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    STRATEGIC ENTERTAINMENT

    There is a story of yours the world hasn't heard yet... and your silence is expensive.

    Keynotes, consulting and training in strategic storytelling for companies and experts who need to turn a message into attention.

    I'm Fernando Palacios, showrunner. For 20 years I've done in the business world the craft Hollywood reserves for series: uncovering the story that should be everywhere and still waits for the script.

    I want a keynoteI want a narrative asset diagnosisI want to see it in practice

    Brands that trust the method

    Itaú · Yamaha · Pfizer · Coca-Cola · Nike · Google · IBM · Unicef

    Fernando Palacios palestrando sobre storytelling estratégico para executivos
    2× World's Best Storyteller · World HRD Congress, Mumbai, 2017 and 2018source
    01The conflict

    The story that stays in the throat

    There is a kind of professional I know well.

    Knows more than most. Has real cases. Has a method. Has results.

    And still, when they step on stage, open Instagram or walk into a boardroom, the story they had to tell stays in the throat. What comes out is the track record. The audience respects it. By the coffee break, it has already forgotten.

    The cost has a name: no script. No one to govern the attention of those who need to hear.

    The way out also has a name: Strategic Entertainment.

    02The method

    The word the market still hasn't learned to split

    Everyone talks about storytelling. Almost no one has noticed the word has two halves.

    Illustrative scenery: hands arranging storyboards on a work desk, on a theatre stage
    Illustrative scenery

    Narrative Intelligence

    What you tell: the narrative, the architecture, the order in which things are revealed and the effect they produce on whoever is listening. Deciding what goes in, what stays out, where the conflict begins and when the resolution arrives. It is the difference between having a story and having a story that works.

    Strategic Entertainment

    How you tell it: the format, the stage, the rhythm, the experience the audience lives. Turning content into spectacle without losing sight of the result. Competing for the attention of the same audience that watched Netflix yesterday, and winning.

    Most communicators have one of the two.

    The Showrunner runs both at the same time.

    The process has four acts:

    1. Discovery

      Mapping of the narratives that already exist in your story, brand or methodology, and are not yet working for you.

    2. Creation

      Building the script, the narrative universe and the formats: from the corporate stage to digital content.

    3. Performance

      The delivery. Keynote, executive presentation, campaign, training. The moment the story meets the audience.

    4. Grand Finale

      The KPIs you already know, and what KPIs cannot measure: the room that does not forget, the client who comes back, the expert who stops being skipped.

    03Proof

    Results that keep showing up in the reports of those who hired.

    24 cohorts

    2018 to 2024 · 24 cohorts · Japan

    Yamaha: the method that ended up in Japan

    In 2018, Yamaha brought the method inside the company. To stay.

    From 2018 to 2024. Twenty-four cohorts. Sales, leadership and communication teams that went through the same process of turning information into narrative that governs attention.

    In 2018, the project of a manager from one of the first cohorts was chosen Best Case at the marketing and sales meeting at Yamaha's headquarters, in Iwata, Japan.

    Whoever repeats a process year after year is building language.

    +50% from one year to the next

    IT Mídia: every session promised the next

    A technology event for CEOs and CIOs had a classic conflict: dense content, an audience whose attention was contested by everything, and the standard format of keynotes and panels the audience already knew by heart.

    The solution was to rebuild the event as narrative: dramatic arc, characters, progression from session to session.

    The result: revenue 50% higher from one year to the next, after five years of plateau.

    The reason: the experience became impossible to abandon.

    R$200k → R$600k/month · 16k → 236k followers

    Healthcare professional: revenue tripled in two years

    A healthcare professional with 16k followers and revenue of R$200k per month. The intervention did not start with the posts. It started with the story: who this brand is, what it stands for, why anyone should stop to listen to her in the middle of an infinite feed. In 2024, R$400k per month. In 2025, R$600k per month and 236k followers.

    The story didn't change. The script did.

    Fernando Palacios on the ONM 2025 stage, with his name on the screen
    ONM 2025 · Fernando Palacios on stage
    04The keynote

    Two Decades in Two Hours

    The keynote that walks through the twenty years of method.

    There is a kind of keynote the audience forgets before reaching the parking lot.

