The Messenger (5) — Packaging Can't Stand in for Substance Forever

There's one last line storytelling has to respect. It is not a technique for inventing something that isn't there.

Nothing to prepare

Going through several certifications taught me something. A team that has genuinely done the work has nothing extra to prepare for an audit. If you've documented consistently, the paperwork already exists. If you've been testing all along, the results already exist. Ahead of one certification, a nervous team member asked, "Do we need to put together separate materials?" I answered, "Just show them what we actually do." On the day of the actual review, an unexpected question came up, and we simply opened the system we use every day, right there on the spot. The real workflow was more convincing than any prepared presentation would have been. Storytelling means organizing value that already exists into a form people can recognize — not dressing up value that isn't there.

The lie in a drop of blood

Looking at the opposite case makes the line clear. An American startup was valued at tens of billions of dollars on the story of "200 tests from a single drop of blood." The founder wore black turtlenecks and seated powerful figures on the board. There was no substance behind it. Tests were being run on other companies' equipment instead of their own, and the underlying method was hidden away as a trade secret. A journalist's investigation exposed the lie, the company was dissolved, and the founder went to prison. A company that claimed to build self-powered electric trucks collapsed after it came out that the truck in its promotional video had actually just been rolled down a hill.

The way substance-less stories collapse is strikingly similar across cases. One cryptocurrency exchange built up trust by projecting the image of a "frugal, good-hearted billionaire," only to collapse overnight when it was revealed that, behind that image, customer funds had been secretly siphoned off. An event sold as a "luxury island festival" through influencers greeted its arriving guests with nothing but relief tents and soggy sandwiches. The gap between the lavish promotion and the shabby reality spread across social media on the spot, and the organizer went to prison. The bigger the packaging, and the longer it holds up, the greater the fall when the substance is finally exposed.

We've had our own version of this. A dairy company announced that its fermented milk suppressed COVID-19. In reality, it was a cell-level trial involving just one product, dressed up as an academic event and effectively released as an advertisement. Boycotts and sanctions followed, the court conviction was finalized, and the founding family eventually lost control of the company. When undisclosed sponsored content disguised as "I bought this with my own money" came to light, regulators went after the brands that had commissioned it, not the individuals, and levied fines accordingly.

The pattern is the same in every case: packaging can stand in for substance for a while, but not forever. And the longer it stands in, the bigger the fall when it collapses. Covering up the absence of value with a story isn't storytelling — it's fraud, and fraud eventually gets found out.

Starting today

That's why order matters. First create real value, then convey it in the language of the person listening. The next time you have to explain something to someone, why not pause for just thirty seconds before you speak and ask: "What is this person most curious about?" Start your answer there.

Even in an age when machines handle so much, the work of carrying value across different worlds and translating it remains a job for people. Plenty of people have something good. What's rare is someone who can make it arrive.