Before you add more content, fix the story
09.25.26
Sam Rudelich
Research and Insights, Project Manager, Invision
Before you add more content, fix the story
When event content is not landing, the instinct is often to add more: more sessions, more messaging, more personalization, more channels.
But more content rarely fixes a weak story. Before an event team scales its message across keynotes, breakouts, demos, activations, and follow-up communications, it needs a clear organizing idea, one the audience can recognize, believe, and repeat. That starts by shifting the focus from what the brand wants to announce to the change the audience is trying to make.
In an episode of Invision’s Inside the Brand Experience podcast, What makes stories stick, Invision Strategist Erin Ruane and Research & Insights, Project Manager Sam Rudelich explore the art and science behind memorable stories, including the role of emotion, specificity, relatability, and authenticity. One concept they explore is narrative transportation: the experience of becoming absorbed in a story and its world. A 2024 systematic review of 95 peer-reviewed articles identified recall, brand trust, word-of-mouth intentions, and story-consistent beliefs among the outcomes associated with narrative transportation.
For experiential marketers, that means the goal is not simply to deliver information. It is to create a narrative audiences can enter. At Invision, we think of that story as the organizing system for the entire experience. The keynote is not the story. Neither is the activation, demo or event theme. The story is the logic that connects the audience, message, proof, and experience so every touchpoint builds on the last.
The five principles below offer a practical way to build that foundation.
1. Start with the audience’s reality
Do not begin with your product, platform or roadmap. Begin with the people in the room. What are they trying to accomplish? What pressures are they facing? What frustrates them? What claims are they already skeptical of? The strongest stories begin with a recognizable human condition: tension, ambition, fear, or challenge that makes the audience think, They understand what I am dealing with. People are more likely to enter a story when they can first locate themselves within it.
Research supports that instinct. A 2024 review of narrative transportation research identified self-referencing and identification with characters or the story as factors that can help draw audiences in. We saw that principle at work with Atlassian Team. Rather than leading with product messaging, the experience began with a reality many teams recognized: burnout, hybrid work, and the tendency to go it alone. “Impossible Alone” became a story attendees could see themselves in, then experience through collaboration, inclusivity, and play across the event.
2. Find the tension
Tension gives a story meaning. It is the space between what the audience needs and what is standing in the way. They need speed, but complexity is slowing them down. They want to create value from AI, but they do not know where to begin. They need customer trust, but expectations keep rising. This does not mean manufacturing drama for drama’s sake. It means acknowledging the uncomfortable truth your audience already knows and showing that you are willing to address it honestly.
For our own Brand Experience Summit 2025, the tension came directly from the reality senior marketing leaders face: they are expected to move faster while still making the right decisions. That tension became “Precision at Speed,” a central idea that shaped the content, intimate peer conversations, and Formula 1 setting. The story felt relevant because it gave language to a pressure the audience was already experiencing.
3. Define the transformation
A story needs movement. Something must change: the audience’s understanding, confidence, behavior, or reality. A useful framework is:
From: Where the audience is today
To: Where they need to go
Because: How your brand can credibly help them get there
Without that movement, even meaningful content can feel flat. The transformation gives each part of the event a role and helps the audience understand where the experience is taking them.
Siemens’ CES story shows what transformation can look like at scale. The starting point was a 175-year-old industrial leader that only 40% of U.S. audiences viewed as a technology company. The destination was recognition as a defining voice in industrial AI. Across three CES appearances, the story evolved from industrial pioneer to tech powerhouse. By 2025, 87% of audiences viewed Siemens as a technology company, a 47-point shift.
4. Make proof part of the story
Audiences don't have to accept a claim just because a brand delivers it confidently. Proof should be built into the experience through customer stories, live demonstrations, hands-on labs, before-and-after examples, peer conversations, and credible voices from outside the executive suite – not thrown in as an appendix or last-minute addition. Ask what the audience needs to see, hear, test or experience for the story to become believable, and who they need to hear it from. Often, the most credible story already exists among customers, employees, partners, or users. The brand’s job is to find it, shape it, and give it a platform.
Proof matters because trust shapes what happens after the experience ends. Research from Invision and ELX found that 92% of B2B event attendees say trust in a brand influences whether they take action after an event. For Gartner’s Maverick Spaceliner, proof became the experience itself. Rather than asking attendees to simply accept predictions about the future, we transformed Gartner’s research into a mixed reality journey where they entered a 2045 spaceport, encountered AI-powered challenges and made decisions inside the story. The experience attracted 686 participants, generated 647 qualified leads (a 763% year-over-year increase), and produced more than 8,000 interactions.
5. Tell one story across the journey
Once the central story is clear, every event touchpoint can help move it forward. Pre-event communications introduce the tension. The keynote frames the transformation. Breakouts explain how change happens. Demonstrations make the abstract tangible. Customer voices provide proof. The expo invites exploration. Follow-up communications reinforce the message and make it easier to repeat. That does not mean saying the same thing in exactly the same way everywhere. It means ensuring that every moment points back to the same central idea. The goal is not simply to make B2B content more entertaining. It is to make important ideas clearer, more human, more credible and more memorable.
The Fae Farm launch campaign for Phoenix Labs shows how one story can travel across different moments without repeating the same execution. Invision first introduced the game’s cozy, magical world through a whimsical fruit stand at Summer Game Fest. That world expanded at PAX West through an immersive homestead, hands-on game demos, and interactive vignettes, then reached a broader audience through a fairy-wing photo experience at Nintendo’s flagship store in New York. Each touchpoint offered a different way into the game while preserving the same feeling of stepping into Fae Farm. The story extended online too, with the PAX West booth organically trending #1 on X on opening day.
The most memorable stories are not necessarily the biggest or most elaborate. They are the ones that make complex ideas feel human, give audiences something they can recognize themselves in, and create an emotional connection that lasts beyond the moment. For B2B marketers, that starts with making the audience the center of the story, not the brand.
So before adding another session, channel or activation, ask a more fundamental question:
Is the story strong enough to scale?
Invision helps brands transform complex ideas into meaningful experiences that connect with audiences and inspire action. Contact us at info@iv.com to start a conversation.
Sam Rudelich is a Research & Insights Project Manager at Invision, an award-winning corporate experiential marketing and event production agency. He leads end-to-end quantitative and qualitative research, translating findings into clear, actionable insights that inform business decisions. He partners with clients and executive teams to uncover meaningful trends, shape forward-looking strategies, and drive measurable business growth. Sam also leads Invision’s annual Business of Experiential research report, providing industry insights on the evolving impact of experiential marketing.