Set the Scene
Does the page put us inside a recognizable business situation?
The SCENE Index™ 2026
The Product-First Problem
Your product may be clear.But can your customer see themselves in the story?
We reviewed 20 enterprise product and solution pages from major companies through the lens of the SCENE Framework™ to answer one question: does the customer enter the story before the product does?
What we found was surprisingly consistent: many sophisticated companies explain what their products do exceptionally well, but introduce the product, platform, architecture or AI before the audience has experienced the problem that makes it necessary.
8 were still predominantly product-first. Only 5 showed strong customer-first narrative behavior.
The problem isn't bad copy. It's the order of the story.
The strongest pages help the audience recognize the world they are already living in. They show who is experiencing the problem, make the tension visible, and let the reader imagine a better future. Then they introduce the product.
That difference changes the story.
Get your page scoredThe question behind the study
Enterprise teams answer every question except the one the customer asks first.
- What does the product do?
- How is it different?
- What features does it include?
- How does the architecture work?
- What results can it deliver?
All important questions. But we wanted to examine the question that usually comes first in the customer's mind:
Why should I care about this right now?
That is a narrative question, not a product question. So we asked of every page: does the copy make us understand the customer's world before it asks us to understand the product?
How we evaluated the pages
Five moves in the SCENE Framework™ — plus the doorway.
Center the Character
Can we tell who is actually experiencing the problem?
Expose the Tension
Does the copy make the friction, risk, change or unmet need visible?
Name the Better Future
Can the reader imagine what better looks like before the product is introduced?
Explain the Answer
Does the product arrive as the answer to an already-understood problem?
The Doorway
Does the opening connect to what this audience cares about — human, economic, operational or strategic?
This reflects the storytelling logic behind SCENE: establish the situation, make the person visible, surface what is happening, create the aspiration, and only then reveal the solution.
The study timeline
From live pages to an actionable narrative benchmark.
01 / 04
Review
20 current enterprise product and solution pages.
Then02 / 04
Score
Five SCENE dimensions, plus the audience doorway.
Then03 / 04
Compare
Product-first, benefit-first and situation-first openings.
Then04 / 04
Synthesize
Shared behaviors, business implications and practical actions.
The headline finding
The average company scored 3.1 out of 5.
3.1 / 5
Average SCENE score across the sample
8 of 20
Scored below 3.0
8 of 20
Still predominantly product-first
5 of 20
Showed strong customer-first narrative behavior
The pattern was clearest in enterprise technology. The more technically sophisticated the offering, the greater the temptation to start with the platform, the architecture, the AI, the infrastructure, the category or the feature set — rather than the moment in which the customer realizes they need it.
Most companies are better at explaining the solution than making the customer feel the need for it.
The three patterns
We found three kinds of enterprise marketing story.
01
Product First
The page begins with what the company built.
- The most advanced AI, ready for enterprise.
- One platform, ready for anything.
- AI that runs the world's business.
- The platform built to help you scale globally.
These are strong positioning lines. But they place the solution on stage before the customer, so the audience immediately has to interpret: what does this mean for me?
02
Benefit First
These pages are better. They lead with an outcome.
- Make work less work.
- Deliver AI outcomes at enterprise scale.
- Make your vision a reality.
The product is no longer the only hero. But the story can still remain abstract. Who is struggling? What is happening to them? Why is the status quo inadequate?
03
Situation First
The strongest pages begin inside the customer's world.
- Endless documents. Scattered knowledge bases. Siloed systems.
They name the friction, create tension, and make the current way feel incomplete. The reader knows the problem before the product appears. These pages make the answer feel necessary, not merely impressive.
Five themes across the findings
The strongest stories earn the product’s entrance.
- 01
Order matters
The same facts land differently when the customer’s world comes first.
- 02
Recognition precedes explanation
People engage faster when they recognize their own situation.
- 03
Tension creates necessity
A visible gap makes the need for change—and the solution—clear.
- 04
Outcomes precede mechanisms
The better future gives features and architecture a reason to matter.
- 05
The product is the resolution
The strongest pages introduce the solution after earning its entrance.
The Narrative Tax™
When the customer has to translate your product language into their own problem, you are making them do unpaid work.
Every time your page says “our platform provides…” the reader has to ask: why do I need that?
Every time you say “AI-powered, enterprise-grade, unified…” the reader has to translate it into: what changes in my world?
Every time you lead with architecture, the customer has to reverse-engineer the business problem. That cognitive burden is the Narrative Tax™.
High Narrative Tax
Company → Product → Features → Benefits → Customer
Low Narrative Tax
Customer → Situation → Tension → Better Future → Product
The more work the audience has to do to connect your product to their world, the more likely they are to disengage before the value becomes clear.
Anonymized examples from the study
Same offering. Different order.
Example 1 — Enterprise AI
Original pattern
“The most advanced AI, ready for enterprise.”
Followed immediately by infrastructure, software, models and workflow capabilities. Missing: what is happening inside the enterprise, who is struggling, and why moving AI into production is hard.
SCENE rewrite
Your AI prototype works. Now comes the hard part.
