How narrative clarity drives conversion, reduces returns, strengthens loyalty, and protects margin in modern commerce.

Over the past decade, performance marketing has become faster, more measurable, and more automated. Private equity backed brands can scale quickly, while e-commerce platforms make it possible for new products to launch overnight. AI has accelerated content production at a pace most teams could not have imagined even two years ago.

Yet at the same time, many leadership teams are asking a harder question:

If we are investing more in traffic, content, and automation, why are conversion rates flattening, customer acquisition costs rising, and loyalty becoming more fragile?

This was the backdrop to my recent conversation at Savant Retail Congress London, where I joined Nadine Killoran, a CMO and Growth Advisor with two decades of experience scaling brands, to unpack how brand storytelling shows up not as a creative layer, but as a commercial lever inside modern e-commerce businesses.

The discussion focused on four themes:

• Why storytelling matters more now than five years ago
• How narrative drives conversion, loyalty, and revenue quality across the funnel
• Where AI helps and where it erodes brand trust
• Whether strong storytelling can reduce dependency on discounting, even during Black Friday

What follows are the key arguments, examples, and practical takeaways from that discussion.

Let’s dive in!

1. Why Storytelling Matters More in E-Commerce Now

Storytelling matters more in e-commerce today for two interconnected reasons.

First, we are operating in an environment of unprecedented information overload. When my co-author and I were writing our books, we coined the term “infobesity” to describe the sheer volume of content, ads, and conversations happening online. Every minute, millions of emails are sent, millions of searches are conducted, and millions of videos and social posts are consumed. AI is accelerating that volume at a pace we have never seen before.

AI will absolutely create competitive advantage for the brands that master it. Teams that understand how to use AI for production, iteration, testing, and optimization will move faster and operate more efficiently. In the short term, that speed matters.

However, efficiency advantages rarely stay exclusive for long. As AI tools mature and become widely adopted, scale becomes table stakes. When everyone can produce more assets, test more variations, and optimize more precisely, differentiation cannot come from output alone.

At that maturity point, advantage shifts to brand and to your brand story.

Story is what allows a business to build trust, articulate what it stands for, clarify what makes it different, and give customers a reason to choose it over the alternatives that look similar on the surface. In a marketplace where distribution is democratized and production is automated, narrative becomes the strategic layer that cannot be easily replicated.

But, why storytelling over other strategies? Well, interestingly our brands are hardwired to favor stories. In writing our books, we studied the neuroscience of storytelling. Neuroscience confirms that story remains the most effective way humans build trust and make decisions. For example, research shows that stories are 22 times more memorable than facts alone and that our neural activity increases by five times when people engage with narrative. Storytelling activates the mechanisms associated with bonding and belief, which is why if people love a brand story, 55 percent are more likely to buy the product in future, while 15 percent will buy the product immediately.

This is not a creative preference. It is human wiring. Consumers do not build trust through feature lists or performance claims alone. They build trust through narrative coherence and consistency across the different touchpoints where they interact with your brand.

In a landscape where new brands can launch quickly, story becomes the durable filter that determines who is remembered, trusted, and chosen repeatedly.

2. How Storytelling Drives Conversion, Loyalty, and Revenue Quality

One of the most common mistakes I see in high-growth environments is an overcorrection toward lower-funnel conversion when pressure to hit sales targets increases.

Lower-funnel tactics are an essential part of the mix. However, when brands rely too heavily on them, they risk eroding the very narrative that drives long-term demand and loyalty. Over time, that disconnect shows up in margin pressure, heavier discounting, and declining customer lifetime value.

I encourage businesses to think about storytelling and their corresponding media across the full funnel:

• Upper funnel: What do we stand for?
• Mid funnel: Why should I believe you?
• Lower funnel: Why should I choose you now?

Customers do not experience brands in isolated moments. They experience them as a sequence. If the story fractures between those stages, trust weakens and conversion becomes more expensive.

To maintain coherence, I use the framework of macro and micro stories.

• Macro stories define why a company exists and what it stands for. They articulate mission, purpose, and long-term ambition and typically sit in the upper to mid funnel.
• Micro stories are the daily, commercial expressions of that macro narrative. They show up in the mid to lower funnel on customer touchpoints like product pages, reviews, loyalty programs, social content, and more. They do the work of answering objections, clarifying value, and reinforcing credibility in the moments closest to purchase.

