The Narrative Gap: The space where brand trust is won or lost
The strongest brands don’t just tell stories. They understand the people living them.
I went to watch The Devil Wears Prada 2 a couple of weeks ago and as I’ve sat here scratching my brain about how to start this article, I realised how nostalgia is such a beautiful way of speaking to your ideal customer’s lived experience.
This week’s deep dive is a guest article from Paula Oyinkan, founder of Micari Studios and creator of the Narrative Gap Framework.
There was no need for a Devil Wears Prada sequel and honestly it wasn’t that great. But come rain or shine those cinema seats will continue to be filled by millennials reliving a time when they were younger and more carefree. It’s the same reason why Toy Story 5 will sell and why we all tuned into that Hannah Montana 20th edition special with tears in our eyes.
Nostalgia works because it closes a gap. The gap between who your customer is now and who they remember being. It speaks to something real. Yet so many brands are still building narratives that have nothing to do with the life their customer is actually living.
I call that distance The Narrative Gap.
The Narrative Gap is the space between what the world says about women vs our actual lived experience. It’s a three phase framework I created to help brands See The Gap, Name The Gap and Close The Gap in order to earn the trust of women.
However, closing the gap goes deeper than earning the trust of your ideal customer. In the long term, it drives revenue, creates loyal brand advocates, positions your brand as the go to voice on cultural conversations and inserts you into the daily life of your customers.
It’s very important to understand that The Narrative Gap framework can only do so much if your internal systems are failing. If your team lacks diversity then you have a much deeper problem to tackle.
Here’s how it works.
