What changes when we stop treating people like data points and start listening to the stories they are already telling?
In this episode of Leadership Story Talks, Jerome Deroy and Julienne Ryan speak with Kristian A. Alomá, a narrative psychologist and brand strategist whose work explores how story shapes the way people understand themselves, their choices, and the brands they let into their lives.
Kristian’s career began with a formative experience of his own. As a high school student in South Florida, he was accepted into a summer business program for minority students and sent to Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. It was his first time away from Florida, his first exposure to the deeper mechanics of business, and his first real experience of a world beyond the path he had assumed he would follow. He had grown up expecting to go to the University of Florida. Instead, that summer introduced him to Northwestern, where he eventually studied, built his career, met his wife, and later returned as a teacher. What began as a one-month program became one of the defining turning points of his life.
The Story Beneath the Consumer
Kristian’s interest in narrative psychology grew out of his work in marketing and consumer behavior. The more he worked in marketing, the more he came to see it as a social science. Marketing is not only about products, positioning, and promotion. It is about influence, behavior, engagement, and the way people make meaning.
That curiosity eventually led him into media psychology and, from there, into narrative psychology. Narrative psychology begins from a simple but powerful idea: human beings make sense of the world by creating stories about it. We are constantly interpreting what happens to us, deciding what it means, connecting one experience to another, and creating internal narratives about who we are and what we believe.
That insight is often used clinically to help people reframe their past, present, or future. Kristian saw that the same principle could be applied to understanding consumers. Instead of asking only what people buy, where they live, how old they are, or which demographic box they fit into, organizations could begin asking a deeper question: what story is this person living inside?
One of the most striking examples in the conversation came from the way organizations often build customer personas. Traditional segmentation relies heavily on demographics such as age, income, marital status, location, occupation, and other measurable characteristics. Those things are useful because they are easy to count and compare, but Kristian pointed out the limitations of this approach with a memorable example. If you grouped people solely by certain demographic characteristics, King Charles and Ozzy Osbourne could have ended up in the same persona.
Technically, the boxes may line up. Humanly, they do not.
That is what gets lost when organizations rely too heavily on categorization. Data can describe certain facts about a person, but it does not necessarily explain what drives them, what they fear, what they aspire to, or how they interpret the world. Stories add that missing color. When people are invited to talk about their experiences, their relationships with a brand, or the role a product plays in their lives, the distinctions become much clearer. You begin to hear how people make meaning, and how that meaning differs even among people who look identical on paper.
Kristian calls this building narrative personas rather than simply personas. The goal is not to discard demographics, but to place them in context.
We Are All Storytellers Already
Jerome and Kristian reflected on how many people instinctively separate storytelling from “serious” business communication. In a corporate setting, people often believe that ideas need to be statistically significant, compressed into a slide, or translated into data before they count as credible.
Yet Kristian argues that everyone is already a storyteller. We use story constantly to understand what happens to us and to explain it to other people. The difference is that many of us have learned to leave that instinct outside the workplace.
Kristian described people who work in very different fields but share a deep belief in story as “storytelling cousins.” Whether the goal is to communicate a company’s purpose, understand employees, build customer relationships, or help an individual make sense of their own experience, narrative sits underneath all of it. We are so immersed in story that we barely notice it. It is, as Kristian put it, like water to a fish.
Julienne connected this to the problem of assumption. People are rarely one thing. They are not simply one age group, one identity, one cultural background, or one emotion. Kristian related this to the way branding has evolved. At one point, brands focused heavily on features and benefits. Then came the push toward emotional branding, where organizations tried to identify and “own” a single emotional territory such as confidence, happiness, or empowerment.
Kristian found that too narrow. Very few human relationships are built around one emotion. People change. Their identities shift depending on context. Their needs evolve across different phases of life. Narrative is better suited to that complexity because stories move. They track transformation. They allow people to be different things at different times while still remaining part of the same larger arc.
That flexibility is one of the reasons Kristian believes narrative can help organizations understand people more humanely.
The Story We Tell and the Story We Think
One of the most interesting distinctions in the conversation was between storytelling and what Kristian calls “story thinking.” The stories we tell out loud are only a small portion of the stories we are actually engaging with.
