Why 2026 is the Year of the Storyteller

We examine why companies are scrambling to hire "storytellers" in 2026 and what it reveals about the state of brand building, making the argument that in a world of moderate growth, cautious capital, and a collapsing trust landscape, your story is no longer optional and in fact your most valuable asset.

We’ve all seen the headlines—the Wall Street Journal recently dropped a viral piece reporting that companies are “desperately seeking storytellers,” with job postings for the role doubling in the past year. USAA is hiring its fourth in-house storyteller in under a year. Compliance firm Vanta is offering up to $274,000 for a head of storytelling. Microsoft, Google, and Notion have all created dedicated storytelling teams.

It’s a trend that’s easy to dismiss as another corporate buzzword, a flashier title for a media relations manager. But to do so would be to miss the point entirely.

In a world of moderate economic growth, cautious capital, and a collapsing trust landscape, a company’s story is now its most valuable, non-negotiable asset.

For years, we’ve argued that communications is not a marketing support function or a luxury for large companies, but the core infrastructure for building trust, credibility, and authority. The sudden corporate scramble for “storytellers” is a lagging indicator of a truth we’ve held for years: your brand is your moat, and your story is how you build it.

The Damaged Information Landscape

Let’s start with the context for this shift—the information landscape of 2026 has become a minefield. According to Forrester, a third of companies will damage customer trust this year through premature or reckless AI deployment. The internet is awash in what the industry has grimly termed “AI slop,” a deluge of low-quality, algorithmically generated content that erodes trust and drives consumers to seek out reliable, human sources.

The numbers reinforce this story. Traditional media has been hollowed out—there are now just over 49,000 journalists in the United States, down from nearly 66,000 in 2000. Print newspaper circulation has dropped 70% since 2005. The websites of the 100 largest papers have seen traffic decline by more than 40% in the past four years alone.

In their place, we have social media feeds choked with synthetic content, AI-generated articles, and a general sense that nothing online can be trusted. When 78% of brands could disappear tomorrow without consumers noticing, as Havas’s Meaningful Brands research suggests, the only thing that makes you matter is the story you tell and the trust you build.

And yet, we still see founders in Asia hesitant to tell their story, viewing it as a distraction from product, a cost centre, or something to be outsourced to the marketing team. This is a profound misunderstanding of what a brand is and how it functions, especially heading into 2026.

Your Story is Your moat

To put it simply, we typically ask founders and marketing leaders this question: why would you not want to be perceived accurately by the people who matter most to your business? Why would you allow the market, your competitors, or the AI-driven noise to define you?

Your story is not the fluffy “about us” page on your website. In today’s reality, it is the strategic narrative that answers the most fundamental questions for your key stakeholders.

For investors, in a world of cautious capital, your story explains why your company is the inevitable winner in its category. Southeast Asia’s digital economy is projected to exceed $300 billion in 2026, but venture capital remains selective and exits are elusive. In this environment, the companies that can articulate a clear, compelling vision of the future they are building will attract capital, and the companies that cannot will stagnate.

For customers, in a sea of look-alike products, your story is what builds trust. It’s what separates you from the competition when features are similar and price tags are comparable. It’s what makes someone choose you over the alternative, and what keeps them loyal when a cheaper option appears.

And for talent, in a competitive hiring market, your story is what attracts the best people and keeps them engaged. The World Economic Forum projects that 39% of core skills will change by 2030. The best talent has options and can work anywhere. Why should they dedicate their careers to your vision? If you can’t answer that question compellingly, you are already losing the war for talent, whether or not you realise it.

To not have a clear, compelling answer to these questions—to not have a story—is to abdicate your most important responsibility as a leader. It is to shortchange your users, your team, and your investors.

brands need to be more human

The rise of the storyteller is also a deeply human response to an increasingly inhuman information environment. It’s a recognition that companies, like people, are made of stories. They are not just legal entities or profit-and-loss statements. They are collections of human ambition, struggle, and triumph.

To tell your story authentically is to show people that you are just like them. That your company is not a faceless, greedy corporation, but a group of people trying to solve a problem they care about. And in an era of deep-seated cynicism in corporations and the capitalist structure, this can be a defining act.

Consider Patagonia’s 2025 Work in Progress report. Three years after making “Earth our only shareholder,” the company released a report that was remarkable for its vulnerability. It openly admitted that its carbon footprint had risen 2%, that 85% of its products still lacked an end-of-life solution, and that it used some of the same factories as fast-fashion brands. The report even included direct quotes from its critics: “Top-notch virtue signaling,” “Stick to selling clothes.”

From ACID’s point of view, this was the human imperative in action. In a world of greenwashing and corporate gloss, Patagonia’s willingness to show its failures alongside its progress is what makes its story credible. They are not saying, “we are perfect,” but rather that “we are trying, we sometimes fail, and we want to be honest about it.”

This is what the best founders we work with understand. They invest in communications not as a way to get quick “visibility hits”, but as a way to build an enduring legacy of trust. They understand that in a damaged information landscape, honest storytelling is the only antidote to cynicism. Your flaws, when owned, are a core part of what makes your brand human—and people relate to that, now more than ever.

The Mandate for 2026

Let’s take one final look at another telling data point from the Wall Street Journal story above. Executives mentioned "storyteller" or "storytelling" on earnings calls and investor days 469 times in 2025, compared with 359 times in 2024 and just 147 times in 2015. This marks a fundamental shift in how companies are thinking about their most valuable asset, and is a strong signal to brands everywhere that your story has become your moat.

Having seen the writing on the wall for some time now, we know that it is what will protect you from the noise, what will attract the right people to your cause, and what will ultimately determine whether you build a company that matters or one that simply exists.

For founders and business leaders in Asia, the opportunity is especially acute. The region’s digital economy is booming, but the competition is fierce. The companies that will win are the ones that can articulate a vision that resonates, that can build trust in a landscape of distrust, and that can tell a story that makes people care.

Stop waiting for your story to be told, and go out there and write it. There’s no bigger investment in your company than this today.