Here's a problem we keep running into with clients: the formats that were working 18 months ago aren't working anymore.

Source: This analysis of content format evolution comes from Kallaway's appearance on Open Residency. Kallaway runs one of the most analytically-rigorous marketing YouTube channels, known for data-backed content strategy frameworks. Open Residency is a podcast that goes deep on content creation and audience building.

"5 tips for X" videos, quick tutorials, and listicle breakdowns. These formats dominated early short-form because supply was low and any reasonably competent creator could post one and get traction. Now there are thousands of them on every topic and the algorithm has more supply than it needs.

The formats that still cut through? Personal narratives. Stories that only one person can tell. Content built on lived experience rather than aggregated information.

AI can write a listicle but it can't live your client's life.

The Format Evolution

Short-form platforms go through predictable seasons and understanding where we are in the cycle helps teams make better format decisions for clients.

Season 1: Transactional Content (2020-2022)

Instagram Reels launched and TikTok went mainstream. Creators discovered they could post simple "here's how to do X" videos and grow fast.

Listicles, quick tips, and product recommendations. Low production value was fine because there wasn't much competition, and the platforms were hungry for content so almost anything got reach.

Season 2: Case Study Content (2023-2024)

The obvious formats got saturated. "How to grow on Instagram" was covered by 10,000 creators and standing out required more original angles.

Enter the case study format: "This brand did X, here's how." You're still teaching but you're borrowing credibility from specific examples. More effort to produce but more differentiated.

Season 3: Personal Narrative (2025-2026)

Now even case studies are everywhere and the next competitive moat is content that literally cannot be replicated because it comes from personal experience.

"I spent 3 years building this company and here's what I learned about hiring" can't be copied. Someone else can make a video about hiring, but they can't make that video.

We're in the narrative era now and the creators and brands that perform best are the ones telling stories only they can tell.

What This Means for Agencies

If you're running content for clients, you need to shift how you think about ideation.

The old model was topic-first. What keywords should we target? What questions are people asking? What content is trending?

The new model is experience-first. What has this client actually done? What stories do they have that no one else has? What opinions have they earned through direct experience?

Topic-first ideation will lead you into commodity content, which is stuff that AI can generate, that competitors can copy, and that platforms have too much of. Experience-first ideation will result in more defensible content that performs better because it's genuinely novel, and it builds the client's authority in a way that generic content never will.

The One-of-One Test

Before greenlighting a content concept, run it through this filter: how many other people could make this exact video?

If the answer is "thousands," it's probably not worth making because the supply is too high and you're competing with everyone.

If the answer is "maybe a handful," it's worth considering. Lower supply and better odds.

If the answer is "literally just this person," that's your priority content. No competition, unique value, and the kind of content that builds audiences rather than just reaching them.

Example from a recent client engagement:

Commodity concept: "3 mistakes new agency owners make" - Every agency consultant can make this. We passed.

Defensible concept: "How we lost our biggest client and what we did the next 30 days" - Only this client can tell this story. We prioritized it.

The second video required more creative work to extract the story and structure it properly, and it also outperformed the first concept by 4x once we ran both.

Extracting Stories From Clients

Most clients don't naturally think in terms of narrative content. They think they need to teach something or explain their service. The stories are there, but they need to be drawn out.

Questions that surface narratives:

• What's something you learned the hard way that you wish someone had told you?
• Tell me about a time a project almost went completely sideways. What happened?
• What's a belief you held strongly when you started that you no longer believe?
• What's the weirdest request a client has ever made? How did you handle it?
• What's something about your industry that most people outside it don't understand?

These questions don't yield listicles. They yield stories with specific details, emotional texture, and genuine insight. The answers are inherently one-of-one.

The extraction process takes more time than just brainstorming trending topics but it's also where the value lives.

The Production Difference

Narrative content requires different production choices than transactional content.

Transactional content: Talking head with text overlays, quick cuts, high density of information. The content is the information itself.

Narrative content: More room to breathe. Pacing matters more than density. B-roll and visuals support the story rather than just filling space. The content is the experience, and the production needs to honor that.

Teams used to pumping out high-volume transactional content often struggle with narrative pacing at first. The instinct is to cut faster, add more text, and keep the energy high, but narratives need moments of tension and release. They need the viewer to feel something, not just learn something.

This isn't necessarily about higher production value. Some of the best narrative content is simple: one person, one camera, one story told well. But the editing philosophy is different.

The Trust Advantage

Here's the business case for narrative content beyond just performance metrics.

Transactional content builds familiarity. Someone watches your "5 tips" videos and they learn you exist. They might even learn something useful. But they don't really know you.

Narrative content builds trust. When someone watches a story about how you handled a difficult situation, they feel like they understand who you are. They're getting signal about your judgment, your values, and how you operate under pressure.

This matters for agencies because trust is what closes deals. A potential client who's watched 20 tips videos might reach out, but a potential client who's watched 3 stories about how you actually work will reach out ready to sign.

The same applies to the clients you're producing content for. Narrative content positions them as humans with real experience, not just talking heads regurgitating information.

The Objection: "But Our Client Doesn't Have Good Stories"

We hear this sometimes and the answer is almost always that the stories are there, you just haven't found them yet.

Every business has moments of crisis, every founder has failures they learned from, and every professional has developed opinions that differ from conventional wisdom. These are stories.

If a client genuinely can't surface any original experiences, that might be a signal about whether content marketing is the right strategy for them. But more often, it's a signal that the discovery process needs to go deeper.

The stories that don't feel like "content" to the client are often the best ones. The difficult conversation they had with a partner, the time they had to fire someone they liked, and the deal that fell through and what it taught them. These feel personal, maybe even uncomfortable to share. That's exactly what makes them powerful.

The Bottom Line

The content landscape has evolved past formats that anyone can produce and agencies that keep churning out commodity content are going to struggle to deliver results. They'll struggle to explain why performance keeps declining.

The shift is toward one-of-one content. Stories that only your client can tell. Experiences that can't be replicated or aggregated by AI.

This requires different ideation processes, different client conversations, and sometimes different production approaches. It's more work upfront but it also produces content that actually performs and builds something lasting.

The listicle era is over and the narrative era is here. Teams that adjust will win and teams that don't will wonder why their old playbook stopped working.