Dan Morrison │ Consulting

StoryVenture is born of decades of experience working with organizations such as

StoryVenture, a human thought leadership co-pilot that helps organizations (large and small) take control of their narrative by going directly to stakeholders.

Thought leadership is the new advertising. It's about positioning your brand, point of view and content in a way that allows you to own your narrative and frame wider stories.

The best thought leadership explains, teaches and builds authority around issues important to your mission, and those larger than you. Most important, in an always-on, attention-challenged world, thought leadership is one of the last-remaining beachheads for building trust.

One of our sweet spots is working with North American organizations scaling into Europe, or European organizations scaling into the United States. We help you deploy thought leadership to fireproof against current crises, or future proof against future crises.

If you're a company, nailing thought leadership helps you enhance your market position, attract customers and influence trends and policies. If you're a venture capital firm or private equity firm or a start-up, it helps you draw investment and talent, and compete. If you're a government or an NGO, thought leadership helps you steer policy and enhance cooperation.

Our Thought Leadership Framework

01 Discovery

We want to hear about your goals, audiences, challenges, potential thought leadership themes and topics and your competitive differentiators.

02 Alignment

We'll help you align thought leadership with your goals. Or, if you want to be a disrupting salmon, we can help you swim the other way.

03 Strategy & Tactics

We'll help you develop a thought leadership plan and cadence, including picking the right topics, channels and timing.

04 Measure/Learn

Measuring thought leadership is challenging. We can adapt to your current metrics or help develop new ones.

Services

Thought Leadership Strategic Co-Pilot

StoryVenture works with you to assess how your organization can harness thought leadership, either on topics or spaces that are saturated, or those that no one really owns - but you could. We can act as a co-pilot with your existing teams, or if you don’t have a team or the team is small, we can act as a fractional chief thought leadership officer.

Content Development

We emphasize explaining, teaching and transparency – the keystones of thought leadership trust-building. If you are using AI, it currently gets you about 80% of the way. It’s the last 20% that makes all the difference. StoryVenture helps you capture the 20%.

Policy Communications

More than ever, classic communications issues dovetail with policy issues – domestically and internationally. That means thought leadership must include policy communications. StoryVenture’s founder has lived and worked in Washington and Brussels – the policy and regulatory epicenters that impact companies around the world. He counsels companies in both cities, and was a senior economic policy advisor at the U.S. State Department. StoryVenture can help you bridge the worlds of communications and policy to create more surround sound thought leadership.

Leading through change

Leaders are struggling with navigating societal and geopolitical issues with employees and stakeholders. Polling shows that a majority of c-suite executives lack the confidence in their own ability to lead effectively amidst major change and disruption, and do not feel well equipped to lead around geopolitics, AI, climate and mis/disinformation. Meanwhile, hostile state actors are ramping up efforts to disrupt societal discussions and politics. StoryVenture's thought leadership framework can help leaders communicate through these storms.

Large Language Model communications consulting

If your organization is building its own AI Large Language Models, StoryVenture can advise on communications and public affairs related issues that you may be facing – everything from mitigating bias to crisis communications.

What Differentiates StoryVenture?

We’re not a PR agency. You get senior counsel ALL the time.

Less overhead. We’re not a permanent hire.

We speak unvarnished truth to power. Anything else is a waste of everyone’s time.

We combine frameworks with tailored strategies and tactics.

We transcend narrow communications boundaries. Our strategic counsel is informed by decades of communications and public affairs experience across business, government, geopolitics/economics, journalism, and tech. We've learned lessons along the way that you'll be able to tap.

The world’s a smaller place now. We take a global view.

What does an engagement look like?

Companies

You’re the head of marketing or communications at an established company. You’ve got a great team, or your building out a team. You know you need to do dedicated thought leadership, but you don’t have money for another headcount, and your team has zero bandwidth. StoryVenture could be your fractional thought leadership partner.

Venture Capital

You’re a venture capital firm that wants to differentiate yourself in the marketplace, support your portfolio companies, and maybe even present yourself as a thoughtful, co-investor to peers. You’d have access to StoryVenture for some or all of its offerings. Or you may want to hire StoryVenture fractionally – for yourself, or to farm out to your portfolio companies.

Startups

You’re a start-up. You want to tell the world your story. StoryVenture can work with you on your narrative-building, and how to turn that narrative into thought leadership that wins trust with customers and investors.

Government or NGO

You’re a government-related entity or NGO. Your policy messaging isn't cutting through. There may be plenty of reasons why, but you want to make a change. StoryVenture’s thought leadership framework can help.

Large language models

You’re an organization building your own AI Large Language Model. Why? Because you want some combination of: more relevant and accurate results than general-purpose models; you want to protect your sensitive data and intellectual property; you want proprietary models for a competitive edge; you want scale, and lower operational costs; you want to integrate your models with your existing systems and workflow; you want ethical and responsible AI use. StoryVenture can partner to help you ask the right questions and provide the right counsel as you build your LLM, not after it’s completed - questions that often can be more comfortably posed by an external voice.

Threats

Every organization these days is vulnerable to non-state actors, trolls and employee activism. Building thought leadership upstream that is aligned with your values can help you navigate social issues and geopolitics. StoryVenture can work with you on both external and internal thought leadership to communicate decisions where employees and stakeholders may need a nudge, or when you have to communicate on decisions they may not like.

Dan was an invaluable advisor

“Our business model is predicated on working nomads getting what they expect to get with rental accommodations when they travel around the world. Dan helped us hone our deck before we pitched. His storytelling sensibilities and his knowledge of what investors are looking for when assessing start-ups is unmatched. One example was when Dan identified that our offering was adjacent to another space -- online dating and the disappointment that comes when the person in real life is not necessarily who they are advertised to be online. Dan's thought leadership and narrative building skills, informed by years of working across business, government, geo-economics and technology, will help any company win trust, differentiate itself, and live its brand. His work for us will help attract investors, customers, partners, and staff.”

Brian Hotani

Co-Founder (stealth start-up)

Teaching Trust: Dan's Thought Leadership

“Dan's ongoing thought leadership and communications storyboarding counsel has been a game-changer for Comma. He asks the right questions to help us double down on our mission, and ignore the noise. He helped us find the right word clouds and nail our messaging. He helped us understand who our real audience is, and how to leave doors open for potential audiences in the future. And when it comes to thought leadership, he said something that has stuck with me: "Remember to teach your audience something with your content. That's how you win trust." I unreservedly recommend Dan and StoryVenture as a thought leadership co-pilot."

Miller Morris

Founder and CEO, Comma

StoryVenture

If you don't tell your story, someone else will.