What can a gritty Western drama teach us about content strategy? More than you might expect.

In this week’s team blog, ITN Business Account Director Tamsin Luck draws surprising parallels between the craft of television storytelling – specifically, the Western drama miniseries 1883, created by Taylor Sheridan as a prequel to Yellowstone – and the challenges of creating effective business content. 

From choosing the right partner to tell your story, to building a coherent narrative over time, there’s something in 1883 that every brand can learn from – especially at a time when AI tools can produce content quickly, but not always meaningfully.

Seeing your own story clearly

It struck me while rewatching 1883 – the Western drama miniseries made for Paramount+ – that producer Taylor Sheridan’s approach to storytelling reveals something crucial about choosing the right people to tell your story.

Perhaps it resonated with me because my own ancestors left Scotland around the same time the series is set, heading not toward the American frontier but to Canada. A different destination, yes – but the same leap into the unknown, the same hard choices about what to take, what to leave behind, and what kind of life to hope for.

There’s a moment early on in 1883 where you realise Sheridan hasn’t just researched the frontier period, he understands it. The exhaustion in people’s voices, the way hardship changes how you speak, the small details that reveal the range of characters.

Watching it, I found myself thinking about my own family’s stories from that era. My ancestors weren’t crossing the Great Plains, but they will have known the weariness of starting over, the weight of decisions that would shape generations.

That’s what makes 1883 so compelling – it’s rooted in understanding. And that’s a crucial distinction when it comes to storytelling in business too. It’s the difference between someone who’s researched your industry and someone who truly grasps what you’re trying to do. AI can replicate your tone and structure content, but can it spot the small human detail that makes everything you’re doing in your organisation click?

Credibility and truth

1883 could have easily focused on sweeping landscapes and dramatic cattle drives;  the grand visuals we associate with the Western genre. But instead, Sheridan chose to centre the story on Elsa, a daughter questioning her family’s decisions at every step of the journey to Oregon. 

It got me thinking about business content. So often, we default to what looks impressive: the biggest numbers, the most features, the slickest production. But audiences rarely connect with scale alone. What stays with them are the moments of recognition; the emotional thread, the human reason behind the work. The right content partner helps you find those moments: the real problems you’re solving, and what it actually feels like to work with you.

Building a story as well as a campaign

1883 wasn’t created in isolation. Taylor Sheridan knew exactly how it connected to Yellowstone and how each story added to a larger narrative he was building over time.

It’s a lesson that applies to content, too. When you’re in the thick of day-to-day business pressures, it’s easy to think campaign by campaign. But truly effective content builds a bigger picture of what you stand for and why it matters. That’s where an outside perspective can be invaluable. A producer who understands your long-term narrative can spot the connections you might miss – how this project links to the last, which story threads could carry through, and where the gaps are in how you’re presenting yourself to the world.

AI can process briefs quickly and generate content efficiently. But it won’t step back and ask whether this piece deepens your story, or simply adds to the noise.

The work behind the work

1883 succeeds because we care about the people. Their struggles feel real because Sheridan found the human story inside the historical events.

But most business content leads with the business; the product launch, the new feature, the process improvement. These, of course, are important, but they might not be what makes someone care.

The right content partner looks for the people in your story. This might be the CEO’s journey, but it could equally be the customer whose problem you solved, the colleague who found a better way to do something, the moment when your solution made a real difference.

Of course, you understand your business, you know what works, and you probably have good instincts about what your audience wants to hear. But content creation is a craft that benefits from perspective you can’t always have when you’re inside the business. The question is whether an outside perspective might help you see the story you’re not telling yourself. Because sometimes the most important stories are the ones we’ve stopped noticing.

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