The Four-E Storytelling Framework
Move audiences by educating, entertaining, engaging, or empowering them
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 99%
Classify every prospective story by the audience function it primarily serves: educate, entertain, engage, or empower. Educational stories reveal useful information; entertaining stories generate emotion, curiosity, or inspiration; engaging stories create participation and dialogue; empowering stories help other people succeed and celebrate their contribution. The classification forces marketers to decide what movement they want from an audience instead of defaulting to another instructional article. A brand can use all four categories across its portfolio, but each asset should have a dominant purpose and a format suited to it. This creates greater variety, stronger human connection, and more opportunities to shape culture than an education-only strategy.
Origin
Ross Simmonds described the four categories while explaining how brands should think about storytelling on Marketing Against The Grain.
Core principles
- 01Every effective story performs a clear audience function
- 02Education is only one of four storytelling opportunities
- 03Engagement makes audiences active participants
- 04Empowerment creates value by helping other people win
- 05Stories can move people and shape culture
How to run it
- 1
Select the audience movement
Decide whether the story should primarily educate, entertain, engage, or empower. State the intended audience response before choosing a format.
Pro tip Use one dominant category even when the finished story contains elements of several.
Watch out Starting with a familiar format can cause the brand to produce content without a clear purpose.
- 2
Build the story around the function
For education, reveal something useful; for entertainment, create emotion or curiosity; for engagement, invite participation; for empowerment, help or celebrate someone else.
Pro tip Choose a real person, tension, discovery, or interaction that naturally expresses the function.
Watch out Do not label routine product information a story unless it creates a meaningful audience experience.
- 3
Choose a fitting channel
Match the story to a format where its function can work, such as a documentary, report, social conversation, game, interview, or community exchange.
Pro tip Interactive environments are especially useful for engagement and empowerment.
Watch out A one-way format can weaken a story whose purpose depends on dialogue.
- 4
Evaluate audience movement
Assess whether people learned, felt, participated, or became more capable as intended. Use quantitative signals without ignoring qualitative reactions and cultural resonance.
Pro tip Review comments and audience language alongside conventional performance metrics.
Watch out Over-optimizing measurable clicks can remove the quality that made the story distinctive.
In the wild
A documentary turns the health implications of fast food into a personal experiment and unfolding story. Instead of presenting disconnected nutritional facts, it gives viewers characters, consequences, and discoveries that make the information memorable.
→ The audience learns through a story that influences public discussion and perceptions of a major brand.
Red Bull supports a space jump that creates suspense, awe, curiosity, and spectacle. The experience expresses the brand without relying on a conventional product lesson.
→ The brand earns attention and emotional association through entertainment.
A software company profiles several customers, explains the obstacles they overcame, and gives each person a platform to teach peers. The customers become the celebrated experts rather than props in a conventional case study.
→ Participants gain recognition while the audience receives relatable proof and practical inspiration.
Common mistakes
Defaulting to education
Brands repeatedly publish instructional content because it feels safe and measurable, leaving entertainment, engagement, and empowerment unused.
Confusing exposure with movement
A story can receive impressions without teaching, moving, involving, or helping its audience. Define the intended response explicitly.
Measuring away the magic
Excessive optimization can flatten the emotional and cultural qualities that make a story memorable.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for marketers designing brand stories, campaigns, editorial calendars, communities, or media properties.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for purely transactional communications that require only a direct factual answer.
From the transcript
“when it comes to storytelling, you can go into one of four categories. You can create stories that are going to educate people, stories that…”
“And the final one that I've just started to come to light to realize that I believe is real is stories that empower people.”
“And if you create stories that do one of those four things, you have a story that can ultimately move people and shape culture.”
From the episode
Be The Most Interesting Brand In Your Market with Ross Simmonds
Ross Simmonds