Grow the Movement
Narrative Engine
How do we reach beyond the choir and inspire key decision-makers to join the movement for systems change?
The Narrative Engine is a new collaborative lab to build movement muscle together, learning by doing, iterating to produce narrative experiences that move people emotionally - understanding which types of stories, storytellers, messages and languages inspire persuadable decision-makers to be in courageous conversations and take bold actions for systems change.
REST Campaign Video Trailer
Allies Shared RESET Assets and Their Own Voices in Social Media
Experiment 2: Testing Message Barriers to Grow the Movement
LEADERS OF THE GROUNDWATER NETWORK VIDEO SERIES
Across 2022-23, Imperative 21 and the Groundwater Institute (GWI) began a narrative partnership to develop effective content to help decision makers overcome increasing hesitancy and skepticism to talk about and take meaningful and sustained action to achieve racial and economic equity, consistent with the Imperatives for Economic System Change.
GWI and Imperative 21 identified common barriers and pain points that hold leaders back from prioritizing racial and economic equity work in their personal and professional lives.
Imperative 21 with GWI then identified leaders in their Groundwater nNetwork who could best authentically and emotionally speak to these barriers to change, deliver key messages on how they moved past them, and what that ha’s meant for themselves and their organizations.
A series of video vignettes was produced featuring the voices of leaders from Delta Airlines, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Bridgespan, American Medical Association (AMA) Center for Health Equity, Spelman College and others.
Groundwater Anthem Video
RESET Campaign Artwork Displayed on Sao Paulo Building
The Narrative Engine catalyzes experiments in campaigns and communications initiatives to activate allies and grow the movement, learning as we go how to build shared narrative power that expresses a powerful, positive vision for the future and counter narratives that no longer serve us.
Live RESET activation on Nasdaq Screen in Times Square
Experiment 1 - A First Network Campaign
RESET
Based upon the insight that every movement needs economic system change to achieve their goals, hundreds of allies across the Imperative 21 network collectively launched a multimedia, global campaign to raise awareness that we can and must create a just economy that centers people not profit.
The campaign prototyped a first campaign by a broad and diverse network of allies, to build narrative power for a resonant and unifying message that called for a RESET of our economic system based on the co-created Imperatives for Economic Systems Change.
The RESET campaign included partnership to run artwork and video on the Nasdaq Tower in Times Square, large scale public art projections in other areas of NYC and Sao Paolo, full page ads in New York Times, Financial Times, along with allies sharing content and activating their own influential voices across social media.
RESET provided important proof points and lessons on the value and challenges of collective narrative efforts to carry forward into future campaigns, to sustain the critical mass, momentum, and support to break through and disrupt the status quo.