They're Paying $400K for a Job Product Marketers Already Do, w/ Elliott Rayner

Companies are posting head of storytelling roles at around $400K a year, and Elliott Rayner (Head of Storytelling at OWOW Agency and Creator of The Story Cohort) has the receipts: 25 of those job descriptions, pulled apart in his State of Storytelling 2026 report. His read is that it is a chief product marketing officer under a different name. The skill set they are asking for is a product marketing director's skill set. So why is nobody in product marketing putting their hand up?

In this episode, he breaks down his three-question alignment he's run at more than 100 companies, and why the average score is just 19% across orgs. Plus the three chemicals that decide whether a story sells, and why credibility is where most product stories fall apart. Listen now.

Show Notes

00:00 Welcome to season six

00:19 Introducing Elliott Rayner

01:29 Are product marketers actually marketers

03:01 The State of Storytelling report and the $400K roles

05:19 Owning the narrative is not the same as telling stories

07:48 Seven reporting lines across 25 roles

08:59 Storytelling is the skill, narrative is what you own

10:21 Reason one: products got too complex to explain

11:03 Reason two: execution has become cheap, meaning has not