Your business is harder to explain than it should be.
Not because the work is bad.
Because the narrative hasn't kept up with it.
It’s called Narrative Debt
Most businesses in advertising and media are better than they sound. The products are real. The thinking is sharp. The results exist.
But when it comes to explaining what the business actually does — to a client, a prospect, a journalist, a new hire — something gets lost. It's not a language problem. It's not even a marketing problem, really. It's a structural one.
The gap between how a business actually creates value and how it describes itself is called narrative debt.
Like financial debt, it accumulates interest. Every pitch that doesn't land, every meeting that needs a follow-up, every conversation where you find yourself over-explaining — that's the cost showing up.
But this debt doesn't announce itself. It just quietly drains energy, credibility, and commercial opportunity.
This is where oomph. starts.
Narrative debt is the foundational concept behind every engagement oomph. runs. Before any document is written or any session is run, the first question is always: where has this business's clarity broken down, and why?
That diagnostic instinct comes from journalism. Over a decade in senior roles covering advertising and media — interviewing the people who run agencies, broadcasters, platforms, and publishers — produces something that's hard to replicate: an understanding of how industries actually behave, not just how they describe themselves.
oomph. brings that lens to your business. Not to write better copy. To identify the structural gap and close it.
A free course on narrative debt. Read carefully or not at all.
There's a free five-day email series on narrative debt: what it is, how it compounds, and how businesses typically get into it. One email a day.
It's written to be read carefully. The value comes from recognition, not instruction. If quick fixes are what you need, this won't deliver them. If you've been circling a problem you haven't quite named yet, it might be exactly right.
Ready to do something about it?
There are two structured ways to work with oomph.
A two-week engagement for an individual who needs a Narrative Foundation for themselves or their work. Fixed scope, fixed output.
A six-to-eight week organisational engagement that builds a complete narrative architecture across your business. Six deliverables. Designed for teams.