordinary style despite their daily circumstances.
• John Hammond (2016): A spot that highlights the real-life music producer who broke boundaries by bringing black and white musicians together on stage during an era of deep segregation.
• Liberty Fields (2019): Tells the remarkable true story of a group of women who defied social conventions to form a competitive, indomitable rugby team in 1980s Japan.

You might not know his name, but you’ll certainly know his art, from the iconic Guinness Toucan to the mischievous, stout-drinking Ostrich. John Gilroy was a polymath in the world of painting, with a mind unlike his peers’. For this reason, the Guinness campaigns he brought to life from the 1930s to the 1960s remain as distinctive today as they were then.

The idea of using animals to advertise Guinness first occurred to Gilroy after visiting the circus. While watching a performing sealion, he had the curious thought that the animal would be smart enough to balance a glass of Guinness on its nose! Alas, that idea became the concept for one of the world’s longest-running advertising campaigns, “My Goodness, MY GUINNESS.”

Brand Masters of Storytelling 2, written by Tor Kjolberg
All images © Guinness.
Other articles on storytelling by Tor Kjolberg:
My 12 Survival Techniques as a Storyteller
Brand Masters of Storytelling
How to Use Humor in Storytelling to Break Through Advertising Clutter
Leaders Who Shape Stories Shape Markets
A Brand’s In-House Storytelling Library

Those who manage stories within an organization should first inventory the stories currently available. Most companies have plenty of stories not properly categorized and/or sorted. A brand’s in-house storytelling library is therefore an asset that the marketing department should establish.

Most organizations maintain a large archive of narrative assets: customer anecdotes, founder lore, internal milestones, failures, product moments, support interactions, employee and customer experiences, etc. However, these stories are often fragmented, uncataloged, and inaccessible.

Companies do not primarily suffer from a lack of stories

They suffer from story disorder. “Story poverty” is more often false or an excuse. Most branding and PR conversations assume the organization needs more stories. But in reality:

• Stories exist across departments
• Employees repeat them informally
• Sales teams use them ad hoc
• Founders retell certain narratives repeatedly
• Customer service hears emotional moments daily
• Internal culture contains mythology
• Product teams accumulate “origin decisions”
• None of this is systematically managed.

The hidden archive problem

There are two types of storytelling organizations:

Story Inventory Before Story Creation

A company should conduct a story inventory audit before launching any brand storytelling initiatives. They already record financial data, products, patents, customer data, content assets, and knowledge bases. But they rarely inventory emotionally resonant experiences, symbolic moments, institutional memory, customer transformations, or cultural narratives. Planning helps ensure that the stories you pursue and create truly support your objectives.

HOW to Find Stories

I would avoid generic advice like “talk to employees.” Instead, build a systematic methodology organized into categories. Many stories are never used to their full potential.

You might follow the categories and questions below.

A. Founding Stories

Questions:

Why was the company started?

What frustration existed?

What early sacrifices were made?

What nearly failed?

What belief contradicts the market?

B. Customer Transformation Stories

Look for before-and-after states, moments of relief, emotional turning points, unexpected use cases, and high-stakes outcomes.

Support tickets and customer success calls are gold mines.

C. Internal Culture Stories

These reveal organizational character through moments when employees rallied together, made difficult decisions, showed unusual care, experienced recurring funny incidents, observed symbolic traditions, and handled crises well.

Culture becomes believable through stories, not value statements.

D. Product Origin Stories

Every meaningful product feature includes a conflict, a trade-off, a customer pain point, an internal debate, and a breakthrough moment.

Engineering and product teams often hold underused narrative capital.

E. Failure Stories

This is important because it adds sophistication. Credible brands do not tell only success stories.

Failures communicate learning, realism, resilience, transparency, and maturity.

How to Collect Stories Systematically

Stories should be captured continuously, not only during campaigns. Those who manage stories within an organization should first inventory the stories currently available. I recommend that organizations establish a story-collection process. Research indicates that most customer content is not compelling and, in most cases, is not used effectively, if at all. The problem stems from failing to align story development with actual company needs.

