The Creator's Guide to Authentic Storytelling w/ David J. Ebner | Ep 387

Summary

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The Futur Podcast with Chris Do

Episode 387: The Creator’s Guide to Authentic Storytelling with David J. Ebner
Release Date: October 9, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Chris Do chats with David J. Ebner, founder of Content Workshop, diving deep into the art and practice of authentic storytelling for creators and brands. The conversation traces Ebner’s transition from classically trained storyteller to brand consultant, explores the importance of narrative fundamentals, and breaks down how to stand out through authenticity—especially in an age overwhelmed by commoditized, AI-generated content. Real-world examples of brand missteps and successes round out this practical and philosophical discussion on what it means to be brave, craft meaningful stories, and remain relevant as both an individual and an organization.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. David J. Ebner’s Backstory and Philosophy

• Classically Trained Storytelling:
  • Ebner’s team is made up of traditionally trained storytellers with backgrounds in creative writing and the fine arts.
  • The agency’s approach: Use artistic storytelling skills in commercial contexts.
    Quote:

    “We’re really kind of artists in disguise... We say we’re classically trained storytellers. I have a fine arts degree in storytelling, in creative writing.”
    — David J. Ebner [00:27]

• Bridging Art and Commerce:
  • Importance of adapting artistic techniques (character, arc, dialogue) to help brands connect emotionally with their audience.
  • Not everyone wants to “put art in a box for brands,” but commercializing artistic methods can be both viable and powerful.
    Quote:

    “We built this mantra of training artists how to essentially apply their craft commercially, and that’s turned into a company that’s been thriving now for 12 years.”
    — David J. Ebner [00:53]

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2. Storytelling Fundamentals: Crafting a Compelling Narrative

• Show, Don’t Tell:
  • The Hemingway-inspired principle encourages demonstrating meaning and emotion through concrete details and outcomes rather than exposition.
    Quote:

    “Hemingway pretty much coined it... Instead of saying the river was 20ft long, he would talk about a squirrel jumping across three logs to get across the span of the river.”
    — David J. Ebner [04:49]

• Emotional Connection & Arc:
  • Every story—brand, personal, or fictional—must foster emotional connection and have a clear beginning, middle, and end.
    Quote:

    “All storytelling is about having an emotional connection... If you can build that emotional connection, that’s the ball game.”
    — David J. Ebner [05:52]

• Framework for a Quick Story (e.g., Instagram Reel):
  • Pitch a core idea, support it with points, and circle back to reinforce it.
  • Human storytelling connects threads; most current AI-generated content cannot.
    Quote:

    “You have to pitch an idea, you have to show points and purpose around the idea and then you have to circle back... Every single point you bring up has to be connected to the idea.”
    — David J. Ebner [08:35]

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3. Character Development & Change

• What Does 'Character Development' Really Mean?
  • Change over time is essential—main characters grow, experience epiphanies, and embody transformation.
  • In brands, this means evolution and genuine responsiveness—not just a static persona. Quote:

    “It’s change, man. It’s always about change... Major and main characters are going to have that throughout, right? They’re going to change.”
    — David J. Ebner [12:57]

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4. Authenticity & Bravery in Brand Storytelling

• The Brand Lives In the Audience’s Mind:
  • Brand is more about emotion and perception than logos or slogans.
    Quote:

    “You literally have as many brands as you have audience members. They all feel something different about you. And that’s brand.”
    — David J. Ebner [14:24]

• Authenticity as the Ultimate Currency:
  • Audiences can sense when brands (or people) pretend or follow trends disingenuously. Authentic alignment wins trust and loyalty.
    Quote:

    “If something comes off as inauthentic, people get turned off immediately.”
    — David J. Ebner [15:52]

• Corporate Fear and Committee-Driven Content:
  • Watered-down, inoffensive messaging erodes connection and engagement. Quote:

    “It’s a product made by committee... watered down for fear, lack of bravery... least common denominator content.”
    — David J. Ebner [19:25]

• Taking a Stand—Bud Light vs. Nike:
  • Bud Light’s misstep: Inauthentic, reactive, and abandoning values after backlash.
    Quote:

    “They issued an apology, I think, which is crazy.”
    — David J. Ebner [23:00]

  • Nike’s success: Authentic, consistent with brand values, and courageous in the face of criticism.
    Quote:

    “The core thing they did right was sticking to their values and those feeling like they had already built that value system with their audience.”
    — David J. Ebner [26:18] Chris Do’s Reflection:
    “There’s no point to have values if they’re never tested. There’s no courage if you’re not pushed back and failure seems inevitable, but you move towards that despite the outcome, and that’s real courage.” [28:06]

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5. Personal Branding & Courage

• Owning Your Point of View:
  • Creating content is about clarity and willingness to take criticism for being genuine. Boring, safe, or crowd-pleasing work fades into noise. Quote:

    “If you don’t take that stance, well, what are you standing for? ...It’s just really boring and safe.”
    — Chris Do [29:35]

  • Be Brave, Not Boring:

    “We talk all, all the time about being a brave brand, be brave, not boring as a brand.”
    — David J. Ebner [29:59]

• Content as Corporate Philanthropy:
  • Make your work and knowledge a public good; give more value than you take. Quote:

    “The responsibility of the able. If you can help people, you have a responsibility to help people.”
    — David J. Ebner [31:16]

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6. AI and the Future of Storytelling

• The Threat and Opportunity of AI:
  • Commoditized, AI-generated content will flood the market, but it often lacks coherence, context, and emotional connection.
    Quote:

    “AI just gives you bullets, but all the bullets feel like kind of disconnected... As humans tell stories, we circle back to the main concept and idea constantly.”
    — David J. Ebner [08:35]

  • Human-created, artisan content will become premium and more valued—a “new luxury.”
    Quote:

    “Boutique content, crafted content by humans, will still exist. It’ll be at a premium, and only the brands that can afford it will buy it.”
    — David J. Ebner [38:21]

  • Chris Do’s Reflection:

    “Quality, craftsmanship, crafting and doing things slowly is the new luxury... When anything can be done at the click of a button... the ability to just stand there, do nothing, or to pull out a piece of paper and write with an analog instrument like a pencil or pen will be a sign that you’ve made it in life.” [40:19]

• Standing Out Despite the AI Flood:
  • Being “interruptive” (not just disruptive) and producing true value by answering: who does this help, and does it hurt anyone? Quote:

    “We’ve got to be brave... provide massive value... produce content that is more valuable than what it takes from people, which is their most precious asset, their time and attention.”
    — David J. Ebner [46:12]

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• “We’re really kind of artists in disguise... classically trained storytellers.”
  — David J. Ebner [00:27]

• “All storytelling is about having an emotional connection... If you can build that emotional connection, that’s the ball game.”
  — David J. Ebner [05:52]

• “Stories are effective because they circle back to an idea... Humans tell stories, we circle back to the main concept and idea constantly.”
  — David J. Ebner [08:35]

• “The major and main characters are going to... change. Usually, it’s a change of mentality. Sometimes it’s a complete change.”
  — David J. Ebner [12:57]

• “If something comes off as inauthentic, people get turned off immediately.”
  — David J. Ebner [15:52]

• “It’s a product made by committee... least common denominator content, designed to appease as many people as possible, offend absolutely nobody, but also not incite any type of emotion.”
  — David J. Ebner [19:25]

• “There’s no point to have values if they’re never tested.”
  — Chris Do [28:06]

• “Be brave, not boring as a brand.”
  — David J. Ebner [29:59]

• “If you can help people, you have a responsibility to help people... Are they brave enough to do that?”
  — David J. Ebner [31:16]

• “Boutique content, crafted content by humans, will still exist... and those brands will start to stand out because their stuff won’t be so predictive.”
  — David J. Ebner [38:21]

• “If we can produce content that helps, doesn’t hurt, is more valuable than what it takes from people... we’ll be on the right side of history.”
  — David J. Ebner [48:16]

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Actionable Takeaways

• For creators and brands:
  • Develop real narrative arcs—beginning, middle, end—even in short-form content.
  • Anchor everything in authenticity: know your values and demonstrate, don’t declare, them.
  • Don’t fear polarizing your audience—be brave. Boring, safe content is invisible.
  • In a world flooded by AI-generated content, human-crafted, value-driven work will endure and stand out.
  • Treat content as a public good; offer more than you extract from your audience.
  • Ask before publishing: “Who does this help? How much? Could it hurt anyone?”

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Resources & Connections

• Find David J. Ebner:
  • Content Workshop (chat function goes to David personally)
  • LinkedIn: David J. Ebner (remember: “Include the J!”)
• Quote from the episode:

  “My friendship is free. So if anybody needs a friend, has an idea, needs somebody else to, you know, yell in the void with them, I’m happy to do that.” — David J. Ebner [49:16]

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This episode is a blueprint for creators, marketers, and organizations seeking to become more memorable and meaningful in a noisy, algorithmic era—reminding us that the most enduring stories will always be made, and felt, by real people.

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Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the podcast. We're just chatting a little bit before we went live here or before we went to the recording. And you do something that's very interesting. You work with artists. You're an artist, and you do storytelling, and you work with people to help them do their brand storytelling. So those are magical words for me.

[B]

My name's David J. Abner. You're listening to the future.

[A]

So let's just get into it. If people don't know who you are, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit of your backstory?

[B]

I'm David J. Ebner. I like to tell people that Jay is silent. It's like an SEO joke. If you look me up, David Ebner, you're not going to find me. Put that J in there. I'm everywhere across your screen, so use the J. So, yeah, I run Content Workshop. We're a. A brand storytelling agency. And as I was telling you a little bit before, we're really kind of artists in disguise. A lot of us went to school for. We say we're classically trained storytellers. I have a fine arts degree in storytelling, Right. In creative writing. And when we got done with school, we were like, what are we going to do? Like, how do we. Oprah isn't going to pick all of us for her book club, so we're going to have to use what we just learned in school commercially. So we kind of built this mantra of training artists how to essentially apply their craft commercially, and that's turned into a company that's been thriving now for 12 years.

[A]

I. I have to ask you, what do you mean you're a classically trained storyteller? Like, expand on that, please, Because I'm like, what?

[B]

Are you sure? Yeah, I'm sure. Trust me. I have the. I have the student loan debt to prove it. You know, I've got the. It's actually one of our little taglines on our website. A lot of the people we hire have advanced degrees in storytelling, esque fields like creative writing, like fine arts degrees, for the most part. Right? They went to school for this. Now, that being said, there are many fantastic storytellers that did not study this at all, which is fine, right? Which is actually great. The fact that storytelling is a skill set that can come to a lot of people in a lot of different ways. I love that more stories are better. But we studied this. We studied narration, we studied character development. We studied flow and arc. We know the hero's journey not because it was a marketing technique. We learned it as A artist technique, you know, in storytelling first, again, that's not better or worse. That's just the direction that we came to it from.

[A]

Okay, let's go back in time then.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You're in school, you're in a program as maybe in a creative writing program, learning about storytelling. What are some of the things you can recall that were meaningful to you that you learned in school? Let's start there before we kind of look at all the permutations, how things have changed.

[B]

A lot of the skills that we learned were about the technical aspects of storytelling. Right. Like when I talk about character development, we talk about the arc of a character over time. And a character can be a brand can be subbed in for a character. And really just about any function, not all of them, but just about any. Right. So when you talk about character development, you talk about brand development. When you're talking about dialogue, which is something I love, I love dialogue, man. I am just obsessed with good dialogue. You're talking about the relationship between a brand and its audience. Right. You're talking about the relationship between a reader in the content that they're reading or consuming. So literally all these little techniques that we were learning had applications outside. Now, that doesn't mean that it was really tough for a lot of people to bridge that gap. A lot of people were artists because they wanted to produce art for the world. The idea of getting paid from a brand to put that art in a box that fit their mode of what they wanted the art to be was not something they were willing to do. So they're a little more altruistic about the art that they were creating. That's okay. We all come to it from different angles. But all those little techniques really played a big role in how we rolled out offerings, solutions to the brands.

