Modern life is full of bids for our attention, social media, traditional media, and of course press releases. In all of these, communications data backs up the claims, but the story is what people walk away with — if it’s in the right format. Here’s why, and how to plan around it.
We all know the feeling. Another announcement lands in the inbox, another set of figures, another carefully crafted boilerplate. Most of it scrolls past us. Some of it sticks. The question every communications team should be asking is: what makes the difference?
“People register announcements and data; but they engage with stories,” says Alexander Brown, Communications Director at Consultancy32. “When preparing, any communication, whether it’s a release, speech, post, or presentation, focus your energy on refining the story you tell; chances are that will be what gets remembered.”
It sounds obvious when you read it. But it’s the kind of principle that, taken seriously, changes how a team actually spends its time in the run-up to a big moment, whether that’s a funding round, a product launch, or a move into a new market.
Why announcements fade and stories stick
There’s plenty of research behind this, but you don’t really need it to know it’s true: the human brain is usually wired for narrative. We process information more deeply, recall it more accurately, and share it more readily when it arrives as a story rather than a list of facts. “Company X raises $30 million Series C” is information. A story about why that funding matters — who’s backing it, what it unlocks, what it shifts in the market — is what audiences carry forward.
This is not a critique of data. Numbers and announcements remain the scaffolding of credible communication, particularly, or course, if you are engaging with financial audiences. But that scaffolding alone is rarely what people remember a week, a month, or a year later. And crucially it doesn’t make a good story that someone recalls and relays when they justify an opinion about everything from an investment decision to a choice of car or washing powder. The elevator or water cooler summary story almost never involves data that isn’t supported by a story.
Where to focus your preparation
For communications teams preparing a major announcement, this principle shifts the work. The temptation is to perfect the press release wording, line up every metric, and triple-check the boilerplate. That is indeed important. But it is the table stakes, not the differentiator.
The differentiator is the narrative: the human stakes, the strategic context, the “why now,” the tension and resolution that give the announcement meaning. Three questions help anchor that work:
- What’s the change? Every story has a before and an after. Make the transformation clear.
- Who is it for? Stories need a protagonist and an audience. Know both.
- Why does it matter now? Context is not filler, but rather what makes the story land.
When teams invest disproportionate effort in refining the narrative, not just the wording, coverage improves, messages travel further across borders and languages, and audiences remember long after the news cycle has moved on.
Press release, or something else?
Perhaps as PRs we rely too heavily on press releases and so some thought should be given to the channel used, because even the right story can land in the wrong format. A wire announcement, a thought leadership piece, an exclusive briefing with one outlet, a founder op-ed, a research report, a podcast appearance: each has a job, and they are rarely interchangeable.
Press releases earn their place when the news is broadly verifiable and structured: funding rounds, mergers and acquisitions, senior hires, regulatory milestones, formal market disclosures. Journalists expect a quotable material, the wire gives you reach across geographies and languages, and the SEO compounds over time.
Other moments call for something else.
- A founder op-ed or thought leadership piece is usually stronger when the news is a perspective, not a fact. “We believe the market is moving here, and here’s why” rarely fits a press release.
- An exclusive briefing under embargo tends to deliver deeper coverage than a wire blast, when one well-chosen outlet matters more than fifty short mentions.
- A long-form essay, blog or newsletter piece lets you control the full argument, and works well for community-facing announcements.
- A research report or data piece can turn a single moment into months of conversation, especially when you have proprietary insight worth standing on.
- A podcast, video or live event wins when the founder’s voice, energy or domain authority is the real asset, not the words on the page.
The discipline is to ask, for each milestone, which format actually carries the story you want remembered. Defaulting to a press release because it feels like the safe move is often the reason a strong story underperforms.
The principle in practice
This approach recently shaped our work supporting MerQube’s $30 million Series C raise, led by 7RIDGE and Deutsche Börse Group. The announcement could have been a routine funding story: another fintech, another round. Instead, the coverage that landed across German, French, Swiss, and English-language outlets — from Börsen-Zeitung to L’Agefi to EQDerivatives and Structured Retail Products — reflected a sharper narrative: an index provider redefining how thematic and AI-driven indices are built, backed by one of Europe’s most respected exchanges.
The underlying data was the same either way. The story made it stick. The press release had great outreach.
The takeaway
In a media environment crowded with press releases, data points, and corporate announcements, communicators face a hard question: what actually gets remembered?
If you’re a CEO or business leader preparing for a milestone moment, the lesson is straightforward. Sweat the narrative before the wording. Make sure your team gets the story right, and the announcement will follow. Get only the announcement right, and the story will either be told differently, either by someone else — or simply not told at all.
Consultancy32 builds and protects the reputations of financial, technology, crypto, and impact brands through narrative-led communications. Get in touch to learn about our C32 Academy and to talk through your next milestone: https://consultancy32.com/our-academy/
