How to Create a Story That Doesn’t Suck
Most companies do not have the luxury of announcing earth-shattering news every Tuesday.
Sometimes the assignment is a major acquisition, groundbreaking research, or something else that naturally makes people sit up and pay attention. Other times, it is a product update, a new partnership, an executive hire, or version 4.2 of a platform nobody outside the company knew had a version 4.1.
That does not mean the story has to suck.
It does mean we have to work harder.
Companies often assume the announcement and the story are the same thing. They are not. The announcement is what happened inside the company. The story is why that change matters to someone outside of it.
“We launched a product” is an announcement.
“Parents are struggling to help their children develop a healthy relationship with technology, and this new product offers a different way forward” is the beginning of a story.
The product did not change. The storytelling did.
The Dog Is Not the Story
There is an old journalism lesson that goes something like this:
Dog bites man is ordinary.
Man bites dog is news.
The point is not that reporters have a strange bias against dogs. The point is that a story becomes more interesting when it contains something important, timely, close to home, emotionally meaningful, surprising, or unusual.
A story needs a pulse.
If all you have is “Company X launched Product Y,” you have a fact. It may be an accurate and perfectly respectable fact, but it is still sitting there like an IKEA bookshelf before assembly. The pieces are technically present. Nobody would call it finished.
Our job is to find the missing pieces.
Start With the Audience, Not the Company
Before you decide what makes your announcement interesting, decide whom you need to interest.
This sounds obvious. It is also one of the first things people skip.
Different audiences care about different parts of the same story. A business reporter may care about market growth, competition, funding, and strategy. A parenting reporter may care about how a product affects families. A local journalist may care that the company is creating jobs nearby. A technology reporter may care about how the product works and whether it represents a meaningful technical shift.
No single version of a story is universally compelling.
Ask:
Who needs to care about this?
What does that audience already care about?
What problem are they trying to understand?
What questions will they immediately ask?
What would make this relevant to their readers, viewers, or listeners?
Which parts of the announcement will they distrust?
What evidence will they need before they believe us?
Do not begin with what the company wants to say. Begin with what the audience has a reason to hear.
Those two things can eventually meet, but they rarely start in the same place.
Find the Actual Story
Every announcement has a basic fact at its center:
We launched something.
We hired someone.
We raised money.
We opened a location.
We signed a partnership.
We reached a milestone.
That fact is the raw material. It is not necessarily the finished story.
To find the story, ask:
What has changed?
Who is affected?
What problem does this solve?
Why has that problem been difficult to solve?
Why is this happening now?
What are the stakes?
Who can show us what the change looks like in real life?
What evidence proves that the problem—and our solution—are real?
What tension, contradiction, or unanswered question sits underneath the announcement?
If you cannot find a meaningful answer, you may not have a story yet. That is okay. It is better to learn that in a planning meeting than after sending a painfully enthusiastic pitch to 400 reporters.
The Elements of News
Journalists use several common elements to judge whether something is newsworthy. These elements are not magic buttons. Adding one does not guarantee coverage, and cramming all of them into a press release will not summon a reporter from the mist.
They are tools for finding the strongest version of the truth.
A good story may use two or three. A great one often layers several together without feeling forced.
1. Impact: Who Does This Help, Hurt, or Change?
Impact answers the question every audience is quietly asking: What does this have to do with me?
A product feature is rarely interesting simply because it exists. It becomes more interesting when it saves people time, changes how they work, reduces a meaningful risk, solves an expensive problem, or improves something they genuinely care about.
Weak framing:
Our company launched a new scheduling dashboard.
Stronger framing:
Small medical practices are losing hours each week to canceled appointments. A new scheduling system is helping them fill those openings before they become lost revenue.
The dashboard is still there. It simply isn't being asked to carry the whole story on its tiny digital shoulders anymore.
To strengthen impact, look for:
The number of people affected
Time or money saved
Risks reduced
Access expanded
Behavior changed
Measurable outcomes
What becomes possible that was not possible before
The larger and clearer the consequence, the stronger the potential story.
2. Timeliness: Why Does This Matter Now?
A story needs a reason to exist today.
Maybe a law changed. A school year is beginning. A market is shifting. A new technology is changing customer behavior. A crisis is growing. A cultural conversation has reached a tipping point.
Timeliness does not mean awkwardly attaching your product to whatever happens to be trending on social media. It means understanding the real-world conditions surrounding the announcement.
Ask:
What is happening right now that makes this relevant?
Is there a seasonal connection?
Has new research changed the conversation?
