# Transcript: Featured Session: Human-Centered Storytelling: Create Connection & Community

**Date:** March 18, 2026 · 10:30 PM  
**Session:** [Featured Session: Human-Centered Storytelling: Create Connection & Community](/sessions/2026-03-18/pp1149036-featured-session-human-centered-storytelling-create-connection-community)

## Summary

Cheryl Miller Houser presents a three-step storytelling framework for brands and leaders to create connection, community, and belonging. She argues that belonging starts with self-acceptance and knowing who you are, then being human and authentic in your storytelling, and finally embracing yourself fully. Through case studies of Yeti, O Boticário, RooJet, and Crocs, she demonstrates how brands that tell honest, relatable stories reflecting the full range of human experience—including the difficult and messy parts—build trust, loyalty, and cultural influence.

## Topics

`storytelling` · `brand marketing` · `belonging` · `authenticity` · `community building` · `self-acceptance` · `human-centered design` · `emotional marketing`

## Key Takeaways

1. Belonging starts with self-acceptance and knowing who you are, not with trying to fit in. Brands must know clearly what they believe and show up with conviction around those beliefs to build culture and community.
2. Tell stories that reflect the full range of human experience, including difficult and messy parts. Brands like O Boticário that openly address painful experiences (like the loneliness of motherhood during adolescence) create space for customers to be vulnerable and build deeper connections.
3. Embrace what makes you distinct, even if it's polarizing. Crocs found success by celebrating how weird and uncool their shoes are rather than trying to conform to fashion norms, reframing their product as an act of rebellion and self-expression.
4. We make purchasing decisions based on emotion, not rational thinking. Focus storytelling on emotional connection and values alignment rather than product features and functionality.
5. Choose influencers and ambassadors based on alignment with your beliefs and values—this is where trust and authenticity live. Build loyalty within existing communities, even niche ones, by featuring people from those communities.

## Full Transcript

Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining me today. I'm excited to explore together how to use storytelling to drive connection, community and belonging. We and our world definitely need more of all three these days. I saw a quote recently that took my breath away. The poet Emily Dickinson wrote, "I am out with lanterns looking for myself." In these eight words she captures so well the search I have been on my whole life. This quest to find and be ourselves is central to being human. It's also the key to belonging.

Belonging is not about fitting in, it's about being accepted fully for who we truly are. And how can we be accepted for who we are if we don't know who we are? That is the paradox of belonging. It starts here, inside us, not out there with others. It is our deepest emotional need. We yearn for it, we're hardwired for it, and yet in our artificial, overwhelming, fractured world, we're finding it harder and harder to find.

Brands and leaders with their reach and influence have the opportunity to tell stories that help us connect to ourselves and to each other, and the ones which do this well are rewarded with trust, loyalty, revenue, investment dollars, cultural influence and so much more. I'm going to share a three step storytelling framework you can use to achieve this. It's based on insight I've gleaned as a documentary filmmaker who works with brands and leaders. You can use it across all platforms and all forms of storytelling.

The first principle in my storytelling framework is: know who you are and what you believe. Yeti, a company based here in Austin, knows clearly who they are and what they believe, and this has enabled people there to grow it into a company worth almost $4 billion selling outdoor gear.

[After showing Yeti holiday spot] In just one minute, Yeti viscerally conveys who they are and what they believe as told through the point of view of their customers. Anyone who lives by this Yeti ethos or aspires to feels seen, understood and like they belong. This spot also conveys why Roy and Ryan Seavers launched Yeti 20 years ago. The brothers had grown up hunting and fishing in the wild. They wanted to go deeper and wilder, but they couldn't find a rugged, durable cooler that matched their rugged spirit. So they created one.

At the time coolers cost about $30. The one they engineered was $300. People told them they were crazy that no one would spend $300 on a cooler. Their most expensive cooler today costs about $1,500. But the brothers had the courage and the conviction to create the cooler they wanted. Sometimes we have to go out into the wilderness alone to find belonging. In their case, both literally and figuratively, by not conforming or trying to fit into industry norms, they ended up creating a whole new category that had never before existed: ultra durable, high end gear for outdoor enthusiasts.

