Caroline began her career as a fashion reporter at WWD before transitioning into the branded content space, becoming the first-ever editorial director at lifestyle brand, Michael Kors. In launching Tell&Co., she and her team of writers and strategists, partner with both global brands and start-ups - conceiving, operationalizing and executing strategic, omni-channel storytelling. In 2021, Caroline was named Content Marketer of the Year by the Women in Content Marketing Awards. Caroline continues to write for the New York Times, Travel + Leisure, Town + Country and more.
When Caroline Tell speaks about content, she doesn’t begin with formats or channels. She begins with people. In our recent Masterclass, The Top-Down Editorial Approach: From the Why to the Words, the journalist-turned-brand strategist and founder of Tell & Co. offered a framework for building brand storytelling that resonates emotionally and delivers consistently.
Here are her five most powerful insights:
For Caroline, everything starts with the why. “Your mission is not about what you sell. It’s about who you impact,” she emphasized. Rather than demographic profiles, she urged members to ask: Who is better because your brand exists?
This shift moves brands beyond features and into emotional territory. Hatch, for example, wasn’t simply offering maternity clothes—it was giving women “confidence and comfort at a moment when everything else might feel pretty bad.” Nanit, a baby monitor brand, wasn’t selling technology; it was delivering “peace of mind at 2am” and empowering parents to feel confident in their new roles. “Products are replicable, services can be copied,” Caroline explained, “but when you find the why and the emotional territory it opens up, you have an infinite well of storytelling that builds loyalty and community.”
Once the mission is defined, the next step is creating editorial pillars that bring it to life. These are not gimmicky themes or one-off campaigns. “They prevent content whiplash so your brand doesn’t sound like five different brands across five different channels,” Caroline said.
Strong pillars are specific, rooted in the mission, and able to support six months—or even a year—of content. For Nanit, those pillars became baby sleep and development, parental wellbeing, expert advice, and community. For Stitch Fix, they included confidence, time-saving convenience, and style discovery. “The more specific you are, the more consistently your brand will show up,” Caroline noted. These foundational categories ensure every piece of content ladders back to the brand’s purpose.
Voice, Caroline explained, is what makes a brand recognizable across contexts. She likened it to “the same person at five different dinner parties—the outfit might change, but the personality never does.”
To get there, she advised defining both what your brand’s voice is and what it is not. It might be supportive, empathetic, and solution-oriented, but not preachy. It might be confident and expert, but never academic or stiff. “Your voice kit becomes a playbook,” she said, “ensuring anyone writing for your brand sounds consistent, recognizable, and human.”
Vocabulary matters too. Caroline encouraged brands to build a bank of vivid, ownable words and taglines that reinforce identity. Hatch leaned on the simple but powerful “We got you.” Stitch Fix repeated the phrase “Consider it fixed” until it became second nature to customers. These refrains are not filler; they are shorthand for trust.
Great ideas fail without process. “A calendar is what turns ideas into consistent content,” Caroline reminded the group. Anchoring the calendar in cultural tentpoles and product moments, then layering in evergreen franchises, ensures balance across pillars and channels.
Just as important, the cadence must be sustainable. “If you can only commit to two pieces of content a week, that’s better than a flurry followed by silence,” she said. Consistency, not sheer volume, is what builds audience trust over time.
Caroline’s final lesson was simple but uncompromising: “Content without feedback is publishing into the void.” Every channel, she explained, should have its own KPIs - email open rates, Instagram saves and shares, YouTube watch time - and those metrics should loop back into strategy.
She underscored the importance of small tests that yield big learnings: “Even the most beautiful editorial plan is only half the job. The other half is measurement and iteration. That’s when content stops being a cost center and becomes a growth driver.”