Ask current customers who within their organizations helped make buying decisions and what factors influenced them.

How to Categorize Stories

A single story typically fits into multiple categories. Create a plan for how you will use each story. Most organizations fail not at storytelling but at retrieval.

Here’s a useful framework:

Then add metadata such as emotional tone, audience, strategic use, brand value represented, business unit, media format, and confidentiality level.

Now you are treating stories as a searchable narrative infrastructure. This is intellectually stronger than conventional “brand storytelling” articles.

During my career, I have had the privilege of working on several successful storytelling campaigns. I have worked in several businesses, from fashion and cosmetics to construction and tourism.

If you want a free copy of my new book, just contact me. The only thing you have to do is to write your name, your email address, and Storytelling in the subject line.

A Brand’s In-House Storytelling Library – Conclusion

A company without a story archive becomes dependent on constant content production. A company with a narrative system compounds meaning over time.

A Brand’s In-House Storytelling Library, written by Tor Kjolberg.
Other articles on storytelling by Tor Kjolberg:
Rethink How Destinations Are Experienced
My 12 Survival Techniques as a Storyteller
Brand Masters of Storytelling
How to Use Humor in Storytelling to Break Through Advertising Clutter
Leaders Who Shape Stories Shape Markets

Ideas don’t spread because they’re smart—they spread because they’re well told. Clever storytellers don’t just communicate ideas; they shape what audiences believe is worth thinking about. Leaders who shape stories shape markets.

In most boardrooms, “thought leadership” is still treated as a function of expertise. Publish a white paper, commission proprietary research, share a bold prediction—repeat at scale. The assumption is simple: if the thinking is strong enough, influence will follow.

But in practice, it rarely works that way.

We operate in an environment defined by content saturation and shrinking attention spans. Insight alone is no longer scarce; interpretation is. And in that shift lies a more useful definition of thought leadership: not just possessing valuable ideas, but shaping how others understand and apply them.

That is the work of storytelling.

Clever storytellers don’t merely communicate ideas—they organize them, give them direction, and make them travel. In doing so, they become the voices that industries listen to, quote, and build upon.

Rethinking Thought Leadership

Traditional thought leadership prioritizes information transfer. Reports, op-eds, and keynote presentations all aim to deliver knowledge to an audience assumed to be rational and attentive.

The flaw is not in the ambition, but in the model. Information does not automatically convert into influence. In fact, without structure, most ideas dissipate quickly, regardless of their quality.

What distinguishes influential leaders is not the volume of their output, but the clarity of their narrative. They don’t just add to the conversation—they frame it.

Storytelling, in this context, is not about embellishment or entertainment. It is a strategic discipline: the ability to package insight into a form that is memorable, repeatable, and meaningful to a specific audience.

Why Storytelling Drives Influence

There are four mechanisms through which storytelling transforms expertise into thought leadership.

1. Stories organize complexity

Modern markets are complex systems. Data points are abundant, signals are ambiguous, and competing interpretations are constant. A well-constructed story acts as a compression tool—it reduces complexity into a coherent throughline.

Instead of presenting ten disconnected insights, a narrative connects them into a single perspective. This allows audiences to process, retain, and apply information more effectively. In executive settings, especially, clarity often outperforms completeness.

2. Stories travel further than facts

Ideas gain influence when they move beyond their original context. A statistic may be accurate, but it is rarely repeated. A narrative, however, is inherently portable.

When an idea is embedded in a story—with a clear tension and resolution—it becomes easier to share across teams, organizations, and media channels. This repeatability is what turns a point of view into a widely adopted perspective.

In other words, storytelling creates distribution leverage for thinking.

3. Stories signal original thinking

In a landscape where access to data is increasingly democratized, differentiation comes from interpretation. Two organizations can look at the same dataset and reach entirely different conclusions.

Storytelling is the vehicle for that differentiation. It reflects how an organization frames reality—what it prioritizes, what it challenges, and what it believes comes next.