    And there is the other kind. The kind where someone sits in the audience with one way of thinking and leaves with another. Where what was said in two hours still shows up in decisions made months later.

    Two Decades in Two Hours walks through the twenty years of method developed in projects with Itaú, Nike, Yamaha and Pfizer. The audience does not hear about Narrative Intelligence or Strategic Entertainment: it lives both during the keynote.

    Format

    Type:
    In-person keynote
    Duration:
    2 hours
    For whom:
    Corporate events, sales conventions, leadership congresses, gatherings of experts and content creators
    I want to book this keynote
    The ONM 2025 stage seen from the back of an audience of over 3,000 people, with Fernando Palacios at the centre
    ONM 2025, São Paulo · the stage seen from the back of a 3,000+ audience

    The difference isn't in the speaker. It's in the script.

    05Knowledge

    What stays after the audience leaves

    Some ideas stay in a keynote and vanish. Others stay in books, courses and articles that keep working.

    The book

    The Complete Guide to Storytellingsource

    A manuscript that reached 900 pages and became three books. Adopted in MBAs and leadership programs. The book that put method where there was intuition.

    Learn more about the bookBuy on Amazon

    The courses

    20 years of courses

    Illustrative scenery: a classroom set up on a theatre stage
    Illustrative scenery

    From storytelling for sales to executive presentation scripts, from digital content to leadership communication.

    Talk de Midas. The complete method for turning experts into speakers who don't need to ask for attention. Available in in-company format for teams and leadership.

    Talk de Midas for my companySee the full catalog

    The blog

    934 posts · 1,822,920 views

    Method applied, case by case, over two decades.

    Visit the blog
    06Track record

    From the Senate to universities, from newsrooms to courts.

    Senado Federal · FGV · USP · ESPM · PUC-SP · UFRJ · Universidade de Lisboa · Sebrae · ABF · Aberje · CEO Council · Meio e Mensagem · Propmark · Consumidor Moderno · Gazeta do Povo · Extra Globo · Médicos S/A · Ministério Público · Tribunais de Justiça · IT Forum LATAM

    07Legacy

    It was not a choice. It was an inheritance.

    The story behind the method.

    Nascido em São Paulo/SP. Reside em Vitória/ES.

    Article about Fernando Palacios and storytelling in Jornal do Commercio
    Jornal do Commercio: storytelling and strategic entertainment
    Fernando Palacios, showrunner and storyteller, in an authorial moment

    The blood that came before

    My grandfather, Alfredo Palacios, did radio drama at Rádio América in São Paulo in the 1940s, alongside Dias Gomes, Janete Clair and Ivani Ribeiro, and moved to TV as co-creator of O Vigilante Rodoviário alongside Ary Fernandes. Stories told in chapters, week after week, for an audience that came back because it needed to know what was going to happen.

    I grew up listening to those stories about stories.

    Before him, my great-grandfather, a Russian Cossack who escaped a firing squad in the gulag. That is also a kind of narrative: the one of those who survive because they know the story is not over yet.

    I learned storytelling at the family table. The courses came later.

    The man who founded a market

    In 2006, I opened Brazil's first storytelling company. The market did not know what that was. Clients asked me to explain the name before explaining the service. There were no competitors because there was no category.

    Twenty years later, everybody does storytelling. Or thinks they do.

    Those who came later have the name in their bio. Those who were there at the start have the method, built case by case, project by project, before there was any manual, benchmark or course to consult.

    Those twenty years fit into six frameworks, one book published by Alta Books and thirty thousand professionals trained live in ten countries.

    The showrunner who lives what he teaches

    In 2011, I was already writing A Nova Maravilha. In 2012, I took the novel on the road through the transmedia project A Próxima Maravilha. W'nderer Writer was the character: I traveled the world and wrote the book on my phone, chapter by chapter, with an audience that took part in the story as it happened. At its peak, more than 100,000 people followed the character as if he were real.

    The project took me to Vitória, in Espírito Santo. There I met Flávia. Today we have two children, Frederico and Jasmin.

    The story I was telling brought me into the story I was going to live.

    Journey

    Prologue

    The fire before the match

    Before Storytellers, there was already story in the family. Three generations who survived, created and told.