They also created connection, community and belonging among people who also adhere to their belief in uncompromising standards and reverence for the wild. Yeti has built a robust culture around these beliefs. Culture, after all, starts with and is grounded in what people believe. This is why, as a leader or a company, if you want to lead and shape culture, you must know what you believe and then show up with conviction around your beliefs.

This is also how Yeti transforms a basic commodity into an object of desire. A Yeti cooler or anything with a Yeti logo on it is an artifact of this culture. It is an object of identity that signals how someone sees themselves and how they want us to see them. This is why anyone who loves their Yeti products feels belonging with others who do as well.

While Yeti has built a robust company around the durability of its products, it does not feature the products, or at least doesn't talk about product features in its brand storytelling. When companies talk about functionality, they are appealing to our rational thinking. But study after study shows that we make purchasing decisions based on emotion. This is true with B2B companies even more than B2C.

For about 10 years, Yeti has been making moving short films and other content featuring people from a range of niche communities. When we hear the word niche, we think small, but there is nothing niche about people with a shared interest when there are millions of them, like hunters, fishermen and women, bull and bronco riders, surfers, skiers and so many other outdoor enthusiast communities.

Yeti chooses its ambassadors based on these people's alignment with Yeti's beliefs and values. This is how every company should be choosing the influencers and anyone it works with—that alignment of beliefs and values is where trust and authenticity live. By featuring people from these communities, Yeti has tapped into the communities and built trust, loyalty and community among them.

These days, people, especially Gen Z, are fleeing to private spaces, to direct messaging, to the cozy web, to places where brands can't buy access to them. So every company needs to be creating this kind of trust, loyalty and belonging within existing communities, even tiny niche communities.

Once you know who you are and what you believe, you need to express that fully—whether as a brand, a leader, or each one of us as individuals. You need to be human and get real. This is the second principle in my storytelling framework. Brands can show up as human and real by telling stories that reflect the lives of their customers. This might sound obvious, maybe simple, but very few companies actually do this. Why? Fear and discomfort.

Like belonging, being human is a paradox. It can be wondrous, thrilling, joyful, and it's also sometimes really difficult, painful and messy. Most brands and people are too afraid and uncomfortable to embrace that full range, especially the painful, messy parts. Before I continue, I want to ask, are there any Brazilians in the audience?

[After showing O Boticário Mother's Day spot about adolescent rejection] I am besotted with this brand. I take the spots carefully that I use in my talks, and then I do a deep dive into the companies. And this is just a remarkable company in every way—so human. I wonder who here can relate as a mom or as the once adolescent child of a mom. Can you believe a beauty brand made this?

Most beauty spots are aspirational in tone and focus on the product, and most marketing around Mother's Day across all categories gives us an idealized view of motherhood. But transactional relationships and a glamorized view of our reality don't foster connection and belonging. Actually, they create shame. Being honest and open does.

We talk a lot about how hard adolescence is for kids, but a Harvard study has shown that it is among the most lonely and turbulent time for moms. But because moms feel so guilty and full of shame around being rejected by their children, they don't talk about it. I have three grown children, and we love each other deeply, but I never felt as much anguish as I did during the years when each one of them behaved like that. I felt alone and unloved in their rejection of me, even though I knew rationally they needed to cast me off to become independent adults.

Here O Boticário is saying to moms: we see you, we understand you, we know what you're going through is so hard and it is normal. You are not broken. The love your child feels for you is not broken, and this will pass. And moms throughout Brazil felt seen, heard, understood, validated—those are among our most fundamental human emotional needs.

And not just moms. The comments under the posts on social media, a lot of them were from now grown children of moms expressing so much love and gratitude for their mothers and for O Boticário. By capturing and conveying in a way that is so real and relatable the pain and the love that the mom and daughter feel, O Boticário is helping moms and kids realize they are not alone in their emotions and experience.

When brands tell stories that are open and honest about what we are going through, they create space for us to be open and honest with ourselves and with others. And that's exactly what happened. Within 24 hours, this was the most viewed and talked about spot in the brand's history. It was also widely shared on WhatsApp. This is significant, because today, direct messaging is blowing up, and it is the most used form of social media.