A distinctive narrative signals that the thinker is not just informed, but insightful. It demonstrates a point of view, which is the foundation of thought leadership.

4. Stories build emotional credibility

Expertise establishes authority, but trust requires more. Audiences need to understand not only what you think, but why it matters.

Storytelling introduces context, stakes, and human relevance. It connects abstract ideas to real-world implications, making them more persuasive and credible. In doing so, it bridges the gap between intellectual agreement and genuine conviction.

From Content Production to Narrative Design

Many organizations attempt to build thought leadership by increasing content output—more articles, more posts, more campaigns. The result is often fragmentation: isolated pieces of content that fail to reinforce a consistent perspective.

A more effective approach is narrative design.

This involves shifting from a campaign mindset to a system mindset. Instead of asking, “What should we publish next?” the better question is, “What is the core narrative we want to own—and how does each piece of content reinforce it?”

The distinction is critical:

• Content production distributes information.
• Narrative design shapes meaning.

In practice, this means aligning leadership communications, marketing efforts, PR activity, and internal messaging around a shared story architecture. Each touchpoint becomes a variation of the same core idea, adapted for context but consistent in direction.

Over time, this consistency is what builds recognition and authority.

A Practical Framework for Story-Led Thought Leadership

For organizations looking to operationalize this approach, a simple four-part framework can be effective.

1. Insight

Start with a non-obvious observation. What do you see in your market that others are overlooking or underestimating? This is not about novelty for its own sake, but about identifying a meaningful shift, contradiction, or emerging pattern.

2. Tension

Insight alone is not enough; it needs urgency. What problem does this insight expose? What assumption does it challenge? Tension creates relevance by answering the question: why should anyone care?

3. Frame

The frame is how you package the insight and tension into a clear, compelling perspective. This often takes the form of a simple, memorable idea or phrase—something that can anchor multiple pieces of content and conversations.

4. Story System

Finally, the narrative must be expressed consistently across channels. This includes executive communications, marketing campaigns, media engagement, and even sales conversations. The goal is not repetition for its own sake, but reinforcement—ensuring that the same core idea is encountered in multiple contexts.

Common Pitfalls

While the value of storytelling is increasingly recognized, execution often falls short. Several patterns tend to undermine effectiveness.

• Confusing storytelling with entertainment: Business storytelling is not about being amusing; it is about being meaningful. Clarity and relevance should take precedence over creativity for its own sake.
• Over-reliance on anecdote: Personal stories can be powerful, but without a clear strategic link to the broader insight, they risk becoming distractions rather than drivers of understanding.
• Fragmented messaging: Producing disconnected content pieces dilutes impact. Without a unifying narrative, even high-quality content struggles to build cumulative influence.
• Chasing virality over authority: Short-term attention spikes do not equate to long-term thought leadership. Consistency of perspective is more valuable than occasional visibility.

The Strategic Implication

As artificial intelligence accelerates content creation, the supply of information will continue to increase. In such an environment, the competitive advantage shifts away from producing content and toward shaping interpretation.

This is where storytelling becomes decisive.

Organizations that invest in narrative capability—defining clear perspectives, structuring ideas effectively, and communicating them consistently—will be better positioned to influence how markets think and evolve.

They do not risk becoming part of the background noise, regardless of how strong their underlying ideas may be.

In the end, thought leadership is not simply about having something to say. It is about ensuring that what you say changes how others see.

And that is the work of a clever storyteller.

If you want a free copy of my new book, “How I’ve Survived as a STORYTELLER for Over 50 Years: 12 Survival Techniques”, just contact me. The only requirements are to include your name, your email address, and “Storytelling” in the subject line.

Leaders Who Shape Stories Shape Markets, written by Tor Kjolberg

Other articles on storytelling:
How Storytelling Can Help Launch Your Product in Scandinavia
Rethink How Destinations Are Experienced
My 12 Survival Techniques as a Storyteller
Brand Masters of Storytelling
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