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Narratives don’t define price. Price defines narratives. 

It’s only natural for us all to want our projects to be at the forefront of the narrative game. But narratives change - uber fast. Now it’s RWAs, now it’s consumer, tokenless apps. You can’t and shouldn’t make it a goal in life to rebrand your project every month to fit the hottest narrative. 

So, how do you at least play a passive part in the narrative game? 

Do you just wait and hope that capital will rotate towards your vertical? Do you try to anticipate up-and-coming narratives? Do you rely on self-proven narratives that have worked out previously? Or do you try to build something else entirely in the hope that people will come? 

Being caught in the midst of the narrative storm before the music stops is a mix of proactiveness, luck, technical feasibility, and a lot of brainstorming. 

We won’t discuss how founders can adapt their product to fit narratives, but instead, how marketers can refine their approach to be narrative-agnostic in their work. 

As a marketer, you have little control over your project’s vertical, solutions, and product-market fit. Your job is to work with the cards you’re dealt to build community. Not to say that you don’t have a shed of influence in shaping the product by advising founders/devs on what’s hot and worth building - you do - but, let’s assume the product is already built or it’s too late/expensive/complicated to change course. 

How do you define your narratives? 

First, figure out a tangible problem. I repeat, tangible. 

Example: You’re building/working for a DEX specialized in non-EVM chains. It’s not the first, and likely won’t be the last. However, while you do everything else that a standard DEX does, your moat is that you have built-in bridges, meaning people don’t have to rely on 3rd party bridges to move their assets in between different non-EVM chains, and can instead swap directly from token X on chain A to token y on chain B. 

Take that narrative, refine it, and weave it into all the posts you make. Talk about the pain of finding bridges, the risk you take when using multiple ones, and the terrible user experience associated with using 3 different protocols to perform a simple swap on-chain. Don’t overcomplicate it. Be as clear as possible - swap from chain A to chain B via a single click. 

Then, create dozens of variations of your narrative with real-life examples. Tell stories, appeal to the emotion people feel - say, someone is getting mad FOMO for token x on chain A, doesn’t use CEXs, doesn’t know a reliable bridge, doesn’t want to spend valuable minutes researching, and doesn’t want to pay multiple gas fees. So they use you - instant cross-chain swaps w/ one click. Then, their token pumps, they’re happy, dopamine rushing through their body. They just made $100. 

How do you adapt to existing narratives? 

You can be proactive in trying to figure out what’s next, but you can’t change your core product on the go to fit the newest play. But, you can change your messaging and BD. 

Following the same example: 

• Is GameFi now hot? Well, guess what. Many GameFi tokens from non-EVM chains are listed on your DEX, and you’re now co-marketing listings and liquidity incentives with all. 
• Is the singularity near? You just partnered with a top AI project to bring PnL analysis and searchable transaction history to any of your users’ trades. You don’t have to integrate it right away - just make the BD play happen and announce it. But please do build it for the betterment of our industry.
• Are RWAs picking up steam? You can trade them cross-chain on your DEX, heck, you’ve even partnered w/ a US Treasury Yields provider and now trade tokenized, revenue-accruing RWAs.
• Is capital rotating to a new ecosystem? You’ve just secured and announced a grant from the foundation to integrate them.

There’s always a play to somewhat align yourself with a new narrative without shifting devs to new products on the spot. This way, you’re tuned in to the hottest narrative without pretending that your project was an AI-fused DEX with gamified trades and RWA cross-chain support from the get-go and making your core materials a mixture of buzzwords that’ll go out of fashion in a few weeks, only to upset your community, then repeat the same mistake again. 

Stay true to your purpose, integrate, and don’t be a shapeshifter. Otherwise people will never know what to associate you with. 

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