We only share and talk about things when they move us or say something about us. So whereas before, moms were too ashamed to talk about what they were going through, they were now sending this spot to friends and family and saying, 'This is me,' and people were having open, honest, vulnerable conversations. And this is how O Boticário is forging connection, community, belonging among its customers and with the brand, and also how it is lifting shame and stigma around things we go through but we're too afraid to talk about.

O Boticário has tackled many difficult experiences of their customers, including infertility, divorce, sibling tension around caring for a mother with dementia, always with the same compassion and love, reflecting the brand's belief that where there is love, there is beauty. I agree wholeheartedly. There is nothing more powerful and beautiful than love.

This spot is very moving and was very successful. But you don't have to be heart wrenching to be human and get real. Humor works really well too, as we will see in this next spot.

[After showing RooJet erectile dysfunction spot with football coach] Like O Boticário, here RooJet is lifting a stigma on something that is very human, real and normal. Most men at some point in their lives are going to experience erectile dysfunction, and yet there is so much shame around it. And advertising in this space only reinforces that pain.

Most marketing around erectile dysfunction speaks in timid, saccharine tones or over-medicalized language that conveys you are broken, our product will fix you. Here RooJet is speaking in a way that men can relate to, and with no pity. They are reframing the story around erectile dysfunction to celebrate resilience and confidence. And importantly, the humor and innuendo here in no way mocks or minimizes the emotional experience. It helps capture and convey it.

What we say matters, but how we say it matters just as much. As a brand, a leader, as parents, in all our relationships, if we want the person we're speaking to to hear and understand us, we need to convey that we see and understand them.

So I ask you, what stories can you tell or elicit from your customers, your clients, your teams that reflect back to them the full range of their experience? And I mean the positives also—we too infrequently stop to say thank you, or great job, or celebrate the joys. Belonging starts with self-acceptance. And self-acceptance often starts with our feeling seen, validated and normal in that full range of what it means to be normal as a human being. When brands help us embrace ourselves fully, we in turn embrace the brand.

So what happens when people aren't embracing a brand, or when a company wants to boost its relevance and revenue? This brings us to the third principle in my storytelling framework: embrace yourself fully and deeply. We just saw what happens when brands help us embrace ourselves fully. Now let's see what happens when a brand turns that same lens on itself.

Crocs, the company that sells these shoes, was in deep trouble 10 years ago. Its revenue had dropped a lot, and it was under vicious attack by the fashion elite and the general public. It is now a global juggernaut, with revenue last year of $4.1 billion. This company is a great example of the growth and belonging that is possible when a brand turns the lanterns on itself.

Crocs were created as boating shoes with a lightweight foam resin, and the holes on the top allow easy air flow and water drainage, so comfort and functionality was key. But when Crocs launched in 2002 they became popular with non-boaters also—so popular that they had explosive growth and a successful IPO just four years later. That's when the fashion elite said enough and waged a smear campaign on what they called the ugliest shoe ever made.

In 2008 with the financial crisis, Crocs was hit hard and had to close a lot of stores. The narrative around the shoe then became: Oh, thank God that horrible trend we all fell for is over. At that point, if you wore Crocs, you were screaming, 'I have bad fashion taste.' Crocs tried to fit in. They streamlined the original shoe, and they expanded their line of offerings, and that only furthered their isolation and mockery.

By 2016 if you googled the word Crocs, memes would come up. That was the third most common word search in conjunction with the brand. Here are some of the memes you would have found: 'Crocs, when you've completely given up on looking normal.' Again, that word normal—what is normal, after all? 'Leather plated Crocs for that classy guy looking to not get laid in style.' And 'See those little holes? That is where your dignity leaks out.'

Crocs had a real problem. They brought in a new CEO in 2017, Andrew Rees, and he put an end to chasing fashion acceptance. Instead, he embraced radical self-acceptance. He refocused all the attention back on the classic Crocs the company had launched with, and he and his team also fully embraced the belief the company was founded on: comfort. But instead of articulating comfort through meeting the functional needs of their customers, they reframed comfort around the emotional need we all have to feel comfortable with who we are.

