In October 2025, American Eagle CMO Craig Brommers remarked in an interview, "I can't believe that anything in our advertising marketing world is still commanding this amount of attention 10 weeks later." He was talking about a jeans campaign that received backlash for its perceived meaning.

The remark shocked me. Of course the campaign commanded attention. Because as marketers, our words and campaigns are not simply published taglines or images—we're laying down stories that compete for mindshare and shape how people see themselves. Our marketing world does command attention.

And that's not a bad thing. Exercising narrative agency, the ability to design meaning through stories, is what makes marketing so compelling. But we enter murky waters when that power tips over into something else: the god complex. That's when narrative agency turns from a craft into a conviction that we alone should, and can, define what matters. From shaping stories with people to shaping stories for them.

The heart of the marketing god complex isn't arrogance. It's the assumption that we craft worlds others "need" to step into. We choose the narrator, the cast, the framing, the arcs. We decide which voices are heard and which are silenced.

And whether we admit it or not, all marketers wield that power. In B2C, it's more visible. In B2B, it's just as real, but often less acknowledged.

The trick is not to suppress this power, but rather to use it consciously, ethically, courageously, and responsibly.

The Marketer as Mythmaker

Communication scholar Richard Pollay highlights an often-ignored point in his work: Modern advertising takes on the role of a mythmaker, influencing our sense of right and wrong as much as it influences our spending habits.

In practice, marketers don't just communicate value. We sculpt frameworks of belief.

• Who is the hero? (The buyer? The brand? A disruptor?)
• What is the enemy? (The status quo? Inefficiency? Competitors?)
• What does transformation look like? (Smooth workflows? Radical reinvention?)

When Brommers said, "The goal really was not to participate in culture, but to define culture," he was embracing that mythmaker identity quite openly.

That stance has consequences. When your brand positions itself as a cultural architect, every misstep feels like betrayal.

When you default into cliché or tone-deaf symbolism, backlash can wind up disproportionate. Not because people are overly sensitive, or because these acts are more important than the systemic issues we face every day. The reaction is outsized because you're playing a high-stakes game of symbols.

When your claim is, implicitly or explicitly, "we shape meaning," people will hold you to that standard.

The Trap of Unchecked Narrative Power

The danger of believing you compel belief is that you start to think any story is justifiable as long as it "works."

Brommers' defense of American Eagle's campaign—"What if this is working?"—reflects a mindset familiar to many marketers: If the numbers look good, the story must be right.

In B2B, it's rarely that simple. The narratives we reinforce about our brand, our capabilities, and our customers may drive growth in the short term but also define the limits of future growth.

When you frame your company in a certain way (for example, as an outsourcing partner or as enabling process transformation), you might win deals today but make it harder to expand beyond that identity tomorrow. So, keeping your long-term ambitions in mind becomes as critical as looking at present numbers when assessing if a story is "working" or not.

Microsoft's AI narrative offers a useful contrast. It started with "empowering every person on the planet" and evolved into "building responsible AI that augments human capability." The latter is specific, yet broad enough to resonate with the right audience.

With this evolution, Microsoft's story became tighter, and the shift broadened the brand's credibility across industries that value human expertise rather than narrowing it.

Narrative Agency: A Conscious Path Forward

We shouldn't silence our mythmaking impulses. We should steer them. Here are three practices to help B2B brands wield narrative power more intentionally.

1. Audit Your Implicit Stories

Every brand already tells stories through messaging, visuals, and even silence.

• What assumptions about your customers are baked into your messaging?
• Whose voices are centered in your messaging, and whose are absent?
• What metaphors do you repeat (growth as conquest, speed as moral virtue, transformation as rupture)?