    In 2002, while studying at USP, I started as a trainee at an events agency, from Camarote da Brahma to Nokia Trends. In the years that followed, I discovered storytelling as a trend in the United States and read 64 books in English on the subject. In Portuguese, no publication, no company, no course. An orphan trend waiting for someone with the right stubbornness.

    Four years of study and testing later, I founded Storytellers.

    Era 1 · 2006 to 2011

    Stealing Fire from the Gods

    How authorial storytelling ended up in the corporate world
    1. 2006
      When it was all wilderness and nobody was talking about it

      Founding of Storytellers, Brazil's first storytelling company. There were no publications in Portuguese, let alone books. Someone had to start.

    2. 2007
      Millions of players, Cannes shortlist

      Latin America's first storytelling project: a website turned into a "choose your adventure" game for Mini Schin. 3 million players. Project dated 04/09/2007, game launched in March 2008. Cannes Lions 2008 shortlist, Cyber category. The same year, the first academic paper on corporate storytelling in Latin America, defended at USP. Top grade.

      source
    3. 2008
      1,248 slides became a theater show

      A J. Macêdo corporate presentation nobody could bear to sit through became a stage play, with each brand coming to life as a character. Partnership with Lew'Lara. The case that put Storytellers on the map.

    4. 2009
      Cinema in five senses

      Birth of the Sense Sessions: the evolution from 2D to 5D cinema. Touch, smell and taste. Late nights when films were not watched, they were served to the participants.

    5. 2010
      The first storytelling course at ESPM

      I created the first storytelling course at ESPM, in partnership with professor Felipe Bedran. The market started paying attention.

    6. 2011
      From the Federal Senate to corporate backstages

      Start of the keynote circuit, taking the stage at dozens of communication and marketing events. Beginning with the Federal Senate. The first in-company workshops also came, with P&G. That year, the W'nderer Writer page became the world's largest tourism page on Facebook. A Nova Maravilha is the literary work written since 2011.

      source
    Era 2 · 2012 to 2016

    Fire Bottled Inside the Magic Lamp

    How to capture in a bottle something that seemed impossible to systematize
    The magic lamp from Istanbul on stage, with the audience behind it, in 2016
    The lamp on stage, 2016
    1. 2012
      The magic lamp from Istanbul

      At the Grand Bazaar, the acquisition of a lamp the merchant guaranteed was genuine. It became the "magic" of every keynote from then on. Also in 2012, the first international course: Taller de Storytelling at PUC Lima, for ultra-selected guests. A Próxima Maravilha is the 2012 transmedia project, with the W'nderer Writer character and the novel A Nova Maravilha.

    2. 2013
      The end of Slidecide

      The course syllabus became a theatrical script. Each slide, a manga panel. The teachers rehearsed before class. A hit with the audience. The didactic frameworks were also born, starting with the campfire that symbolizes Story + Telling.

    3. 2014
      Your project's complete story in 8 slides

      Birth of the Palacios 8 Steps Framework. The premise: you do not need creativity to follow the 8 steps. In the first class for CIOs of the Forbes 500, an executive said his Mexican boss would not let anyone into the meeting with slides. Just "una hoja". The answer: "excellent, we need nothing beyond that."

    4. 2015
      The most ambitious project in the house

      8 months developing ITForumLand: turning a sober corporate event into an immersive experience worthy of a film. 3 years running. It increased the client's revenue by 50% from one year to the next, after five years of plateau. Several awards. It only stopped because of the pandemic.

    5. 2016
      O Guia Completo do Storytelling (Alta Books, 2016)

      Launch of O Guia Completo do Storytelling by Alta Books. It once reached 900 pages. The publisher asked to cut it down. It became an academic and commercial reference.

      source
    Era 3 · 2017 to 2019

    The Fire Spreads Across the World

    From the Pedro Álvares Cabral of Storytelling to World's Best Storyteller
    1. 2017
      Practically naked on Comandatuba Island

      Closing performance of the 17th Convention of the Brazilian Franchising Association, celebrating 30 years of ABF. I took the stage barefoot, in shorts and a tank top. As the story of Adalberto Brasileiro da Fortuna (initials: ABF) progressed, I got dressed: flip-flops, t-shirt, dress pants. 24 minutes that encapsulated 30 years of franchising in the journey of an entrepreneur who learned that "trust comes from entrusting". I opened for the Titãs concert. The same year, World's Best Story Tellers Award, World HRD Congress, Mumbai.

