Maybe because the profession’s entire raison d’être is to engage you there is always a new name for people who are good at grabbing your attention.
I swear I’ve lived through half a dozen new names for the communications profession in twenty years of being paid, in one form or another, to get attention for other people. And I don’t even call myself a marketer.
Everyone on LinkedIn, and a few on Twitter have latched onto the latest buzzword: storyteller. Someone call Joseph Campbell and see if they can send him a residuals check beyond the grave.
The aversion to existing terms like marketing, communications, and public relations is endemic to the space. There is always the new hotness and thus always a new name. Crisis manager. Influencer. Honestly I miss socialite. That was a great term.
I had not intended to read the trend piece as it’s not news to me that we hire professionals to craft stories about brands and people.
Millennials were the original generation who experienced personal brand building as just one of those things required to get a job.
I am glad I opened it up though as I got to experience a pretty amusing bit of story telling inside the Wall Street Journals mobile application. A most unfortunate creative services choice to place storytelling sponsored content from consulting firm Deloitte.
Who knew that consulting firms final form would be not as management consultants but publicists? The remaining few journalists at the Wall Street Journal definitely were not involved in this.