[A]

Okay, I'm going to ask this a different way, and I want to preface it because most of what I know how to do today was self taught. I always admire people who go and study under professionals who've been doing this a long time because I think there's some. If you go to a really good program taught by an incredible, inspiring instructor, the structure of the exercises or the assignments really are the things allow you to self discover. So I'm always fascinated by this. So I'm going to pretend like I'm sitting next to you. We're in grad school together, it's 12 years ago or whatever and you are looking at the technical part of a character arc. What are we learning? Take me back there. Please don't don't go to the future. Don't tie it all to the branding yet, because we'll have plenty of time to talk about that. I'm just fascinated by this. Please take me with you.

[B]

Absolutely. Well, I'll tell you one thing that really stuck to me that they preached all the time was show, don't tell, which is a very classic technique. And storytelling. Hemingway pretty much coined it. And actually all modern, most modern writers today, you can stem back their, their techniques to Hemingway. That was kind of like the evolution of storytelling changed with him because he would show you something happening. Opposed to saying the river was 20ft long. He would, he would talk about a squirrel jumping across like three logs to get across the span of the river. Right. It was showing you distance versus telling you distance. So that was a very big technique in character development too. When we're talking about character, it's about not just giving you the facts, but showing you the benefits and the outcomes. Right. And that's how it translates to brands a lot. For me, a character is developed through their movement through space and time. It's not developed by specifically actions happening to them. It's their emotional reactions to things in the world around them. All of those techniques were fascinating to me at the time. The techniques of what does an actual narrative flow look like? It sounds so basic, Chris. A beginning, a middle and an end. And there's so much content that doesn't have that, but those aspects that pull us in emotionally because it's all about emotional connection. In the end, all storytelling is about having an emotional connection with what you're doing. Consuming. Right? And if you can build that emotional connection, that's the ball game that engages somebody over time. It, it builds a relationship between the person and whoever's telling the story. So those are the types of techniques that we learned about kind of like the. What's the end goal? How do we get there? How do you do that with dialogue? How do you do that with character development? How do you do that with narrative arc? You know, it's, it's a tough, it's a tough skill set to develop. It's A lot of people, though, as, as you mentioned, are self taught in this. And even if you go to school like I did, like, what is grad school, man? Grad school is like, it's ridiculous. It doesn't teach you how to do something. It teaches you how to manage time and space. Because they give you this massive project and they're like, you gotta do this in two years. You're like, there's no way in hell I can do that and keep my part time job at the drive through or whatever it is.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

But you have to figure out how to put your skills and ability into some sort of like package. That's what it taught us. And again, that's applicable, I think when.

[A]

I listen to music because I did not study music and I hear a beautiful composition, a chorus or melody or whatever it is I'm hearing, I'm like, God, it's like magic. And I know people who are music know it's following a pretty specific formula. So for the layperson who doesn't understand art, design, music, or in our case storytelling, I think helping them to understand the structure will kind of demystify it a little bit. So people have said this, Chris, you're a good storyteller. I love the way you tell stories. I'm like, okay, so I just did this the way that felt most natural to me. So let's break this thing down if somebody's listening to this and asking this very question. Because we know this. We know that the people who understand how to tell, deliver and formulate stories are going to rule the communication landscape of on all platforms, in all formats. We understand that Hollywood is a multi billion dollar industry, or maybe a trillion dollar industry, I don't know. But because they understand how to tell stories. Stories is how we learn, how we communicate, how we understand the world. So what are some basic structural things? A framework for telling a good story? Say for a 60 second Instagram reel?

[B]

Yeah, man, that's.

[A]

Is it too complicated?

[B]

No, no, not at all. And I'm going to even make it, I'm going to make it super simple. Um, and I'm going to cut it down into this, this concept of a beginning, a middle and an end. Stories are effective because they circle back to an idea. There, there's an ability to hold a thread of an idea through multiple points and then circle back to it. Right. And in a 30 second reel, whatever you're, you're producing, the, the concept is you have to pitch an idea, you have to show points and purpose around the idea and then you have to circle back to the idea at the end. And every single point you bring up has to be connected to the idea. This is actually something that AI for now has not fully like figured out. They just give you bullets, but like all the bullets feel like kind of disconnected. They're about something broader, but they don't really circle back. And it's a, it's not Efficient at all. But as humans tell stories, we circle back to the main concept and idea constantly. Constantly. And that's what ties us. It reiterates it, like builds that kind of. That stamp on your mind of the story. Right. It puts it there. It lodges a memory by having this repetition. So even basic, the short, real, general idea, a couple of transient points that connect to the main idea and then circle back to the main idea at the end, that is like the most basic function of narration.

[A]

Okay, I like that. I understand that. I've observed that too, luckily. So, David, we're gonna have to eat our own dog food here. I'm gonna ask you to show me. Don't tell me. Give me an example where a story isn't so good and can you fix the story and show us before and after?

