Dave McCaughan on the Power of Storytelling

From librarian to global strategist (and back to stories)

Dave McCaughan didn’t plot a career in advertising—he wandered into it. An Aussie from Sydney’s western suburbs, he spent a decade in public libraries, earned degrees in library and political science, backpacked the world, and then—by accident—joined McCann in Sydney. What began as desk research became qualitative/quantitative research, then strategic planning just as the discipline was spreading from the UK.

McCaughan’s “real MBA” arrived fast: McCann sent him to Tokyo, London, Paris, and New York to learn planning from the source. Asia soon became home—Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tokyo—culminating in leading McCann’s second-largest office globally. In 2015 he returned to Bangkok to found bibliosexual, a consultancy that helps brands figure out the story they should tell—sometimes by doing the research, sometimes by writing the brief, often by challenging how they think about people, demographics, and technology. Fun fact: he’s been using AI in research since long before it was fashionable.

Why stories still win

“Everyone has a story” is cliché because it’s true—of people and brands. We don’t remember features; we remember meaning. A statistic on its own is noise; a statistic inside a narrative becomes insight. Even the most mundane choice (toothpaste!) is guided by stories: habits, packaging cues, what friends swear by, how we want to feel.

Great marketers have always known this. What’s changed is the industrialization of storytelling—courses, frameworks, formulas. Those can help, but the craft hasn’t fundamentally changed since Rome: stories work when they resonate, surprise, and fit the audience’s life.

AI: accelerator, not author

McCaughan’s take on AI is pragmatic: think of it like literacy. When more people can produce text faster, you get more of the same—unless you add a twist. AI is brilliant for drafts, variants, and scale; it’s useless for your voice unless you consciously layer in context, scars, taste, and point of view.

The real question isn’t “Can AI make content?” It’s “What’s the unexpected angle only we can bring?” In other words: speed is table stakes; difference is the advantage.

“Original voice” beats borrowed formulas

Original voice isn’t about inventing an entirely new category. It’s saying familiar things in a way only you would. Shakespeare coined words; the best brands coin meanings. That might be a contrarian stance, a non-category reference point, a design choice that violates norms, or a metaphor no one in your space is using.

Borrow the idea if you must—then bend it. If every brand in your aisle shouts in red, show up in blue. If every post reads like a prompt response, publish something that sounds like a person who’s lived it.

McCaughan’s own quirk: he skips spell/grammar auto-polish because “rules” can sand off originality. You don’t have to go that far, but the point stands—polish is not personality.

People, not “consumers”

One line from the episode deserves framing: “I’m not a consumer. I’m a person.”

We are only “consumers” in the fleeting minutes we consume. The other 23 hours and 50 minutes of the day, we’re friends, parents, colleagues, neighbors—people. Your job as a marketer is to understand that person well enough to earn the next moment of consumption.

McCaughan’s Coca-Cola example nails it: he drinks one daily, but in most moments he is not consuming. Marketing’s task isn’t to glorify the sip; it’s to connect with the life that surrounds it—ego, aspiration, convenience, identity, belonging. Most decisions are emotional first and only later rationalized. Sell to the feeling, support with the facts.

Life stages > generations

Here’s where Dave gets delightfully heretical. Labels like Gen X/Y/Z are often lazy shortcuts. (Fun note: “Gen X” was a novel about a small subset of disaffected young Americans; marketing turned it into a birth-year bucket and exported it everywhere—even to countries where the “boomer” or “Gen X” dynamics never existed.)

Instead of birth cohorts, he urges brands to think in life stages, which are remarkably consistent across time and culture:

• Childhood

• Emerging years (studenthood): physically adult, socially not yet—roughly early teens to early 20s

• Career builders: first 5–10 working years; identity, skills, and income take shape

• Family builders: commitments—partners, mortgages, children (for some)

• New-life builders: late 50s to mid-70s; kids launched (or independent), health and purpose dominate, reinvention begins

• Late-life care window: when support needs rise

A newer layer is the Extended 20s: people who choose not to have kids or defer “family builder” commitments, often prioritizing freedom, mobility, or different definitions of success. The upshot: what matters to people is driven more by stage than vintage. Tailor your story to the stage.

Practical takeaways for brand storytellers

1. Start with “what matters.” Before category talk, ask: what emotional jobs are people trying to get done at their life stage?

2. Use AI for width; protect your voice for depth. Draft, iterate, test—but inject your scars, stance, and specificity.

3. Find the twist. A narrative without a surprise is a memo.

4. Design for difference. If the aisle zigs, zag. Distinctive assets are story in shorthand.

5. Measure meaning, not just metrics. Stats without narrative don’t travel. Build the story people can repeat.
   

What’s next for Dave

Dave continues to run workshops and advisory projects around life stages, aging populations, and the question that anchors his work: What matters to people? He’s speaking at events in Bangkok and Paris, and co-authoring a compact book on storytelling. Follow him on LinkedIn (highly recommended) and Facebook for his characteristically spiky takes—always in pursuit of an original voice.