---
id: "concept-storytelling-signals"
type: "concept"
source_timestamps: ["§ Keep Your Enemies Close"]
tags: ["narrative-design", "copywriting"]
related: ["concept-rivalry-reference-effect", "action-use-storytelling-cues"]
definition: "Verbal cues and phrases incorporated into marketing messages that explicitly prime consumers to view the communication as a continuation of an ongoing narrative."
speakers: ["Abhishek Borah", "Johannes Berendt", "Sebastian Uhrich", "Gavin Kilduff"]
sources: ["tail2"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-tail2"
originDay: 2
articleStem: "hbr-tail-124-good-rivalry-brand"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2025/08/a-good-rivalry-can-elevate-your-brand"
sourceTitle: "A Good Rivalry Can Elevate Your Brand"
---
# Storytelling Signals

To maximize the [[concept-rivalry-reference-effect]], brands must help consumers recognize that a specific message is part of a larger, ongoing story. **Storytelling signals** are the explicit linguistic markers that achieve this.

Examples given in the source: *'Remember when we did…,'* *'The saga continues,'* and *'Ready for the next chapter.'* These cues act as cognitive shortcuts — they instantly activate the consumer's memory of the brand's historical rivalry and frame the current message as the latest plot development. Without such signals, a message risks being misinterpreted as an isolated attack rather than an entertaining chapter in a long-standing narrative.

**Evidence caveat (from the enrichment):** the *underlying mechanism* — perceived 'story embeddedness' as a mediator of the rivalry reference effect — is empirically validated in the [[entity-journal-of-marketing-research|JMR]] study. However, the specific operational tactic of inserting verbal signals like 'remember when' was **not separately tested** as an experimental manipulation; it is a reasonable copywriting extrapolation derived from the mediation insight and consistent with narrative-design theory. The action-oriented version of this concept is [[action-use-storytelling-cues]].