Optimization Without Story Is Just Noise

At its core, this newsletter has always been about storytelling in business — what I call corporate narrative. That’s where the name The Narrative Intel comes from.

When you’re building a house, if the foundation is weak, the whole thing eventually comes crumbling down. The same is true for your corporate narrative. Too many businesses take shortcuts. They go for the flashy campaign that grabs attention which quickly fades. 

The same problem shows up in content strategy. For years, companies churned out material just to feed the search engines. Maybe that had some marginal value once. But today the game has changed — and the shortcuts don’t work anymore. 

So let’s start where authority really begins: with the story.

Story Comes First

Story → Signals → Surfaces. That’s the order. And it always starts with story.

Your story is the foundation. It’s the corporate narrative — the world you invite people into. Without it, nothing else works.

Signals are the proof. Surfaces are where that influence shows up — search results, social feeds, AI answers, and conversations.

A strong story makes you clear. People know what you stand for and why you exist. But clarity on its own isn’t enough — you still need to prove you’re credible. That’s where signals come in. 

Signals Build Trust

Signals are your thought leadership — the proof points, frameworks, and context that make you useful and believable. A case study, a customer story, or a lived example all function as signals.

When your story is clear and your signals are credible, you become vettable. People can look at you and believe, “They’re real. They can do what they say.” That’s the real test. It’s not whether an algorithm surfaces you — it’s whether a decision-maker carries your insight with them when it’s time to act.

Clever lines may grab attention, but only proof and insight last. Signals are what turn attention into trust. They’re also how you help people navigate complexity — acting as a sensemaker — making it easier for them to see a way forward. I wrote about this in Who Are Your Sensemakers?, and it’s just as true for companies as it is for people. 

Content vs. Surfaces

Content is what you create directly: the post, the deck, the podcast.

Surfaces are not the content itself. They’re the echoes — the places where your content shows up and exerts influence. A search snippet, a LinkedIn share, an AI answer, a headline in an article, or a customer repeating your framework in a meeting — those are surfaces.

You can control what you publish. You can’t fully control where it surfaces.

Surfaces Don’t Create Authority

Surfaces may be where your work gets seen, but they’re not where authority begins.

Authority doesn’t start with optimization — it starts with the story you tell and the signals you send. Without that substance, surfaces (AIO/AEO/GEO) are just mechanics.

• AIO (AI Optimization): helping machines crawl and parse your content.

• AEO (Answer Engine Optimization): structuring it so you can be the answer.

• GEO (Generative Engine Optimization): giving AI a reason to reference you in its outputs.

Chasing surfaces alone worked in the SEO era — you could play the game and sometimes win. But in an AI-driven world of answer engines and generative outputs, that approach fails. Substance and clarity win. Engines may help you get seen; distinctive, useful insight is what gets you selected, shared, and remembered.

Without substance, you’re just polishing empty content. 

This Applies to Us, Too

This isn’t just about companies. It’s about people.

Every one of us is telling a story, whether we realize it or not. The signals we send — how we follow through, how we make sense of the world for others, how we show up — either reinforce that story or undermine it.

And the surfaces? They’re the echoes of how others experience us. A colleague repeating something we said in a meeting. A friend referencing us in conversation. A post we wrote being shared on LinkedIn.

The same rule holds: get the story and the signals right, and those surfaces amplify you. Get them wrong, and you’re just another bit of noise in someone else’s feed.

Berkson's Bits

Networking ProTip: Close the loop when people help you out.

If you ask for advice or an introduction, let them know how it worked out — good or bad. Otherwise, they’re less likely to help you next time.

When you do close the loop, they learn something, you stay top of mind, and everyone wins. 

What I'm Watching...

Here's Will AI Save Humanity or End It? with Mustafa Suleyman.

This was a far-ranging conversation hosted by Trevor Noah with Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Deepmind and current head of AI for Microsoft. One moment that stood out for me was when Suleyman was describing the experience of Go master Lee Sedol playing AlphaGo, the Deepmind Go program. AlphaGo did a move that surprised everyone, including Sedol. 

Rather than being disappointed that the program beat him, Sedol was happy to know there were parts of Go that he didn't know existed. He said "this machine has reminded me to keep being creative and push beyond the boundaries that I thought existed in my head."

That's a vision of AI I can buy into.

The order matters:

Story → Signals → Surfaces.

Get it wrong, and no acronym will save you.

Get it right, and optimization isn’t the strategy — it’s the amplifier.

If you start with optimization, you’ll end up with noise — but if you start with story and signals, every surface becomes an amplifier. Machines spread the message. People decide if it matters. So start with getting the story right. Because in the end, technology doesn’t tell stories. People do. 

Try this: ask a colleague how they’d describe your story — or your company’s story. If their answer surprises you, that’s a signal your foundation needs work.

Let me know what you come up with.

Looking forward to continuing the conversation...

Alan