Last month, headline writers had a field day dreaming up puns for coverage about several pharmaceutical companies’ decision not to run ads for erectile dysfunction drugs during this season’s NFL broadcasts. And, while a connection to the recent sale of WebMD might not be immediately obvious, upon closer examination, these stories share a common theme. Both reflect the shifting sands beneath the pharmaceutical industry and how, in reacting to them, its marketers are being challenged to do more with less.

We, as humans, are natural story tellers. Even our most basic communications are often expressed in the form of a narrative. “A narrative account involves a sequence of two or more bits of information which are presented in such a way that if the order of the sequence were changed, the meaning of the account would alter”. We apply this, and multiple other indicators, all the time. Temporal changes, tense variation, climaxing topics, learned morals — we incorporate these elements into much of our daily conversation without even realizing it. And we come to digest and remember our experiences based on repeated narration.