“All rise for the jury,” the court’s clerk announced. A dozen jurors and two alternates filed in with quiet solemnity. Mere moments before they had been waiting in a small room, jointly working on a puzzle showing steampunk cats in hot air balloons. The juxtaposition of the different atmospheres was jarring. A man’s life would hang in the balance. The prosecutor began her opening remarks. She simply told a story, no powerpoint, no visual aids, just a tragic and horrific story of malice from what seemed to be an omniscient point of view. It was eye opening.

Then the defense attorney got up and told the same story, but from a completely different point of view—from the perspective of one of the characters in the story, the defendant. This narrator had no visual aids either, just equal parts empathy and skepticism of the prosecutor’s story. Our minds were more than capable of visualizing the tragic choices and heartbreaking details as he described them. He was trying to identify and leverage a shared belief of the jury and the defendant, that a person has the right to defend oneself.

The prosecutor was trying to stake out a competing shared belief, that a person has obligations in conflicts. She followed that by presenting evidence, direct and circumstantial. After cross-examining the testimony, each attorney gave their closing statement. The judge pointed out how the opening and closing statements were not evidence. Yes, but they were enormously influential on how the jury look at the evidence. Did it confirm what they believed?

I recently had the privilege of sitting on this jury. And I realized within moments: this was branding and marketing. The judge was the FTC. One attorney tried to brand the defendant as guilty. The other, not guilty. The evidence, or Reasons To Belief (RTBs), were argued over just like all good legal and compliance departments do. We, the jury, were the market, the arbiter of who wins and who loses. And like most markets, we had divided into various market shares, depending on the charge.

It was a good reminder that agencies and marketing managers try to manage the brand, but it’s ultimately your audience who does. The parallels to branding, advertising and marketing were fascinating. But more importantly, it was a visceral reminder of how prevalent and powerful storytelling really is. A lot of marketers just want to broadcast the evidence—the features, benefits and data that are supposed to convince people to buy their product or service. Humans don’t work that way.