      source
    2. 2018
      Three trips to India, a 6-meter screen in Rio

      Two-time champion in Mumbai. Second consecutive title, the only Brazilian. Invited back to train CEOs and CFOs of the Indian financial market at the 10th Mutual Fund Round Table Conference, in New Delhi: Dashboard Storytelling for a thousand delegates, turning spreadsheets into narratives that open vaults. Three trips to India in two years. From there, straight to Rio: keynote at the Museum of Tomorrow on brand building for schools, projected on a screen of almost 6 meters, for Edify Education and Cultura Inglesa. Also in 2018, World's Top 100 Coach/Mentor for training hundreds of C-levels.

    3. 2019
      Two months on an island in the Atlantic

      Immersion at the Madeira Startup Retreat, in Portugal, as an investor in Instaviagem, chosen among the investors to go. #Unskippable workshop on Instagram for tourism entrepreneurs. I, who used to teach CEOs how to present, was now teaching startups how to exist on social media. A bridge between two eras.

    Era 4 · 2020 to 2026

    The Reconquest of Olympus

    How Brazil's storytelling pioneer had to relearn everything from scratch... and discovered a greater empire
    1. 2020
      The calendar that emptied in one week

      In March, the calendar was fully booked through June. A week later, it was empty. For the first time in many years, no protagonists, no stage, no audience. But with time to spare. That was when I looked at digital for real, for the first time.

    2. 2021
      Even in chaos, science needed story

      The Pfizer case: the narrative script to announce the Covid vaccine in Brazil.

    3. 2022
      From 10,000 to 100,000 followers in one month

      Between the end of November and the end of December 2022, on my personal profile. Birth of Remixed Narratives. A method born from the pressure of being a brand-new father (Frederico's birth, in Vitória/ES) and needing to produce with zero time.

    4. 2023
      One post, a thousand leads, seven cohorts

      The Remixed Narratives method generated demand for mentoring. A single post generated more than 1,000 leads. There were 7 cohorts of Quebrador de Vasos: of the 80 mentees, half reached the Million Club (a post with more than 1 million views).

    5. 2023 to 2025
      From 16k to 236k, revenue tripled

      A healthcare professional: from 16k to 236k followers, revenue from R$200k to R$600k per month between 2023 and 2025. Proof that narrative scales business.

    6. 2025
      The book that took a decade

      A 4-month sprint. 550 pages. The Book of Archetypes, consolidating a decade of studies. Live Archetypes keynote for 3,000+ people. Official launch of Talk de Midas after two decades of refinement.

    7. 2026
      From "what is that?" to national reference

      Storytellers turns twenty.

    Twenty years on the scoreboard, with a declared basis

    Storytellers
    20 years
    Founded in 2006, the first storytelling company in Brazil.
    Trained live
    30,000
    On site or online, counted by attendance from 2006 to 2026.
    Including recorded digital
    50,000
    Content reach
    100 million
    Views across book, video, posts and open classes. A different measure, never added to the ones above.
    Training delivered
    10 countries
    Brazil, India, USA, Portugal, Peru, UK, Netherlands, Singapore, Argentina and the UAE.
    Seniority slice
    200+ C-levels
    Inside the 30,000, not added to it.
    World's Best Story Tellers
    2×
    2017 and 2018, World HRD Congress, Mumbai. The only two-time Brazilian winner.
    Methodology, counting criteria and sources

    A consolidation of twenty years of operating indicators, taken from the internal record of cohorts, events and publications and checked against the “Training by the numbers” page.

    Counting criteria

    • Live training counts attendances per cohort, not unique people: someone returning for a second course is counted twice.
    • Content reach counts views of published material and is a separate layer from training; the two are never added.
    • Countries count where the author personally delivered live or remote work, not where content was merely watched.
    • Every figure shown is already recorded on a page of this site or in a linked public source; nothing is estimated, rounded up or projected.
    • Each figure travels with basis, period and meaning. Different measurement layers are never added together.
    • When a declared basis or a checkable source is missing, the figure is removed rather than shown with a caveat.
    Every figure carries basis, period and meaning. Live training and content reach are separate layers and are never added up. · Period: 2006 to 2026 · Source: Training by the numbers
    08Next scene

    What's your next scene?