[B]

Well, I'll say one thing that White Lotus does in every season that is a bit difficult in the first season. It doesn't feel. You don't feel it this much, but you notice it in multiple seasons thereafter. Their character development from a pacing point of view, is. Is poor. They start with an inciting event. You always see a dead body or somebody's dead at the beginning, which pulls you, and you're like, oh, which character is going to die? It builds a formula, and there's nothing wrong with a formula until it becomes predictable. I can never predict who's dead. I can never predict who's dead. I'm always wrong about who is dead. But it kind of constantly hints at that concept. So it's an example of good storytelling because of bringing back the idea throughout. Right. Somebody's going to die. Is it this guy? Is it this girl? They said this thing. This person's trying to find somebody to kill them. So maybe it's them that got killed. You don't really know throughout the main point, but it takes them a long time to get there. Too long to get there, in my opinion. It's a saga the first three or four episodes have. It's kind of positioning the characters and not progressing the characters. They don't progress for like four episodes in. So from a storytelling point of view, it's obviously working because people are engaged in that content. So I want to say it's a bad form of storytelling. But if I turned that paper in in graduate school, right. I would get a lot of red ink on the first 20 or 30 pages because my characters aren't developing. We're setting a scene and we're doing a lot of showing, not telling, but nothing is happening. It's literally a bunch of rich people at a resort and for some reason they never freaking leave the resort. Chris, who goes on vacation and doesn't leave the place, right? Like, I go on hikes, I go do stuff. Who's just going to eat every meal there? So anyway, that's. That's an aside, but I think that's an example of. Of something that. A story that doesn't really follow that arc. It's probably lost some viewer. I guess if you look at viewership, I bet you the first few episodes are. You can see that drop off of people, but it still engages us enough to bring us back around the end. Because the second half of the season is done really well. Really well. Like, there's a lot of action, but the characters are developing based on emotion in the second half of the season. So anyway, that's the best example I've got in my mind right now. And it's actually the same show's doing it. I wouldn't say poorly, but not as good in the first half and much better in the second half of the season.

[A]

When you say the character's developing, what does that mean?

[B]

Yeah, it's change, man. It's always about change. You have some characters that very often are static, and that's okay. It's okay to have static characters that don't change. They aren't going to be major or main characters though, because you always have to have some sort of baseline. So you'll. You'll think of some characters that throughout the whole season, although things happen to them, they don't have an epiphany, they don't have an enlightening moment, whatever it may be. No cathartic activity, and that's okay. But they're. The major and main characters are going to have that throughout, right? They're going to change. Usually it's a change of mentality. Sometimes it's a complete change across the board. Right? They are a new character and they're doing crazy, wild things. That's what I mean by character development. It's just simply change over time.

[A]

Okay, so let's go to the future. Now.

[B]

The.

[A]

The word du jour really is brand and story. You can't walk anywhere. Maybe we add the word personal to personal. Brand, story. Those three words seem to be thrown around willy nilly. Everybody's using it. And it's this mistake that I see a lot of students make from design school when I was a teacher. Because you use the word doesn't mean you understand the word or how to Use the word. Right, so let's get into the good word now. Build us the bridge. That's narrative, long form, cinematic storytelling. Hollywood. What are we going to do in our everyday stories with our brand and our companies? What can we learn from this?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, we can apply a lot of those things we just talked about that are in those stories that we love, that we've watched and heard and been told, those bedtime stories from all those years into us as a Persona, a digital Persona. You know, we all are to some degree a person online. What is the. Our personal brand? Right. Brands for a corporation, for a company as well, at the same time. And all of it has to do with building kind of like that emotional framework. I had a good friend tell me once, that brand lives in the hearts and minds of the people who engage with your company. That's what brand is. So you literally have as many brands as you have audience members. They all feel something different about you. And that's brand branding. Our logos and letterhead and colors and all that kind of stuff which you want to somehow reiterate or reinforce a feeling. But everything we're talking about, Chris, comes down to emotion and feeling and imparting some sort of feeling on the audience. So how to use all of that artistic storytelling we just talked about in a commercial or personal way? I think one, authenticity is primary across everything. If something comes off as inauthentic, people get turned off immediately. Whether it's a brand producing some content and it feels like corporate propaganda. It's like, this doesn't produce any value for me. Why are they saying these things? Why should I spend my time, my most valuable resource on this thing? Or it's a Persona, an individual, personal brand, and they produce something that doesn't align with whatever the believed values or brand of the individual actually are. It's inauthentic. So using that authenticity is obviously very important. This is a philosophical term that doesn't really talk about tactics so much. But in the end, what you have to do is kind of match who you are, what you want to be, to what you produce. When we're talking about like everyday content, right? Whether it's, you know, reels, video for your, your Instagram or videos for your LinkedIn. Right. For some reason, so many videos on LinkedIn these days, it's, it's quite a bit, you know, or you're producing like a long form piece, like an ebook or something for, for a brand. All of those things we talked about, the build, building tension, the beginning, the middle the end concept. But they taught us this in grade school, right? Like intro, three bullets closing. Right. Who thought that all these years later that those core concepts actually can help in like brand storytelling, both for individuals and for companies. Right. That's how you apply it though. You, you build a, a narrative arc around knowing a beginning, a middle and an end. You, you circle back to your points throughout, you circle back to the main idea throughout, and then you give some sort, some sort of ending that matches the promise of whatever the piece is. Right. The promise may just be entertainment, as we've been talking about, but usually the promise is some sort of emotional tension that's been built. When you're producing content as a brand or a company, what you want to do is provide more value than what you're taking from the individual. Right? And actually as an individual, personal brand, you want to do that too, right? More value than what you're taking. Right. That's the barter. The great barter of content is like, I'm going to give you more than I take. I'm going to take your time and attention. If I gate the piece, I'm going to take your contact information. If I put a paywall, I'm going to take your money. Right. Whatever that content is has to supersede that perceived value. Again, that can take any form. That's, that is not. It's format agnostic, right? Of what that can be. Yeah, that's, that's how it's applied in today's format.

[A]

You, you use the word. That got my eyebrows going up here a little bit. And that is authenticity. And I have a theory on this, but I want to get your take on it, which is why people don't connect with corporate brands, because I don't even know who that is. I always feel like corporate brands, corporate or company pages are an amalgamation of lots of points of view that's been washed down to be what's in the middle. That's run through strategy, copy, legal, finance, HR before it's released. So it winds up being some of the most banal things you can read. There's not a strong opinion, there's no. It's so safe. And that's why we don't connect. So as far as a corporation can have a personality, be authentic, how do they screw that up?

