Summary: The error message “I apologize, but the given text does not appear to contain a main story that can be extracted and rewritten” might seem mundane or technical at first glance, but under the surface, it teaches a sharp marketing lesson about clarity, context, and the limitations of automation when disconnected from narrative and human judgment.
How an Error Message Became a Mirror for Misaligned Expectations
The message originates from an automated text-processing system. The purpose of that system is to examine a chunk of input—often written text—and extract something that resembles a coherent story. If the input lacks narrative structure or is made up only of data, the system informs the user that no story can be found. Simple enough, but the real issue isn’t in the error itself. It’s in what that failure communicates.
It reveals a deeper breakdown between system output and user intent. When someone pastes in a JSON error response and asks it to be rewritten as a story, what they may really be doing is seeking clarity, context, or even just a better way to communicate a boring but necessary issue. And the system replying with a dead-end message—”Well, there’s no story here”—is not unlike a customer service rep who shrugs and says, “That’s not my job.”
So ask yourself: Is the real failure technical—some line of JSON—or communicational? And what does it tell us about how businesses, creators, or marketers lose trust and attention by missing context and tone?
What Happens When Structure Isn’t Enough?
JSON is structured. Formatted. Exact. But it doesn’t have a narrative. No characters. No motivations. No conflict. This is important because structure alone doesn’t create engagement. Logic without a story is just cold data. And that mirrors precisely what happens when a brand produces content without connection: neat, tidy, and ignored.
Marketing content that leads with features, data dumps, or protocols does the same thing the JSON file did: it fails to tell a story. It assumes the reader will piece things together. Most won’t.
Now let’s turn the mirror: Where in your communication are you putting structure where there should be story? Where are you handing people data when they want meaning? Have your messages gotten too technical? Too “correct” but too cold?
The Troubles of Automation Without Empathy
Think about this error: it’s trying to “help.” But it helps the machine, not the user. It explains why it can’t work, instead of asking a better question that might lead to something that can work.
Imagine if, instead of closing down, the system responded like a skilled negotiator: “What do you want the story to prove?” Or even mirrored the request: “You’re asking whether this technical issue could be described as a human story?” Suddenly, we go from shutdown to conversation. From dead-end to progress.
This is where Chris Voss’s methods come in. Mirroring, tactical empathy, labeling the emotion—it builds bridges inside even the most technical or tense communication. We should ask: Are your customer-facing systems easy to speak with or easy to give up on? Do clients feel like you’ve closed the door or opened a hallway—even when you can’t deliver what they wanted immediately?
The Raw Lesson for Marketing Professionals
Content—whether machine-generated or human-written—must start with understanding. Precision without usefulness is wasted intelligence. And in professional services or B2B marketing, getting too caught up in machine-thinking or jargon-thinking will kill response rate, trust, and conversions. People don’t want your data. They want what the data means—for them, their business, and their goals.
Here’s where we get grounded: If a message doesn’t connect, it’s irrelevant—even if it’s accurate. “Hey, your JSON structure shows a low account balance” is factual and useless alone. But frame it like this: “You’re currently blocked from critical queries because your credits have run out. What’s your plan for ensuring uninterrupted access to your business data?” Now we’re talking. Now we’ve given the recipient something to react to. Something with consequence.
A Better Way to Frame Boring Problems
You’ll often encounter dry issues in business that resist emotional storytelling. That’s normal. “Insufficient balance” sounds like something you can’t build a campaign around. But what does that balance touch? Reliability. Continuity. Trust. Those are the real stakes.
People will forgive mistakes. They understand errors. But they don’t forgive being ignored, brushed off, or talked down to. They want to know: do you see what this means for me? That’s the real marketing opportunity hidden in this technical burp.
Use every support ticket, every automated reply, every dried-up query log as discovery. What pain is being voiced beneath the surface? What outcome is being threatened? Who is going to be left exposed if they don’t take action? That’s what you market to.
The Takeaway: Translate Data Into Decisions
This “non-story” of an error message is actually a full case study in misalignment, and most marketers don’t see it. Most businesses have some “nice” technical copy sitting in their app nobody ever reads. Or automated responses that say too much but mean nothing. And when that communication fails to acknowledge risk, cost, or disruption through the client’s perspective, it loses all persuasive power.
Before you write anything, ask: Who does this help? Who does it frustrate? What’s the real consequence behind it? Then flip that into a conversation, not a notification. This is where great marketing delves—not in successes, but in communications that almost connect, then fall short. Fix those. Then scale them.
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Featured Image courtesy of Unsplash and Wolfgang Rottmann (uTBi5cZsmYk)