When customers clearly understand what a company and its product/services do, who it is for, and how to use it, uncertainty decreases. When uncertainty decreases, returns decline. When expectations match reality, repeat purchase increases. When repeat purchase increases, reliance on discounting softens and revenue quality improves.

Storytelling is not about inspiration alone. It is about reducing friction at every step of the journey. Macro stories give your brand a north star. Micro stories do the commercial work.

In eCommerce, strong storytelling aligns promise with experience. That alignment is what makes the decision to buy feel obvious.

3. AI: Scale Versus Sameness

The rise of AI has created a new marketing reality. We can now generate endless ad variations, test creative at industrial scale, and even fabricate hyper-realistic digital people to sell our products.

The real question is not whether we can – it’s whether we should.

AI is highly effective at repetitive creative tasks such as background variations, copy iterations, and format adaptation. It accelerates production and reduces cost. It helps teams test more ideas, more quickly.

What it does not do is:

• Define what your brand stands for
• Own accountability for trust

Why is this important? Trust is no longer a soft metric. It is a commercial one.

According to Nielsen, 88 percent of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family more than any form of advertising. Sprout Social reports that 55 percent of consumers are more likely to trust brands that use human-led content rather than AI-generated content. Animoto’s 2026 State of Video report shows that 36 percent of consumers say that if they suspect a video is made with AI, it lowers their perception of a brand.

We have already seen how fragile that credibility can be. SheerLuxe faced backlash after introducing an AI-generated fashion editor, undermining years of community trust in days. Shein experienced reputational fallout when AI-generated imagery lacked basic brand governance. In both cases, the issue was not the tool. It was the absence of narrative leadership guiding it.

This showcases that while AI can scale creative, we as marketing leaders have to question where the best places are to leverage it. We also have to ask whether it helps or hinders the credibility our brand has with the customers we’re trying to reach.

4. Can Strong Storytelling Reduce Discount Dependency?

The final question centered on whether powerful storytelling and premium branding can reduce reliance on discounting, particularly during Black Friday.

The answer depends on discipline.

Luxury houses such as Louis Vuitton and Chanel do not discount because their premium brand positioning and product integrity support pricing power. Sustainability has been a rising theme, with brands like Patagonia reinforcing its macro story of encouraging people to purchase less in support of the environment. Me+Em and Reiss avoid heavy promotional theatrics in favor of long-term brand equity. Even smaller brands like UK probiotic startup Epetome have tested discounting and then pivoted back toward waitlists and demand-led drops to protect perceived value.

Avoiding discounting requires advance investment in brand clarity. Just like summer bodies are built in the winter, shifting away from an endless cycle of discounting requires alignment between marketing promise and product reality. It requires discipline across touchpoints so that customers understand why a product is worth paying full price.

Storytelling cannot rescue a weak offer or a poor product, but it can strengthen a coherent one.

Brands that rely exclusively on discounting train customers to wait. Brands that invest in narrative coherence build customers who advocate, repeat purchase, and accept price integrity.

The Strategic Imperative

Modern e-commerce is not suffering from a lack of content or traffic. It is suffering from a lack of narrative alignment.

Storytelling is not a creative layer applied at the end of a campaign. It is a system that aligns product, pricing, customer experience, and communication.

When that system is clear, performance marketing becomes more efficient. Conversion friction decreases. Loyalty strengthens. Margin becomes more defensible.

This is the work I focus on through my consultancy and fractional CMO roles: helping companies clarify their core narrative, connect it to commercial objectives, and translate it into measurable growth across the funnel.

Storytelling does not replace the spreadsheet. It gives it direction.

In an AI-led environment where scale is increasingly accessible, narrative coherence is becoming one of the most durable competitive advantages a brand can build.

A big thank you to the team at Savant Events for having me. For more information on their events, visit: https://savant-events.com/

Jessica Gioglio is the co-author of The Laws of Brand Storytelling and The Power of Visual Storytelling. Professionally, Jessica has led innovative marketing and public relations programs for Dunkin’, TripAdvisor, Sprinklr, and more. Today, Jessica is a keynote speaker (book her here) and founder of With Savvy Media & Marketing, a strategic branding, storytelling, and content strategy consultancy.