[B]

Well, you know that's a product made by committee, right? Like it's, it's exactly what you're, you're alluding to there, which is a watered down version of a good idea. And it's Watered down. I mean, from. Not. Not for negative reasons. Like, people are worried. It's fear that waters it down. It's a la. Honestly, it's a lack of bravery. You know, courage and cowardice come from the same root emotion, which is fear. Right. When you're afraid, that's the only moment in which you really are brave. Or. Or you're not. Right. And there's a lot of fear around. Stock price. Providing value to the stockholders was the Milton Friedman doctrine. All of those concepts water down whatever the item is, and then what you're left with is something for the least common denominator. Least common denominator content, or whatever it may be, is designed to appease as many people as possible, offend absolutely nobody, but also not incite any type of emotion. So it's just corporate jargon. You'll see this, too. You'll read these. And I'm sure you have, man, like, you read these things that say what a company does, and it's like, that doesn't say anything. Like, those words together in string is just word salad. It doesn't say anything. And we deal with this on a daily basis when brands come to us, right? Being succinct and short and just getting to the point and being very specific is void in a lot of that content. So, yeah, I think that's why people, to your point, they don't connect with a lot of these brands. And also, these brands are inauthentic all the time, Chris. The number of brands that stand up for social justice things and then turn their back on them immediately when it doesn't appease whoever, it drives me crazy. Just don't have an opinion then, like, why have an opinion and then just change your mind? That's no longer. Values are only values when they stand up against criticism. If they don't stand up against criticism, they're not values at all. And I think corporate America today has tried to espouse values, and then they're inauthentic to them because they turn their back on them the second that it can hurt the stock price. I don't know. Listen to me. I'm vamping now at this point. My issues are broader than storytelling, but I think that's what drives this inauthentic relationship between individuals and brands.

[A]

Yeah. Do you remember the. The alcohol brand, the beer brand that hopped on the transgender. It was.

[B]

It was Bud Light. Yeah.

[A]

Bud. Okay. I just wanted somebody to say in case I messed that up.

[B]

Yeah. Okay.

[A]

So this is classic Bud Light did something and let's talk about that and why it cost them. And then I want to switch to another company that it did something crazy. It cost them too, but they stuck to it and it worked out. So tell us the Bud Light situation.

[B]

Yeah. So Bud Light was. Was doing some can design with just. Just influencers, various people that they're trying to get to promote their brand into new audiences. And they were working with, with somebody from the trans community was just put on the can. Literally just the picture of the person was on the can and upset some people who don't believe in that lifestyle. So they decided they were going to stop buying Budweiser and they started buying Modelo, which is interesting because it's international brand. And anyway, that's a whole nother separate piece. So it drove up the value of Modelo in the United States and drove down the value of Bud Light. And then they decided to revert like, and they issued an apology, I think, which is crazy.

[A]

Well, yeah, let's talk about this. So you. There's some context, in case you're an international listener to this, why this makes sense. Bud Light is a domestic US Beer brand that isn't on the high end. It's an affordable beer and it attracts a certain kind of person, working class, salted earth, and not super progressive in their thinking. You can as stereotypically think that they're wearing a cowboy hat and driving a truck and they got a dog or something like that. I know I'm making broad, sweeping statements and this is who they stand for. And this is reflective of the culture, I imagine. I have no evidence that this is true, that there was a bunch of young people were like, hey, we need to be inclusive, we need to do this. And they had an influence in moving the needle, or could have been somebody from the marketing side or the agency said, you know, we need to expand and we'll do this. And so what they were doing is in a weird way, putting a middle finger up to their core audience and not understanding they're quite tone deaf. And it feels largely inauthentic as where have you been this whole time if you were for trans rights and acknowledgement of people that identify this way. Right. So that's really problematic is you have no history of this and they folded like a house of cards as soon as there was blowback. It cost them a lot of money to do this. Have they recovered, do you know?

[B]

No, they've not. I mean, probably inevitably they will.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The game's kind of short. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Okay. And if you're thinking about doing this because it's trendy, it's popular, or some people in your agency or company are saying, we need to do this. You got to remember, what are we about? Who do we stand for or what are we against? And just be clear, because the last thing you want to do is be a bandwagon person jumping on different trends and social movements. It just reeks of corporate nonsense. Okay. Nike, Colin Kaepernick. He famously, I think, San Francisco 49er quarterback, who, during the pledge of Allegiance, he would take a knee. Not a pledge of allegiance. I'm sorry. During the national anthem, he would take a knee to kind of talk about black rights and the social injustice. A very passive form of protest. And people didn't like it. And he was thrown off the team. And then Nike said, we stand with you. Sometimes you have to take a knee to stand up for what you believe in. And then all over the Internet, people who were longtime Nike fans, true believers, were burning their shoes, throwing the trash and saying, this is wrong. It's unpatriotic for you to take a knee during the anthem. It's wrong. Do not do that here. We don't want that. And they stood by him, and their stock tanked, but they kept standing by him. And what they did was they galvanized the people like, you know what? Nike is a company for people like me, and we need to stand for something. And they have a history of standing for justice and being inclusive and understanding that. It's a diverse audience. Even though I think almost everybody at Nike corporate is pretty white, I think probably it's progressive. It's very progressive. Right. And so they stood by that, and then their stock came right back, and they're doing better than ever now. They had missteps recently for different reasons, but let's talk about that. Like, what did they do right? And what can we learn from that?

[B]

Yeah, I think the core thing that they did right was sticking to their values and those feeling like they had already built that value system with their audience, and their core audience is who they're going after with it. Right. Um, if you play sports, you're probably.

[A]

You're.

[B]

You're playing with people from a lot of different cultures and backgrounds. That's how sports work, y' all like. And honestly, a lot of people who, you know, sports are the way that they. They improve their lives. Right? It's their way to. To pick themselves up by their bootstraps and. And climb the economic ladder. Sports do that for people. So your audience is varied. So even if you play sports, you're probably to some degree, a more progressive thinker, as it were, because you've probably had just a little bit more interaction with people who aren't like you. Right. Sportsmanship. The concept of sportsmanship is that we are all equal on the playing field. We are all equal. It doesn't matter who you are or where you come from. You prove your value on the field. And what you do there is how we measure you, not by anything that you bring to it. Right. And that's what Nike stands for. Right. So it makes perfect sense, it's authentic for them to stand with Colin Kaepernick. And if they were to revert, it would literally break. It would break all that trust that they built with not just their core audience, but everybody. Right. You know, so appeasing to the mob was. Was not the right call. And of course, that's not what they did. They stuck with Colin. And Colin, he's never played football again since then. Right. Which is crazy because he is really good. You think somebody would set that aside and just say, listen, we want to make money, let's hire him and have him be our quarterback. Right. But he hasn't played, and he makes a living now because he made this stand. Right?

