We are living in a “post-advertising age.” These days, “the message is the message and the medium is just the carrier” (with all due respect to Marshall McLuhan’s original idea first posted in 1968).

I’d like to take credit for these lines, but they’re from commentary written by an author and creative advertising leader, Kirk Cheyfitz, CEO of StoryWorldwide a progressive agency that helps its clients develop stories that will resonate with customers in today’s media-cluttered environment.

VM’s senior editor, John Sailer explains in his “Message in a Portal” feature for us this month, via conversations with some leading optical retailers, that today, “Hybrid strategies that compound the expansiveness of print and broadcast with the immediacy of the internet are energizing optical groups’ marketing campaigns.”

Underlying these campaigns are messages of connection, delivered through storytelling. Stories that might, say, connect a retail brand to influencers in a local market, as Eyetique has been doing via its celebrity gallery campaign. Or, they are stories that explain the role of optometry and the value of healthy sight as FYidoctors has been doing with powerful videos.

With all of these messages amplified by social media and recommendations, today’s successful retailers—and health care professionals—are finding that stories, examples and conversations are what strike the right chord.

Story’s Cheyfitz summed it up: “We connect brands to customers by telling engaging and entertaining stories that audiences actually want to hear. We’re living in an opt-in culture. The new age’s defining feature is this: The only messages anyone will see and hear are the messages they choose to see and hear.”

maxelrad@jobson.com