Are customers facing a new challenge?
Is the industry moving in a different direction?
Would this story have made equal sense six months ago?
If the answer to that last question is yes, you may need a stronger “why now?”
3. Proximity: How Close Is This to the Audience?
People care more about things that feel close to them. Sometimes that closeness is geographic. Sometimes it is professional, cultural, emotional, or personal.
A national employment trend becomes more relevant to a Utah business publication when you can show what it means for Utah companies. A broad technology story becomes more useful to educators when it affects their classrooms. A global issue becomes personal when it reaches someone’s home.
Proximity can come from:
Geography
Industry
Profession
Community
Age or stage of life
Shared experience
Cultural identity
A problem the audience encounters regularly
Do not just tell people the story is close to them. Show them where it touches their lives.
4. Human Interest: Who Is Living This Story?
Data tells us that something is happening. People show us what it means.
This is where many product stories go from lifeless to memorable.
Find the customer who struggled with the problem before the product existed. Talk to the employee who spent years trying to solve it. Show the parent, teacher, patient, founder, or business owner whose daily life changed.
Then get specific.
What happened? What did the problem feel like? What were they doing before? What changed afterward? What detail would help another person recognize themselves in the experience?
A customer quote that says, “This innovative solution has been transformative,” is not a human-interest story. It is a brochure wearing a name tag.
Real people speak in details. They talk about missed dinners, awkward conversations, hours lost, small victories, sleepless nights, messy houses, and the moment they realized something had changed.
That is where the story lives.
5. Conflict: What Is Working Against What?
Conflict does not require two CEOs to meet in a parking lot at high noon.
Conflict is tension. It is the gap between what people need and what currently exists.
It might be:
Parents versus the risks of giving children smartphones
Small businesses versus rising costs
Patients versus limited access to care
New technology versus outdated regulations
A growing company versus a shortage of qualified workers
Convenience versus privacy
Innovation versus an established way of doing things
What customers expect versus what the industry currently provides
Conflict gives the story movement. It creates a question the audience wants answered.
Can parents give children access to technology without opening every door on the internet? Can a company grow without losing what made it special? Can AI provide useful support without replacing human relationships?
The product may be part of the answer, but the tension is what gives the answer meaning.
6. Surprise: What Makes Someone Say, “Wait—What?”
“Man bites dog” works because it reverses expectations.
Surprise can come from an unusual fact, a counterintuitive result, an unexpected use of a product, a strange customer behavior, or a solution that challenges conventional wisdom.
Maybe the fastest-growing users are not the people the product was built for. Maybe a declining industry is growing in one unexpected place. Maybe customers are using a feature in a way its creators never imagined.
The important part is that the surprise must be real.
Do not manufacture shock by overstating the announcement. “Revolutionary” is not a story element. It is an adjective that should be forced to earn its way back into polite society.
Look for what is genuinely unusual, then explain why it matters.
7. Authority: Who Gives the Story Credibility?
The original list calls this “celebrity or expert,” but the deeper principle is authority.
A recognizable person may attract attention, but a credible expert helps people understand why the news matters. Depending on the story, authority may come from:
An independent researcher
A customer with firsthand experience
An industry analyst
A physician or subject-matter expert
A respected investor
A community leader
A well-known partner
Original research or proprietary data
The best experts do more than praise the company. They add context, explain the problem, or tell us where the industry is heading.
A celebrity can bring an audience. An expert can bring trust. Occasionally, you get both. Enjoy it when that happens.
How Troodi Became More Than a Product Launch
The launch of Troodi, Troomi’s AI-powered mobile companion for children, could have been presented as a basic product story:
Troomi launched a new AI feature.
Accurate? Yes.
Compelling? Not yet.
The stronger story began with the tension parents were already feeling. They wanted their children to benefit from technology, but they were also worried about social media, harmful content, misinformation, isolation, and the effects digital life could have on their children’s emotional well-being.
That gave the announcement conflict.
The broader conversation about children’s mental health, smartphones, social media, and the rapid growth of AI gave it timeliness.
Research and public data about anxiety, depression, screen use, and isolation gave it scale and credibility.
Then came Nicole and her 12-year-old daughter, Lauren.
Lauren sometimes had questions she did not feel ready to ask her mother—or questions that came up when her mother was’t immediately available. Troodi gave her another place to work through those moments. Nicole described it as a supplement to the conversations they were already having, not a replacement for their relationship.
That gave the story a person.
It also gave the story details. Lauren compared Troodi’s positive encouragement to the uplifting messages she liked reading on tea bags. That small detail did more to explain the experience than a paragraph full of words like transformative, cutting-edge, and next-generation ever could.