[A]

Yeah, he did come at a great cost to him.

[B]

Sure. Absolutely. He lost a lot of money. A lot of money.

[A]

He made money in different ways, but he lost a lot of money and opportunity. And there's no point to have values if they're never tested. There's no courage if you're not pushed back and failure seems inevitable, but you move towards that despite the outcome, and that's real courage. Because if you can take people on and not worry about losing, that's not called courage. That's just confidence. You got it in the bag. Okay, let's pull this all the way back to the individual here. I'm gonna make it relatable. I think, for some folks here, and people ask me this all the time, Chris, you got lots of opinions. You see things and aren't you afraid of. You know what? I'm not afraid of it because I owe it to myself to be 100% me all the time. And the few times in which I've done these things where people pressured me to say something about some things I normally never talk about. The blowback was incredible. So I'm like, I learned my lesson. I'm not going there as much as you want me to. This is not my thing. I try to help people find and communicate the value that they bring to the world. I teach creative entrepreneurs how to run a business. That's what I want to focus on. There's a lot of personal things. If you want to have a drink with me on the side, we can talk about it. But this is not my platform to do that. And of course, if the things that we're saying today, I'm certain will alienate some people, and I'm okay with that. I'm not trying to push you away, but if I'm not your cup of tea, there's lots of tea out there. Bless you. You do your thing. I'm just gonna be me 100% of the time. So. A lot of us are afraid when we're creating content, putting stuff out there that it's gonna be met with criticism. But here's the thing. If you don't take that stance, well, what are you standing for? I don't really. This is the problem with the vast majority of the content that's out there. It's just really boring and safe, and it's not even corporate or committee driven. It's really one person who's just not courageous enough to have a point of view. What's your take on that?

[B]

You're like reading my biography here, Chris, but you know.

[A]

Oh, that's what that is over here on the screen.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. It's on that shelf behind you there. We talk all, all the time about being a brave brand, be brave, not boring as a brand. Right? And, and bravery is standing up for those things that you believe in. It doesn't have to be social issues. It literally can be like, we stand for high quality content. We stand for producing content that is so good, people would be willing to pay for it. But giving it away for free, that's what we stand for, right? And we don't stand for, for, you know, quantity over quality. We don't stand for those things. Right? So we are constantly pushing against those things. And there's some people who think volume is the way to go, right? And we're probably not their cup of tea either. But you have to bet on yourself, man. Like, if you're not betting on yourself, what are you doing, right? You're, you're, you're going through a wheel, somebody else's wheel, right? You're just spending time making somebody else money or, or building somebody else's dream. I think you gotta bet on yourself. And that means standing up for what you believe in as a personal brand. That's the same thing. I post stuff on LinkedIn all the time. And I'm like, man, I'm probably gonna. If some of my clients see this, they're probably gonna think, I don't care about measuring the performance of their content. Right. Cause I post all the time about content being kind of corporate philanthropy to a degree. Right. Like, you can help people, so you should help people. That was the value system I grew up with. The responsibility of the able. If you can help people, you have a responsibility to help people. And a lot of these big corporate brands have the ability to give away great advice and help their target audience or whoever is following them in a lot of different ways. And personal brands have the same ability too. Are they brave enough to do that? Are they too scared about losing some sort of value as an individual if I give away the secret sauce? Right, as it were. So in the end, I stand with you, Chris. You gotta be yourself. You have to have espoused values. You have to live up to those values. Sometimes you're not going to live up to them. And values are about. To me, perfection is about change. Right. Like, to get better at something is to. Closer to perfection you get, the more you have to change. Usually that doesn't mean changing the things you believe in. That just means improving over time. So you're going to miss the mark. You're not going to live up to your values sometimes. And it's okay to say, hey, I strive to live by these values. I don't think I can always espouse them, but when I don't, I notice it, I call it out and I change to improve. Right. Two things.

[A]

Number one, I love the reframe. Content is a form of corporate philanthropy. As the kids. Wait. As the kids would say, that's a bar. Okay, so just.

[B]

Great. I assume that's a good thing that kids are saying.

[A]

Yeah, Yeah, I think so. When they say it, I'm like, thank you. I think. Okay, but here's the thing. Individually, is our character arc, our pursuit of continuing to improve.

[B]

Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's the change, right? The change is us, our character arc as individuals. You think of yourself as the. The main character of your own story. You really should. If you don't, like, let's have a conversation.

[A]

That's a problem. Your background character.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Like, that's rough. You've got to be the main character in your own story. Right. And start to ask yourself, are things happening to me or am I making things happen? Right. With. With all that being the case, though, you've got to. You Know, you've got to move through this life looking for ways to improve. I think it was Churchill who said, to improve is to change, and to perfect is to change constantly, or whatever it is. Right. Our own character development is happening through change in our lives. Think about the chapters of your life. If you're the character in your own story, you have chapters, right? Like, I spent a lot of time focused on this thing. I cared a lot about this thing. I spent a lot of time doing this stuff that's a chapter of your life or maybe a section of your book. Right. You're on a chapter right now, and the question is going to be, what's the inciting incident? That's going to keep people reading. Right. Keep your audience engaged. That will help them flip to the next chapter. So if you change as an individual, what's the one thread that carries throughout? And for most people, that's going to be their values and what they stand for. Those might you develop them when you're younger. And usually they don't change unless you have some sort of cathartic moment. At some point, you're like, whoa, maybe Clint Eastwood's character. Right. Like, I was going in the wrong direction. I need to reframe my entire life. Right. And what I believe in.

