S3.E4: The Narrative Machine, with Kristian A. Alomá PhD

Kristian A. Alomá, PhD — behavioral psychologist, founder and CEO of Threadline, and author of Start with the Story: Brand-Building in a Narrative Economy — returns to Bullhorns & Bullseyes for a second season to answer the harder follow-up question: once you have the customer truth, what do you actually do with it? Tom Nixon and Curtis Hays dig into signal loss, the STORY Framework, and why most organizations let the best insights die in translation. From Nike and FedEx to Peloton and McDonald’s, this conversation is a field guide for anyone who has ever come back from customer research with something real—and watched it get polished flat.N.B.:Learn more at threadline.com and kristianaloma.com.Connect with Kristian on LinkedIn.Takeaways:Signal loss is the real enemy. You can do the research right and still lose the truth at every handoff—brief to copywriter, copywriter to AI—until what started as something real comes out sounding like everyone else in the category.Your brand is not the hero. If your marketing centers on how great you are, there’s no room for the customer in the story. The relationship doesn’t go far from there.The STORY Framework: Struggle → Tool → Objective → Reward → Yearning. Most brands start at Tool and skip Yearning entirely—but Yearning is where loyalty lives.Build the hymnal. A documented, organization-wide source of customer truth is not a slide deck. It’s the guardrail against drift, the creative brief anchor, and the only thing that keeps the whole team telling the same story.AI amplifies what you give it. Feed it your customer’s reality, and it amplifies signal. Feed it nothing, and it amplifies your own reflection—faster.Show, don’t tell. Claims are unverifiable to anyone who hasn’t already experienced them. Stories are felt before they’re evaluated. The difference is the difference between copy that sells and stories people actually believe.Brand is a relationship, not an asset. The companies that get it right—Nike, FedEx, McDonald’s—invest in the emotional experience of the customer, not just the product or the logistics behind it.Find and Follow:Find all episodes at ⁠bullhornsbullseyes.com⁠.Follow ⁠the show on LinkedIn!⁠Learn more about ⁠Collideascope⁠ and ⁠Creative Mill⁠ at their respective websites.Connect with ⁠Curtis⁠ and ⁠Tom⁠ on LinkedIn.Check out our newsletter, ⁠Amplify and Aim⁠!