The product was still important. It was simply no longer standing alone.
The full story contained:
Impact: Helping children work through emotions while giving parents another way to stay connected
Timeliness: Growing concern about youth mental health, digital life, and the role of AI
Human interest: Nicole and Lauren’s real experience
Conflict: Parents want children to use technology without being overwhelmed or harmed by it
Surprise: AI positioned as a tool for strengthening family conversations rather than replacing them
Authority: Research, public data, expert context, and firsthand customer experience
That is how an ordinary product announcement becomes part of a larger story about parenting, technology, trust, and what it means to raise children in a digital world.
We did not make the product less important. We made its importance visible.
Decide What Role the Brand Should Play
Companies naturally want to be the hero of every story. Sometimes they are. Sometimes the story is better when they are not.
Your brand can be:
The main character: The company itself is doing something truly new or consequential.
The guide: The company helps customers navigate a larger challenge.
The evidence: Customer data reveals an important trend.
The solution: The company offers one credible response to a wider problem.
The supporting character: The company helps bring someone else’s meaningful story to life.
This requires a little humility.
If the larger story is about parents trying to help their children build healthier relationships with technology, the parent and child may be the emotional center. The company’s role is to help them.
That does not weaken the brand. It makes the brand relevant.
Add Ingredients, Not Decorations
When a story feels weak, the answer is not to pour adjectives over it.
The answer is to add substance.
Consider what you can bring to the story before it goes public:
Original research
Customer data
A compelling case study
Independent experts
Useful visuals
A live demonstration
A relevant partner
A local angle
A seasonal connection
A meaningful milestone
Access to the founder or product team
A customer who is willing to speak with media
A clear point of view about a larger industry issue
These elements should deepen the story, not distract from it.
You are not decorating a boring announcement. You are doing the reporting required to discover what the announcement actually means.
Pressure Test the Story Before Going Public
Before finalizing the release, pitch, or campaign, ask:
Who is the audience?
What do they care about?
What is the central change?
Why does it matter now?
Which elements of news make it stronger?
Who is affected?
Do we have a real person who can show the impact?
What credible data supports the story?
Is there tension or conflict?
Is anything genuinely surprising?
Do we have an expert who can add context?
Should the brand be the center of the story or part of a larger one?
Can every claim survive a skeptical follow-up question?
Are spokespeople, customers, visuals, and supporting materials ready?
Would I cover this if I were the reporter?
That last question is brutal. It is also useful.
If the answer is no, do not immediately give up. Ask what the story is missing. Maybe it needs a customer. Maybe it needs data. Maybe it needs a stronger connection to what is happening right now. Maybe the announcement should wait until you have more to say.
And sometimes, it is simply not a media story.
It may still be a great customer email, company blog post, social campaign, sales tool, or internal announcement. Not every respectable piece of communication needs to become a headline.
When It Is Time to Pitch
Once you have a story worth telling, do not ruin it with a terrible pitch.
Get to the point. Be clear. Be brief. Write like a human. Explain why the story fits that journalist and that audience. Offer the most useful evidence, people, or access you have.
Then stop.
The pitch should make the reporter want to learn more, not feel like they have already served a full shift reading your email.
A few reminders:
Do not hide the news behind a warm-up paragraph.
Do not attach six files nobody requested.
Do not send a wall of links.
Do not claim everything is cutting-edge, disruptive, revolutionary, groundbreaking, or game-changing.
Do not write a subject line that could describe 500 other companies.
Do not confuse enthusiasm with relevance.
Do proofread the thing. Then proofread it again.
Most importantly, keep reading the news. You cannot consistently identify good stories if you do not regularly consume them. Storytelling is not a worksheet you complete once. It is a muscle built through attention and repetition.
The more you pitch, the better you will get.
The Formula
There is no perfect formula for a great story, but this one is a good place to begin:
A meaningful change + real people + clear stakes + credible evidence + a reason it matters now.
Your announcement does not need every element of news. It needs the right ones for the audience you are trying to reach.
Find the impact. Add the human. Show the tension. Bring the evidence. Connect it to the moment. Decide where the brand honestly belongs.
Most product announcements are not born great. That is fine.
Stories are built.
So before we send another release into the world announcing that someone is thrilled about an innovative solution, let’s pause. Let’s ask better questions. Let’s find the people living the story and the larger forces making it matter.
We can make it better.
We can create a story that does not suck.
In fact, we can make a good story into a great story.