That same year, they released a new global campaign, 'Come As You Are,' and they encouraged people to celebrate and share what made them unique. So instead of changing the shoe to try to fit in, through brilliant storytelling they changed the belief and narrative around the shoe. Wearing Crocs no longer signified you had bad fashion taste. It became an act of rebellion that signified you were not a conformist.

Here again, we see how trying to fit in does not lead to belonging, even for a brand. Crocs found success not by trying to be cool, but by embracing how weird and uncool the shoe is. They also were not chasing culture. They ended up leading and shaping culture by being distinct, even polarizing.

We see how brands try to stay relevant by chasing trends or try to earn belonging by being all things to all people, but that is impossible, and then they end up blending into every other company, conforming and speaking to no one. By embracing fully who it was, Crocs has enabled people around the world to embrace who they are, and they have built an engine of belonging and co-creation, even ironically with the fashion elite.

In 2018 Balenciaga released these platform Crocs for a mere $850. You could buy these, except they sold out immediately when they went on pre-order. And this is only one of many collaborations Crocs has now done with other brands and creators like Post Malone and Bad Bunny.

So we just saw what happened when Crocs turned the lanterns on itself. What about us out with lanterns looking for ourselves? The greatest obstacle for me in growing fully into who I am was that voice in my head that used to whisper and sometimes scream: not enough, not good enough, not thin enough, not cool enough, not capable enough. The stories we tell ourselves can be so detrimental. And at the same time that inner critic pushed me to be more, to do more, to achieve more, but I was sometimes chasing more of things that weren't bringing me joy or enabling me to bring others joy.

About 10 years ago, I said enough to that voice in my head, and I got up the courage to leave my job as head of production for a large production company to launch my own company, Creative Breed. I was yearning to tell stories that spoke to my heart and to work with people who aligned with my beliefs and values.

The first film I directed and produced through my new company was Generation Startup. We followed six young people for a year and a half launching startups in Detroit. Their stories spoke to me because they were jumping into the void and following their hearts decades younger than I had.

[After showing clip from Generation Startup with Labib and his parents] When I traveled around the United States and around the world with this film, and then when it came out on Netflix and on other sites, I heard from people time and again, globally, how inspired they were that Labib had the courage to live life on his own terms and not cave to the expectations his parents had of him.

I told a close friend of mine recently what I was going to talk about today with you. She's a psychologist, and she shared something with me I think about a lot now. She said that many of her patients don't know who they are. They are so disconnected from themselves, and these are people who are successful by any normal, conventional measure. But they have spent their lives trying to please others, trying to meet other people's expectations. Why? Out of a fear of not fitting in or fear of rejection. But ironically and sadly, they have rejected their own true selves.

Dr. Zach Bush, a leading hospice doctor, echoes the same. He says that at the end of people's lives, he hears almost all the time people say: I was too afraid to be myself. I needed other people's approval to define who I was. Let's not wait until the end of our lives to cast off the expectations of others. Our lives are too precious and too short.

So at this point, I have a pretty good idea of who I am and what I believe, but I keep the lanterns near because that quest to find and be ourselves is never ending. I've also come to realize that we can be the lanterns, especially—it's so important in these dark times. I'm heartened whenever I see a leader or individuals show up in their conviction on behalf of our humanity, our democracy, our planet.

And as we saw today, when brands tell honest stories, when leaders show up as human, when we embrace ourselves fully and others, we can light a path for others to do this. Follow these three principles: know who you are and what you believe, be human and get real in that full range of what it means to be human, and embrace yourself fully and deeply.

So what stories will you tell to yourself and to others? I ask you, I challenge you to be guided by compassion and love for yourself and others. As O Boticário tells us, where there is love, there is beauty. And then make bold, courageous choices that reflect your beliefs and values. This is how we together will create connection, community and belonging, and how we will build a better future for ourselves, for each one of us and for our planet. I am so here to take that journey with all of you. Thank you.

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*Source: stt · Language: en · Model: anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5*

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