    You've come this far because you have a story that deserves more than it's getting. Maybe it's a keynote that needs to stop being skipped. A brand that needs a script worthy of what it delivers. A method that lives in your head but doesn't yet exist in the world.

    There is a door for every conflict.

    • I want to book a keynote

      For events, conventions and leadership gatherings. The keynote the audience doesn't forget at the coffee break.

      See topics and formats

    • I want the Showrunner for my brand

      For consulting projects, corporate training and the building of narrative universes. From script to delivery. One-off branded content, a loose piece with no command of the season, is not taken on.

      Talk about the project

    • I want a narrative asset diagnosis

      Free. Only for those who already have a stage, a brand or a method running.

      Request a narrative asset diagnosis

    Direct pages:Fernando Palacios keynoteExecutive storytelling trainingBranded content

    Frequently asked questions

    Frequently asked questions about Fernando Palacios

    What people usually ask before hiring.

    Fernando Palacios is the founder of Storytellers, the first storytelling company in Brazil, created in 2006 in São Paulo. He is the only Brazilian with the title 2× World's Best Storyteller, World HRD Congress, Mumbai, 2017 and 2018, and the author of O Guia Completo do Storytelling (Alta Books, 2016). He has 30,000 professionals trained live, on site or online, in 10 countries, between 2006 and 2026.

    Strategic Entertainment is the Telling half of Método Palacios, the storytelling system created by Fernando Palacios: the application of entertainment techniques, such as film, series, theater and games, to the format, the stage and the rhythm of a business message. The other half, Story, is Narrative Intelligence, which decides what gets told. The body of Strategic Entertainment is the 8 Passos do Palacios, created in 2014. In practice, the work follows four acts: Discovery, Creation, Performance and Grand Finale.

    Storytelling is the most primitive and yet most sophisticated technology for transmitting knowledge through the transfusion of emotions, in Fernando Palacios's definition. Showrunning is the orchestration of an entire narrative universe, from the characters to the delivery in several formats, with one person responsible for the coherence of the story across every delivery. Fernando Palacios has applied showrunning to brands and companies since 2006.

    Fernando Palacios and Storytellers have served Unicef, Globo, IBM, Google, Coca-Cola, Nike, McDonald's, Sebrae, Yamaha, Itaú, Pfizer, Swarovski and Natura, among other organizations. The longest relationship is with Yamaha: 24 cohorts, from 2018 to 2024, and the method became official.

    In Fernando Palacios's projects, the result of storytelling shows up in billing, revenue and contract renewal. At IT Forum, by IT Mídia, the event rebuilt as a narrative billed 50% more from one year to the next, after five years of plateau. At Yamaha, there were 24 cohorts from 2018 to 2024, and the method reached Japan. With a healthcare professional, followers went from 16,000 to 236,000, and revenue from R$200,000 to R$600,000 a month between 2023 and 2025.

    Hiring Fernando Palacios is done through the form at fernandorrpalacios.com.br/contato or by e-mail at contato@storytellers.com.br. The main keynote is Two Decades in Two Hours, a two-hour session that walks through the 20 years of method, for corporate events, sales conventions and leadership congresses. Keynotes and consulting are delivered in Portuguese, Spanish and English, and Fernando has led trainings in 10 countries, among them India, the United States, Portugal and the United Arab Emirates.

    A storytelling consulting project by Storytellers takes 2 to 6 months. Executive trainings range from 1 day to 6 months, and complete showrunning projects, with a transmedia narrative universe, range from 6 to 18 months.

    Talk de Midas is Fernando Palacios's program that turns experts into speakers who don't need to ask for attention, officially launched in 2025. It is also offered in in-company format for teams and leadership. The name comes from King Midas: what the expert tells becomes something the audience cannot stop listening to.

    Fernando Palacios's book is O Guia Completo do Storytelling, written with Martha Terenzzo and published by Alta Books in 2016, with 448 pages (ISBN 9788576089872). Universities adopt the book as bibliography, among them ESPM, USP, UFRJ and the University of Lisbon. It is on sale in bookstores, on Amazon and on Mercado Livre.
    Contact

    Let's give stories to your brand and mark your story.

    contato@storytellers.com.br