Published on March 18, 2025

The Sea We Swim In: How Stories Work in a Data-Driven World

Frank Rose. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. 2024. 300 pages, including index.

Index Terms—digital storytelling, immersive media, misinformation, narrative structure

Reviewed by Bonnie Winstel, Project Analyst, SAIC.

The Sea We Swim In: How Stories Work in a Data-Driven World explores the human need for stories and the role narratives play in consumption and conscience in the digital age. This book would be practical for marketing and branding strategists, but it is also enjoyable to a general audience interested in media and artificial intelligence (AI).

Frank Rose shares his experiences at Wired and Columbia University’s Digital Storytelling Lab and makes the case that the internet has revolutionized the way we consume stories. People expect to interact with and immerse themselves in media rather than being passive consumers of it. Successful companies must leverage this new paradigm to connect with their customers and succeed.

Rose lays out the science that shows how easily stories can manipulate human attitudes and beliefs. He describes studies where changing the construction of a story materially affected readers’ opinions on race and sexual orientation. Humans like to think of themselves as rational beings, but the evidence shows that we act on emotion far more consistently.

Rose lays out the essential elements of a story: Author, Journey, and Audience. He presents case studies of two retailers: Warby Parker and Harry’s. Rose argues that these brands skyrocketed quickly due to their cohesive stories. A brand with a clearly defined personality is attractive to customers who wish to identify themselves similarly. Every choice, from company name to color scheme, tells a story to the customer about who the brand is and why they do what they do.

More traditional stories such as TV and movies must engage in similar worldbuilding strategies to engage the viewer. Rose analyzes films and TV shows to explore how the narrative structure works. He demonstrates how changes to the storytelling structure can completely change the viewer’s emotional response. A compelling example is how the HBO adaptation of Westworld inverts the perspective of the source material by using a nonlinear storyline and by centering the robots as the empathetic characters to explore the ethics of AI.

 The internet allows brands and media to immerse their customers in a cohesive world. Consumers may begin with passive consumption of a TV show but can be brought more deeply into the brand through other levels of interaction such as games, social media speculation, and fan fiction. The Walking Dead is a notable example, with not only multiple shows, but also books, games and apps, merchandise, and interactive real-world experiences for superfans.

However, the internet also comes with a dark side. The viral nature of the internet can advance social causes or grow a brand, but it can also spread misinformation, conspiracy theories, and other negative content at a massive scale. These are stories that are compelling for the wrong reasons: our baser instincts. Rose warns that with the advent of more advanced AI, virtual reality, and generative AI, the lines between the real and the unreal continue to blur in dangerous ways.

Overall, The Sea We Swim In is an engaging story about stories: how they affect us, how to tell a good one, and how not to fall for a false one.

Data Storytelling in Marketing: How to Tell Persuasive Stories Through Data

Caroline Florence. Kogan Page. [ISBN 978-1-3986-1503-8. 256 pages, including index. US$41.99 (softcover).]

Index Terms—customer engagement, data storytelling, persuasive narratives

Reviewed by Bonnie Winstel, Project Analyst, SAIC.

The ability to tell compelling stories with data is becoming an essential skill for marketers. It requires creativity and strategic thinking to analyze the increasing volume of data and translate it into narratives that resonate with stakeholders.

Data Storytelling in Marketing: How to tell persuasive stories through data by Caroline Florence is a practical guide for marketers to identify skills for improving their data storytelling and to develop compelling evidence-based stories that influence decision-making and drive change. Florence shares proven methods and real-world examples, breaks down key concepts, and explains how to transform complex data into persuasive narratives.

The book is divided into three parts: Part one outlines the need for data storytelling and its benefits for the marketing function. Part two introduces the 5Rs roadmap—relevant, robust, refined, relatable, and remarkable—for creating a great data story with each R being explained in its own chapter. Part three teaches the reader how to become a storytelling champion.

One particularly compelling data story came from the De Beers diamond company. They were conducting qualitative research for campaign development when they saw an emerging trend of women buying diamonds for themselves. The team knew no one was speaking to this audience, so this was a clear opportunity to do something different. Besides looking at what competitors were doing, De Beers built a “robust” story around the macroeconomic data on female purchasing power, trend studies on the nature of modern relationships, and microeconomic factors in key markets. They developed a proposition that would support the emerging insight and created a range of data stories that were “relevant” for those data audiences. De Beers needed to get the jewelers they worked with to understand the “relatable” data story so they could sell diamonds to the target. In the end, they developed a new collection of products that focused on women who purchased diamonds for themselves (pp. 53–54).

For readers who want to up their marketing game, Florence delivers valuable insights for transforming data into powerful narratives for target audiences in her Data Storytelling book. Its case studies, practical models, and do’s and don’ts provide the blueprint for stories that resonate, engage, and persuade.