Jelmarie (Juno) Maldonado Rodríguez

How I Work

I believe narrative is the current the world runs on. Whether you are actively shaping it or not, narrative continues to influence people's beliefs, values, and behaviors. Right now, we are in the battle for our lives and for future generations, and we need to start working toward a collective narrative that flows in the direction many of us have envisioned: a pluralistic, progressive, and just future. Narratives are inescapable. They're in our media, in the stories we tell, in the ads we see, even in our memes. The world is built through this connective tissue, across the personal, community, corporate, and social movement spheres.

Here's how I define the core concepts that make up my work, informed by leaders and researchers in the field like Narrative Initiative, Race Forward, FrameWorks Institute, Define American, and Harmony Labs.

• Narrative Ecosystem: a set of deep narratives that build upon each other. When one deep narrative is being pushed, the others are strengthened. Designed and implemented correctly, your narrative ecosystem is ever-evolving.
• Deep Narrative: It represents the central value or theme that's in the current. Depending on the goal of whoever is pushing the narrative, it can be anything from belonging to profit.
• Narrative: Often misunderstood as part of a story, it is a series of messages and stories around a central theme, tied to a specific topic or goal. It can be about anything from an issue to an album release.
• Stories: We know this one well. They have a start, middle, and end. Stories are everywhere, embedded into our whole lives. From the chisme to the news, stories shape how we see the world.
• Messages: They are short, often catchy, and most live in slogans, talking points, and quips. When done right, they stick. They're your last building block when you're building your narrative change, but that doesn't mean they're the least important. The best messages are accessible and easily understood. If you find yourself having to do a lot of exposition to make your messages land, let's revisit the drawing board.

Finally, without people, without you and me, the narrative current would run dry. I believe it's essential for any good narrative strategy to hone in on the right audience, not by their demographics but by their values. Values-based segmentation is where you can really make the narrative current flow intentionally. Putting the narratives you want to shape through what your audiences are already consuming, based on their values, can supercharge your strategy. I don't have to tell you that human beings are complex beings, so why do we continue to box them in by their age, gender, and ethnicity? When you peel back the curtain and go straight to what they care about, you can transform the narrative > story > message with such surgical precision that it will land, and it will shape your target audience's beliefs, values, and behaviors. From there, you can identify the narrative multipliers (who your audience listens to and is influenced by) and the narrative gatekeepers (who decides what gets amplified to your target audiences and what doesn't).

While narrative change is often used interchangeably with strategic communications, the two are very different. Strategic communications works on short-term behavioral change; narrative change, as I've stated here, works on long-term behavioral change. I strongly believe both can coexist. In fact, a robust communications plan will have both, but neither is a replacement for the other, and I'm happy to show you how we can make it work for you.