Most of the narrative activity in our lives happens internally. We interpret situations, explain our own behavior to ourselves, predict what other people mean, and create reasons for the choices we make. By the time someone asks us why we bought something or why we made a certain decision, we often give them a neat, socially acceptable version of the story.
That first answer may be true, but it may not be the whole truth.
Kristian believes many forms of market research stop too early. They ask why someone bought a product, get a rational response, and move on. Narrative research keeps going. It asks what is underneath that first explanation.
Kristian offered an example from research into hotels and Airbnb. If people were asked directly why they chose an Airbnb, their initial answers were fairly predictable. It was more affordable. There was more space. The location was convenient. The experience felt less formal. All of that was useful information, but when researchers began probing the stories underneath those answers, something more interesting emerged.
Some travelers explained that a hotel could feel sanitized. A large hotel chain often delivers a consistent experience no matter where you are in the world. For some travelers, that predictability is comforting. For others, it interrupts the very thing they came to experience.
A person visiting Seoul may not simply want a place to sleep. They may want to imagine what it feels like to live there. They want to walk to the neighborhood grocery store, hear the sounds outside the apartment, notice the rhythm of the street, and feel temporarily embedded in everyday life. The Airbnb is not just lodging. It becomes part of the travel story.
That insight changes what the brand could do. Instead of competing only on price or space, it could help hosts deepen that feeling of immersion by sharing favorite local restaurants, recipes, neighborhood routines, or places they actually visit.
The deeper story reveals the opportunity.
Narrative Transportation
The conversation then moved into another idea from psychology: narrative transportation.
When we become fully engaged in a story, we do not simply observe it. Psychologically, we enter it. We begin imagining ourselves inside the experience. We run the story through our own minds and, in a sense, become the protagonist.
This is why stories can be so memorable and persuasive. We do not just learn what happened to someone else. We mentally rehearse what it might feel like if it happened to us.
A travel article built around features may tell us where to stay and what to see. A narrative about someone’s experience allows us to imagine being there. Kristian described research showing that people remember narrative-based travel material more clearly and for longer than material that simply lists features.
Story helps the audience experience before they act.
Julienne connected this to something she calls “story tourism.” When we hear someone else’s story, we are temporarily dropped into another landscape, another experience, another perspective. We see the world through someone else’s eyes and then return to our own life with a slightly altered view.
That is part of the power of narrative transportation. A story can give us an experience we have not literally had and still leave us changed by it.
Data Still Matters
Kristian was also careful to make an important distinction: story is not a replacement for data.
In a corporate environment, the strongest stories are often anchored in evidence. Data helps make a story believable. It gives the narrative weight and credibility. Story, in turn, gives the data meaning.
The two are not in competition.
The problem arises when organizations assume that numbers alone will create understanding, motivation, or connection. They rarely do. Data can tell you what is happening. Story can help explain why it matters.
That distinction is especially important when organizations are trying to understand the people they serve. Demographics, surveys, and behavioral data may reveal patterns, but narrative can reveal the person inside those patterns.
Seeing People More Fully
Near the end of the conversation, Kristian returned to the larger reason he believes this work matters.
Organizations often think about customers in terms of transactions, databases, segmentation, and stakeholder value. But those customers are people. They have histories, contradictions, relationships, fears, ambitions, and internal narratives that shape how they move through the world.
When a brand enters someone’s life, it enters that story.
Kristian believes organizations have a responsibility to take that seriously. Brands are in people’s homes, pockets, routines, and conversations. They may interact with customers more often than some of the most important people in those customers’ lives.
That level of access carries weight.
If organizations see consumers only as numbers, they miss the humanity of the relationship. But if they listen closely enough to understand the stories people are living, something else becomes possible. The business can become more relevant, the relationship can become more respectful, and the person on the other side of the transaction becomes visible.
Kristian’s work is ultimately a reminder that story is not something we add at the end to make communication more engaging. It is already there.
People are constantly creating narratives about their experiences, their identities, their choices, and their relationships with the world around them. The question is whether we are listening closely enough to hear them.
When we do, the categories become less rigid. The assumptions begin to soften. The customer stops being a persona on a slide and starts becoming a person.
And that may be the most important shift of all.
Because when someone lets you into their story, they are letting you into their life.
Listen to the full conversation with Kristian Alomá: HERE
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