About 20 years ago, I started an MBA.
I was one of those ambitious, eager-to-learn types — until the company sponsoring me went spectacularly bust halfway through the first module. No more funding. No more textbooks. Just me, a partially digested SWOT analysis, and a sudden abundance of free evenings.
Back then, I thought I’d missed out on a proper business education. But funnily enough, I’ve spent the past few years learning something far more valuable — something no MBA module ever really taught:
Storytelling.
It’s the skill that helped me build a YouTube channel with over 150,000 subscribers. It’s the reason people actually care about the content I put out. And the best real-world example I’ve seen of it?
A grumpy bloke in muddy jeans, driving a tractor backwards through a hedge.
Yes, I’m talking about Clarkson’s Farm.
Specifically, any episode. Because Jeremy Clarkson is a master of something that almost every brand gets horribly, comically wrong:
Storytelling.
The Clarkson Method: Story First, Tractors Later
Every episode follows a classic narrative arc:
- The protagonist wants something (Clarkson wants to grow wheat, open a pub, sell milk, not get arrested by the local council).
- He encounters obstacles (weather, red tape, sheep, Kaleb).
- He struggles, learns, adapts.
- He's transformed — not into a perfect person, but into a more interesting one.
- And he triumphs (sort of) — usually in a muddy, half-failed, wonderfully human way.
It’s not farming content. It’s human content.
Clarkson doesn’t just show you what happens on the farm — he tells a story. He frames every mundane task (moving a pig, planting rapeseed, trying to serve chips legally) as part of an emotional journey. One you care about.
The 1984 Apple Ad and Diddly Squat Farm: Same Playbook
Take Apple’s legendary 1984 ad. It’s not really about a computer. It’s about smashing conformity. It’s about rebellion. It’s about a woman running like she’s late for spin class — only with a giant hammer and a totalitarian regime watching.
Clarkson does the same thing.
His show isn’t really about tractors. It’s about taking on The System. It’s about fighting pointless bureaucracy, defending rural communities, and finding meaning in manual labour. It’s him vs. the machine — the metaphorical one, and sometimes the literal one (that Lamborghini tractor is a beast).
Apple made you root for the underdog. So does Clarkson.
One is launching a personal computer revolution. The other is trying to sell potato peelings to tourists. But both work because of story.
Why Most Brands Get This So Wrong
Most brand content reads like it was written by a LinkedIn chatbot after a glass of lukewarm oat milk.
It’s faceless.
It’s bloodless.
It’s so cautious it becomes invisible.
There’s no tension. No character. No stakes. No reason to care.
Which is why nobody shares it. Nobody remembers it. And nobody buys from it.
The Most Valuable Skill in Marketing
It’s not SEO. It’s not copywriting. It’s not mastering prompt engineering.
It’s storytelling.
Once you understand storytelling, everything changes.
You’ll see it everywhere — in films, in tweets, in customer feedback. You’ll start spotting:
- The Hero’s Journey in your onboarding sequence.
- Conflict and transformation in your case studies.
- A satisfying narrative arc in a 30-second Instagram Reel.
You’ll also start to notice how hollow your current content feels. Like stale bread that’s been through a focus group.
That’s when you realise: understanding storytelling is like seeing the Matrix. Except instead of green code, you see missed opportunities in every brand blog post.
Three Books to Make You Dangerous
-
The World According to Clarkson
A chaotic, hilarious collection of Clarkson’s newspaper columns. It’s journalism as storytelling — proof that even a rant about traffic can have a satisfying narrative arc. -
On Writing by Stephen King
Half memoir, half masterclass. King breaks down storytelling like it’s a physical skill. Because it is. -
The Anatomy of Story by John Truby
A deep dive into the mechanics of storytelling, used by screenwriters and brand storytellers alike. Read this and you’ll never write a flat About page again.
One Last Thing: The Numbers Don’t Lie
This isn’t just a cult show about pigs and ploughs. It’s a global storytelling juggernaut.
The Season 3 premiere pulled in 5.1 million UK viewers in its first week, making it the most‑streamed show on Amazon Prime UK in 2024 — and the second‑most across all platforms. When the season wrapped, it had amassed 85 million views from 10.1 million UK viewers, topping the streaming charts for the month.
Even in China — where farming shows are not exactly headline material — it racked up over 5 million views on Bilibili, with a Douban rating of 9.6/10.
Clarkson spins mud into gold by telling great stories.
So, the next time you're tempted to post a “Here at [BrandName], we’re passionate about solutions…” LinkedIn update, just stop.
Instead, ask yourself:
What’s the story here?
And how can I make people care?
The tractor’s optional. The story isn’t.
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