It has to connect to real enterprise data, operate securely, perform reliably, and scale without infrastructure becoming the bottleneck.
Imagine if teams could move from experimentation to production without rebuilding the AI stack every time.
That is what an enterprise AI platform should make possible.
Example 2 — Enterprise workflow platform
Original pattern
“One platform, ready for anything.”
Then: AI. Data. Workflows. Agents. Governance.
SCENE rewrite
An employee has a problem. They shouldn't need to know which system owns it.
They just want the request understood, routed, acted on, and finished.
But today, work still moves across disconnected systems, handoffs, and teams.
Imagine if the employee could simply ask — and the work moved from question to completion.
That is the promise of an intelligent workflow platform.
Example 3 — ERP
Original pattern
“Next-generation ERP for the AI era.”
Then the page explains embedded AI, agents, finance, HR, procurement and operations.
SCENE rewrite
The monthly close is late again.
Finance is reconciling systems manually. Operations is working from a different version of the data. Leadership wants an answer before the numbers are ready.
Imagine if finance, people and operations were working from the same real-time picture — and AI handled more of the repetitive work before anyone had to ask.
That is what the next generation of ERP is trying to solve.
Example 4 — The better pattern
“Endless documents. Scattered knowledge bases. Siloed systems.”
The page explains why existing search and retrieval approaches fail to deliver enough context. Only after the problem is established does the solution appear. We experience the fragmentation first — and the technology becomes a resolution rather than the opening act.
What stronger companies do differently
The highest-scoring pages shared four behaviors.
They start closer to the customer's reality.
Not “our new platform…” but “here is what organizations are struggling with.”
They make the status quo uncomfortable.
The reader understands why the old way is no longer sufficient.
They describe the outcome before the mechanism.
The audience wants the future before being asked to understand the technology.
They let the product enter as the resolution.
The solution answers a question the page has already created.
That's the SCENE difference.
An important nuance
SCENE does not mean every B2B page needs an emotional story.
A “character” can be:
- a CIO
- a finance team
- a developer
- a call-center agent
- an employee
- an operations leader
- an organization facing a recognizable moment
A scene can be operational. A tension can be technical. A better future can be economic.
The goal is not to turn enterprise software into Hollywood.
The customer encounters their world before they encounter your architecture.
The Index scale
Enterprise sales and marketing is halfway from product story to customer story.
- 1Product Led
The page primarily explains the product, category or capabilities.
- 2Product + Benefits
The page identifies outcomes but still asks the audience to infer the underlying problem.
- 3Outcome Led
The page clearly communicates value and some customer context.
- 4Customer Led
The customer situation and tension are visible before the product dominates.
- 5Narrative Led
The page creates a recognizable situation, tension and future state before revealing the answer.
2026 sample average: 3.1 / 5
Why this matters
This is not about making copy more emotional.
Narrative structure affects whether the buyer can quickly answer:
Is this for me?
Do they understand my problem?
Why does this matter now?
What changes if I act?
Why is this product the logical answer?
The strongest enterprise storytelling reduces the distance between what we built and why you need it. The Narrative Tax is the distance between those two.
Self-assessment
How much Narrative Tax does your website create?
Take any important product page and ask:
- 1
What is the first noun in the story?
Is it your company and product — or your customer?
- 2
Can I identify the character?
Who is living through this?
- 3
Is there genuine tension?
What is hard, risky, changing or inadequate?
- 4
Do I see the better future before I see the feature list?
- 5
Does the product feel like the inevitable answer — or simply the next section?
About SCENE
A framework for moving from what you built to why it matters.
SCENE was developed from years of working with leaders and organizations on executive communication, strategic storytelling and high-stakes messaging.
It helps teams move from “Here is what we built” to “Here is the world our customer is navigating—and why what we built matters.”
The same core story may open differently for investors, partners, employees or customers. And sometimes a customer, expert or sponsor is the more credible person to tell it.
Before SCENE
Choose the Doorway.
Decide what this specific audience needs to care about first.
The five moves
Scene → Character → Tension → Better Future → Answer
After SCENE
Choose the Messenger.
Put the story in the hands of the person with the greatest credibility.
Want us to score your page?
Get a complimentary SCENE Narrative Audit™
We'll review one product or solution page and show you exactly where the story asks the customer to do the work.
- Where the product enters too early
- What customer story is currently missing
- Which SCENE moves are absent
- How we would restructure the narrative
- A sample before-and-after rewrite
Questions about the report?
Ask Ash.
Share what caught your attention, what you want to apply, or what you would like to understand better. Ash will respond directly.
About the study
Methodology and credibility
The first SCENE Index reviewed 20 enterprise product and solution landing pages from large, established companies across enterprise software, AI, infrastructure, payments, cloud, networking, workplace technology and business platforms.
Pages were reviewed based on the copy visible on the primary product or solution page at the time of the study, and each was evaluated on five narrative dimensions: Scene, Character, Tension, Better Future and Answer.
The study evaluates narrative structure — not product quality, company performance, brand strength or overall marketing effectiveness.
Companies are intentionally anonymized in the published findings because the purpose of the study is to identify patterns, not rank or embarrass brands.