[A]

I want to talk a little bit about what I'm sure everybody's talking about. Yeah, okay. Brand, story. Okay. We get it. Content. And everybody's talking the same thing. But who is this? I think it's the CEO of Pfeiffer who put something out on Twitter recently, and it's very fiery. And he talk about the threat of AI he's basically saying, this is not to scare you. It's to tell you the reality that's coming. AI has made everything easy, like, worth nothing because AI would do that. It's basically rearrange the chairs on the deck to say that things are super easy. We just pushed them off the boat, they're gone. Things are hard have now become easy, and things that are impossible become plausible. Something's going on here. So where do you think this is all going? Like, how is AI going to influence and affect what we're doing as content creators, as storytellers?

[B]

Yeah, quite a bit, right, Chris?

[A]

I think.

[B]

So the CEO said something like, we are all doomed, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Oh, you read this? Yeah. Well, I just googled it just now, so I don't think I knew more than the average Joe. But, yeah, we are all doomed because of AI I don't disagree. But don't take such A, I don't know, dystopian view of the future, you know, still 60% of what we do, although we. We do a lot of design work, we build websites, we do all sorts of stuff, but 60% is still copywriting that people hire us for, right? And when ChatGPT came to prominence, I remember I was walking through my neighborhood and listening to a podcast with Mark Cuban on it, and he was talking about how his son was turning in his, like, schoolwork with ChatGPT was writing, and he was turning it in now. I was like, that was the moment that I had. I was like, oh, man. Like, if people are subbing in intellectual thought with Chat GPT, like, how long do I have left as an agency owner, as a content creator, before people replace me or devalue me so much? I can no longer do this. Because we do air. We still do almost everything, but by hand, by human. We don't deploy AI. You know, in the end, good content is good content, so I guess it really doesn't matter. The problem is that most of it's not. So essentially what we have here is a giant data set, right? That is deciding what all future content is going to look like. We took a data set, a snapshot of the Internet, whatever you want to call the data set, right? It's mostly just public stuff on the Internet, and that is going to produce all content moving forward. Okay, I'm just building kind of a framework here. Let's assume that at some point in time, we constantly update the data set, right? What are we updating it with, man? Like, are we just updating it with more content that was produced by the data set to begin with? Then how do we get new ideas and thoughts? How do we apply old learned knowledge to new problems, right? We don't anymore, right? We only get whatever has been said before. The AI is particularly chatgpt. It's a large language model. It tries to decide what the next word is going to be in a string of words. It's predictive text, Literally the same, very similar technology we had on our phone since 2008. It would predict the text, like what word would come next, right? Based on what you would put in there. So it's predictive text. So it's giving you the most common, the least common denominator to circle back to an idea from earlier in this story, right? It's giving us least common denominator content for the most part. And the problem is a lot of people are accepting that as good enough and pushing it out to the world. So now we got this, like, future where the snake is kind of going to eat its own tail. Or from a content point of view, it's learning from itself. It's producing. There's no new thoughts, no great ideas, no new exciting inciting moments. And it's just lost all value because it's, it's. No, it's snow blindness now. Like, everything is just the same. Right? So that's, that's not good for content creators like, like us, right? Cause it would devalue content. But it also, here's the caveat. It'll put a premium on, like, boutique content. I still buy vinyl records today, Chris. I still buy them, man. I love the sound. I love the nuance of it. I love buying them. I love flipping through the thing, right? My, my. My son plays. He's 17. He plays NES. You know, he never. He wasn't born when the NES came out. Right. But he still plays it. Right. Cause it's nostalgic to him and it's fun for him and it's exciting how things have changed. But also there's like, little rituals involved in a lot of this stuff. So I think boutique content, crafted content by humans will still exist. It'll be at a premium, and only the brands that can afford it will buy it. And those brands will start to stand out because their stuff won't be so predictive. Right. Good marketing is about being interruptive. You don't really want to be disruptive. You can, you can go like, way in the other direction and like kill your mascot, like duolingo, right? Like, you can go that way and you'll get some virility out of it. Right. But for the most part, you just want to be interruptive. And you're not going to get that from an AI data set. Now that's just AI as it currently stands, doing the same thing forever in the future and not being changed and us not evolving to. To put safeguards on it or whatever it may be. Right. Anyway, that's what I see for the future as human beings. I feel like when it's going to start costing people who have money, enough money, something will change. If it never does that, if it only makes the rich richer, then it probably won't change all that much. But I have enough faith in the world that will probably step in and put some safeguards into place so it doesn't do that. What do you think, Chris?

[A]

