Tori Barnes is a healthcare communications and brand marketing consultant

I recently held a workshop with over 50 health tech leaders on the value of storytelling in the age of AI. As homework, I asked each participant to submit a short video talking about their company. No polish, just a short form, off the cuff, 30-second video. 

The exercise was a near flop. Only two submissions came in by the deadline. By the time I managed to get a quorum, here was the result:

Despite the variety of business models, products, services and go-to-market strategies represented in the room, everyone’s description sounded just about the same. And if you’ve been around the healthcare block, this isn’t foreign. Take a walk around the HLTH or HIMSS show floor. Scan through your LinkedIn feed. Every company is innovative and transforming healthcare. We’re all leveraging AI to improve outcomes. And we’re definitely all thrilled about our newest utilization management tool and AI-driven revenue cycle management

I've been obsessed with healthcare communications for the better part of two decades, most recently leading communications at Headspace before hanging my own shingle. I've helped brands and leaders navigate their most visible moments, from funding rounds to product launches, broadcast interviews, events and marketing campaigns. The through-line across all of it has been the same problem: we’re drowning in a "sea of sameness." This isn't new to healthcare – we've all been competing against the same thesaurus for some time. But AI has poured gasoline on it, making it far too easy to create polished, jargon-heavy content.

The companies that win in healthcare aren't always the ones with the best product. They're the ones that tell the clearest story about why they matter. In an AI-flooded market, a strong story may be the most defensible advantage a healthcare company has left. 

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The stakes, across every audience

The appetite for real, human-driven content has never been higher across all of the audiences leaders should care about:  

• B2B buyers - 64% of buyers trust thought leadership more than traditional marketing.  
• Investors - 72% of investors are more likely to back companies whose leaders can communicate an effective story. 
• Media - The media landscape is shrinking rapidly. Newsroom employment in the U.S. has dropped by more than a quarter since 2008, and for the journalists who do remain, the bar is incredibly high for compelling sources with something interesting to say.
• LLMs - Even the machines are craving human content. LinkedIn is now the #1 most-cited domain for professional queries across all AI search platforms, ahead of every major news publisher. 
• Employees - Employees have the potential to be some of your biggest drivers of brand awareness. Only 3% of employees share company content, but when they do, it drives 30% of brand awareness. In addition, 92% of B2B buyers trust employee recommendations over traditional advertising.

Ultimately, people (and LLMs) want to connect with people. 

Building the muscle: The AAA Framework

Most leaders aren't poor storytellers because they don't care, but because they don’t have a framework. On top of this, the outdated corporate communications playbooks (the 30-page briefing book, jargon-filled press release, and ghostwritten social posts) actively make it worse. The structure I share with leaders is fairly simple: remember the triple A. 

Audience - Far too often, brands jump straight to what’s in it for them, versus the reader, listener, or viewer. Great stories start with understanding the audience. Where are they right now? What problems are they facing? Why should they care about this story? If you’ve been in sales, you know the acronym, WIFM: “What’s In It For Me”. Maven's Kate Ryder did this well recently when announcing an AI tool. She could’ve just jumped straight to the features – agentic intelligence, embedded in care delivery, driving better health outcomes. But instead, she leads with a powerful vignette of a postpartum mother in the NICU. The announcement comes in the fifth paragraph, when the reader is fully engaged in the story and can put themselves in the shoes of the patient.