Brand Storytelling Keynote: Stories That Build Brands People Actually Care About

What Your Audience Gets

Here's the problem with most brand storytelling advice: it comes from people who've only worked inside an office. They'll tell you to "find your why" and "be authentic" and call it a day. But they've never sat across from a coral reef gardener in Raja Ampat trying to figure out how his story connects to a Fortune 500 sustainability report. They've never had to translate the messy, complicated truth of real work into something a marketing team can actually use.

I've done both. For fifteen years, I built brand narratives for some of the world's biggest companies at Ogilvy and Huge. I learned how brands think, how they buy, how they measure success. Then I co-founded Edges of Earth and spent three years in the field, documenting 375+ stories in 53 countries. That changed everything I thought I knew about what makes a story land.

This keynote brings those two worlds together. Your audience walks away with a practical framework for building brand stories that people actually remember, grounded in real examples from the field. Not theory. Not buzzwords. Real narrative strategy they can put to work the next morning.

Talk Topics

Every talk is customized, but these are the core threads I pull from depending on your audience and goals.

Building a Brand Narrative That Holds

Most brands have a story problem, not a marketing problem. They've got a mission statement nobody remembers and a content strategy that feels like it was written by committee. I break down how to build a narrative architecture that actually holds together across channels, teams, and years. Not a tagline. A story that gives everyone in the organization a clear way to talk about what you do and why it matters.

Authentic Storytelling in a Trust Deficit

Consumer trust is at historic lows. People can smell inauthenticity instantly. I share what I've learned about earning trust through specificity, first-hand experience, and the willingness to show the rough edges. This draws heavily on my fieldwork, where I've seen that the stories with the most impact are never the polished ones. They're the honest ones.

Storytelling That Drives Business

There's a persistent myth that storytelling is the soft side of marketing. I don't buy it. I show how narrative strategy connects directly to acquisition, retention, and revenue using case studies from my agency years and my expedition work. When storytelling is done right, it's the hardest-working asset in your marketing stack.

Who Books This Talk

I've delivered this keynote across a range of settings, but the audiences that get the most out of it tend to fall into a few buckets:

• CMOs and brand leaders looking for a fresh perspective on narrative strategy that goes beyond the standard playbook. If your team is stuck in a content-as-commodity cycle, this is a reset.
• Marketing conferences and summits that want a speaker who can bridge strategy and storytelling with real-world credibility. I bring field footage and case studies, not slide decks full of frameworks nobody uses.
• Brand teams going through a rebrand or repositioning who need inspiration and a practical framework for building their new narrative from the ground up.
• Agency offsites and client events where the goal is to challenge assumptions about what good storytelling looks like. I've been on both sides of the table. That perspective resonates.
• Corporate retreats and leadership events focused on culture, purpose, and communication. Storytelling isn't just external. The best brands tell their story internally first.

What Makes This Talk Different

There are a lot of people out there who talk about storytelling. Most of them have read the same books and cite the same case studies. I respect that, but it's not what I do.

What I bring is something you can't get from a TED talk or a marketing blog: the lived experience of building stories in boardrooms at major agencies and in the field across 53 countries. I've written brand strategy decks for Fortune 500 clients. I've also sat in a fishing village in Mozambique with no electricity, trying to capture a story on a camera that was running out of battery. Those two worlds don't usually overlap. When they do, you get something different.

I don't lecture. I tell stories. Real ones, from real places, with real people in them. And I connect those stories back to the work your audience does every day. The feedback I hear most often is "that was the most practical talk I've seen on this topic." That's what I'm going for.

I also customize every single talk. I don't have a canned 45-minute presentation that I deliver the same way to every audience. I research your organization, your industry, and your audience before I walk on stage. That homework shows up in the specifics, and specifics are what make a talk stick.

Past Speaking

A selection of events where I've delivered brand storytelling keynotes and workshops:

• SXSW - Panel on brand storytelling in the age of impact
• Forbes Under 30 Summit - Keynote on building narratives that scale
• Cannes Lions - Workshop on frontline storytelling for brands
• Web Summit - Talk on authentic brand building in low-trust environments
• Content Marketing World - Keynote on narrative strategy beyond content calendars
• Advertising Week New York - Panel on the future of brand narrative
• TEDx - Talk on how fieldwork transforms brand strategy
• Corporate events - Private keynotes and workshops for organizations including consulting firms, consumer brands, and technology companies

I also speak regularly at university programs and nonprofit leadership events, bringing the same frameworks to teams working with smaller budgets and bigger missions.