Well, there's a volume of content that's being produced that is kind of unprecedented and that Volume is going to get louder, faster, not necessarily better, so that our ability to stand out is going to become more difficult. But I think it creates the reverse opportunity and it is alignment with what you said, which is something like quality, craftsmanship, crafting and doing things slowly is the new luxury. So when, when anything can be done at its, at a kind of a click of a button or, or whatever it is, a press of a keyboard, then now we want to do things slowly. The ability to just stand there, do nothing, or to pull out a piece of paper and write with an analog instrument like a pencil or pen will be a sign that you've made it in life. And so I think companies and brands who want to celebrate this, the crafting of things, I think they're going to pay for it. And the companies that don't want that, it doesn't matter, they're going to run right through with AI generated content, video, text, audio, audio, everything. Now, having said that, I often argue with people and I will tell them very few new things are ever created. What you think is new and fresh is because you have a limited understanding of history, what's come before, you know, and it, it kind of shocks me because there are accounts on Instagram that say, oh, you love this song. That's the same song as this song. And they just keep going back in time. I'm like, oh my God. Same hook, same melody. And we're just too stupid, we're too ignorant to know what's come before us. We're like, yeah, this is the new sound. I'm like, apparently it's not. So we had Kirby Ferguson on our show many seasons ago, and he talked about everything as a remix, as his kind of his thesis, and that new things are only possible when we combine old things in slightly new ways. Now this is where it gets really weird. AI is very good at doing that. So when we say like, the data set is just basically it's like a copy of a copy and so it starts to degenerate over time, right? That's not good. But I'm not sure it's doing that because in the early days of Mid Journey, I would type in prompts smashing different art styles together. It's like Blade Runner meets Sin City. And it would come up as, I'm like, oh, dude, that's how I look what's going on here? And so then the creativity or the originality is in us saying, machine, help me do these two weird things. And I remember GPT version 1.0 was much more raw and better than the, than the subsequent versions because it didn't know how to control itself and the parameters weren't put on. So a friend of mine, he had said that he had wanted to write a story, a screenplay where the origin story of Santa Claus was. He was not a nice guy and he was a Russian whatever. And that's the, that was the prompt. And he wrote him a really beautiful story how he was a nasty kid. I saw a nasty man who hated children, something had happened. And wrote the whole story for him as this Russian character. And I was like, that's cool. He goes, he won't write that story now. But it used to, so who knows? Who knows? The last thing I want to say about this is a buddy of mine, Daniel Priestley, said, okay, imagine you're on the Runway tarmac and your plane about to take off. That's your brand. And you're trying to get up to 30,000 square, 30,000ft. So above that point in which it's like not using a lot of fuel, but this fog is coming in and it's heavy, and that's the fog of AI Content. So, Heik, the window is slowly closing or fast closing, where if you're trying to build your personal brand today, if you are, if you aren't already in the air about to break that fog layer, you're going to be stuck and no one will be able to see you anymore because there will be so much content. Yeah, I'm curious what your take on that is.

[B]

I, I couldn't agree more. I. One of my team members, Riley Manning, wrote this on LinkedIn. He's got the greatest. Go follow Riley Manning. He's got the greatest. Like, he'll post on LinkedIn once every, like five months, but it'll be like the perfect gem. He wrote something along the lines of in 22, 23, maybe if your content agency didn't exist before AI, you're going to have a bad time. And it's this concept about that breakthrough. Like, you have to understand the foundation of how these things work. We talked a lot about the foundations of stories, what makes stories good here today. If you understand those foundations, you can start to apply that knowledge in new ways when it's never been applied that way before. It's kind of cool to hear that Mid Journey and a few other AI tools are really good at mashing some of those, those things together. And it's unfortunate they put the, the reins on GPT to, to not be able to tell stories like that. But in the end there's, there's going to be this gap between the haves and have nots. It's growing for brands, significantly for person, personal brands and corporate brands. The haves keep investing in this, this idea of craft storytelling and they're going to keep producing and they're not going to stop and they're just going to keep going. And if they can break through that ceiling, through that fog, then they're going to stay up there, they're going to float up there. If they don't, then they're going to sink down into kind of this sea of sameness is just, is just going to feel like everything's exactly the same anyway. That's, that's, I think your friend, how they, they put it was, was spot on.

[A]

That leads me to this whole thing. Well, if this is happening and it's going to get faster and it's going to get more difficult, what do we do to stand out?

[B]

Yeah, we got to be brave, Chris. We've got to tell stories that aren't, for lack of a better word, whitewashed, right? Like, aren't just diluted down into something that's just good for all audiences. Right. You know, a little less tv. Pg. Right. We're going to have to care about things, talk about those things that we care about, take a stand on them and provide massive value. Because we know that, I mean, AI, in the hands of a fantastic content creator, AI is going to make that person just even better, right? Because they can take something and produce. They're going to do a lot of editing and curating and all that kind of stuff with it. Right? Which is the same work that was done before. Just some of like the time consuming stuff maybe is sped up a little bit. But with that being the case, they still have to, they still have to stand out and they still have to be brave. So they're going to have to tell stories a little differently. They're going to have to not be so predictive, they're going to have to be interruptive. They're going to have to produce value where value is not right. They're going to have to ask themselves this question. Chris, I've been thinking about this a lot lately about the morality of marketing, which I think is a whole nother topic that we could spend another, another hour talking about. But are people asking, when they produce a piece of content, who does this help and how much does it help them? And are they asking who does this hurt? I think sometimes we should ask ourselves, when we produce something, is this going to hurt somebody. And when I say that, I mean, is this going to take more than it gives? I think about this a lot when it comes to swag for conferences. I'm a fan of swag, don't get me wrong. But we produce so much junk that just ends up in a trash can, man. All that being said, I think it's going to come down to asking ourselves those questions. Who does this help? How much does it help them? And then, does this hurt anybody? And if we can produce content that helps, doesn't hurt. If we can produce content that is more valuable than what it takes from people, which is their most precious asset, their time and attention, we'll be on the right side. The right side of history, let's call it.

[A]

If people want to find out more about you and your process and what your team does, where do they go? Where can we send them?

[B]

Yeah. So if. If you go to the. The Google machine and again, David J. J. Ebner. Include the J. You will find me. That's right, Chris. Include the J. If you go to our website, content workshop.com. simple name. It's what we do. We run content workshops. Right. If you go to the chatbot on that site, that's literally. It's a picture of me. It comes to my phone. I still answer all of the. The chats on our website and all the spam. It's annoying, but I love it because every once in a while I'll. A freelance writer is like, hey, how do I get started in this career? And I love having those conversations. So feel free to chat with me there. LinkedIn is a great way to find me to again, use the J. David J. Ebner. And I'm always open to having conversations with people, Chris. I like to say my friendship is free. So if anybody needs a friend, has an idea, needs somebody else to, you know, yell in the void with them, I'm happy to do that.

[A]

That was a very positive and a wholesome way to end this episode. You're going to answer the message. If you need a friend, his friendship is free. My friendship is very expensive, everybody. So we just want to be clear, you know that that was David J. Ebner's voice who said that. Okay, well, that was awesome, man. Thank you very much.

[B]

Yeah, thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me. This was a lot of fun. I appreciate where this conversation went. It's. It's been a blast.