Crypto Marketing 101 Lesson 1: How to Write a Good Narrative

Author: Dov

First, Shift Your Mindset: Put Aside Thoughts of Product and Technological Innovation, and Pick Up the Hammer of "Narrative"

From a Crypto marketing perspective, we have a hammer called narrative. Now, please look at every project as a nail. Set aside all technological innovations and product capabilities; let's only talk about how to tell a story (narrative).

You can roughly understand the entire crypto industry as a consumer goods industry (especially new consumption), which is completely driven by sales. New brands like Perfect Diary and Six Female Doctors have no great product innovations (just like most crypto projects lack real technological innovations); they are driven by sales, emerging as new brands following innovations in sales channels.

Korean Exchanges and Retail Investors are the Innovations in Sales Channels for This Crypto Bull Market

Say it three times:

Marketing is selling, KOLs are sales anchors.

Marketing is selling, KOLs are sales anchors.

Marketing is selling, KOLs are sales anchors.

Bro, this coin is only 1 billion USD FDV, how is that expensive?

As a project party, your revenue source is traffic * conversion rate.

• Traffic means how many channels (media, KOLs, etc.) you find to write content and how much attention you gain.

• Conversion rate means whether people are interested after seeing your content, whether they want to take a look or read it all, and whether they buy into your story and how much they spend.

Today, we will only discuss "how to write a good story." Most project parties have their own products and know what they are doing, but they fail to articulate their grand vision well. When thinking about the story, they often narrow their perspective or tell some old, boring stories that VCs, exchanges, and retail investors do not buy into.

Let's Take Sign as an Example, This is the Hottest Project Recently

I suggest that if project parties don't know how to write a narrative, they should start from the product. You must know what you are doing.

Let’s talk plainly about Sign's several products:

1. EthSign - On-chain contract signing, 2 million users, a total of 1.5 million contracts signed; hopes to become the protocol for contracts between humans and AI agents in the future.

2. TokenTable, a token distribution platform, the Goldman Sachs of the crypto industry, simultaneously acting as a brokerage and investment bank. Total revenue of 15 million USD.

3. Sign Pass, an identity system, global passports, such as Sierra Leone's PR and UAE golden visa.

4. Sign Protocol, the infrastructure for the above three products.

We first fed this content to my previously trained GPT to help me write the narrative. Of course, using DeepSeek might be better now. Emphasize to GPT that the target audience is global VCs and wealthy individuals (so it can write a bigger vision for you).

The above is the first response from GPT. At least we now have a general direction and some initial inspiration. But this is still far from enough; it’s too scattered.

The Best Narrative is: Simple and Grand, Ideally with Some Philosophical Height, So That the Valuation Model Can Shift from Price-to-Earnings Ratio to Price-to-Dream Ratio.

Previous examples like Sonic had two narratives:

• Solana Layer 2, everyone knows what Layer 2 is, and everyone knows Layer 2's FDV is high; you don't need to explain further, it’s benchmarked against OP.

• TikTok Chain, this is very straightforward, even without explanation. It’s benchmarked against TON.

Sonic's narrative could score 90 points, but it lacks the last 10 points of philosophical height. To elevate the final 10 points, a sense of narrative aesthetics is needed.

Let’s look at one of my favorite narratives for a case study. This is Notion's pitch deck from 2013.

"We Shape our tools, and thereafter our tools will shape us"

This is top-tier narrative aesthetics: simple, profound, and relevant.

It is almost impossible to translate the beauty of the English phrase into Chinese. A simple translation would be:

"We shape our tools, and in turn, these tools shape us."

Notion has many keywords, but it only captured one. This is "doing subtraction" in narrative.

Notion's keywords could include: efficiency, tools, inspiration, collaboration, creativity, and so on. They only chose "tools."

Narratives should do subtraction; less is more. When the public mentions you, they should only remember one positioning and not a long list of details.

How to implement this practically? Let's return to Sign. We directly asked ChatGPT. At that time, we hadn’t decided which keyword to assign to Sign; it could be contract, trust, signature, collaboration, distribution, or even fairness, among many others.

We let GPT brainstorm.

This time, GPT's responses were quite vague and did not identify Sign's true keywords. The content was not grounded and practical enough; it was too one-sided, so we provided some additional context.

The content provided this time was much better. Among all this, we captured this sentence:

"Trust is the invisible currency that powers every transaction, every relationship, and every society."

------Inspired by Yuval Noah Harari

Interpretation: Sign is redefining the "monetization" of trust, embedding it into contracts, assets, and identity systems, providing new infrastructure for the digital society.

Why choose this sentence?

• It highlights the keyword: monetizing trust. This is a narrative at the level of human civilization; it is grand enough and sounds impressive.

• The subsequent keywords are transaction, relationship, and society, which are exactly what Sign and the blockchain industry are doing—various transactions, relationships, and societies—so it is very relevant.

• This sentence comes from Yuval Noah Harari, the author of bestsellers like Sapiens and Homo Deus, who has a reputation and reach in the field of technology philosophy. He is a great choice, more stylish than a bestselling author and more influential than an obscure academic.

With this philosophical height as a starting point, the next step is to align Sign's business with this grand vision from Yuval Noah Harari. We continue to ask GPT.

The third point he wrote was good, capturing the big theme of "trust." This topic is big, simple, and closely related to what Sign is doing. Since we have set the direction, let’s let GPT brainstorm further to see if there are more inspirations in this direction.

This time, GPT provided some clichéd dead ends, like "decentralized revolution" and "empowerment effect," but this "programmability" laid a foundation for what’s to come.

Let’s ask GPT to emphasize that it should correspond with Yuval Noah Harari's statement and see what it says:

This time, it provided many satisfactory responses. The story and tone are both present. The most suitable one is the first; with slight modifications, it became the following:

In a tokenized world, blockchain provides the trust foundation for human society, transforming trust from an invisible currency into a programmable framework, and Sign sets the standard for this new era of seamless collaboration across humans, nations, and AI.

After crafting these two paragraphs, we still need a simple and powerful slogan to emphasize it once more.

GPT provided these frameworks, and with the earlier laid foundation, Potter had an Aha Moment and came up with the slogan:

SIGN MAKES TRUST PROGRAMMABLE.

(This moment crystallized the collaboration between humans and AI, and Sign happens to be the first tool for humans to sign agreements with AI.)

This slogan responds to the grand theme and explains how Sign executes it. Potter and I cheered and high-fived, then ran downstairs for a smoke.

The final effect is shown below (of course, this is not the final version):

Let me translate for everyone:

"Trust is the invisible currency that powers every transaction, every relationship, and every society."

- Yuval Noah Harari

In a tokenized world, blockchain provides the trust foundation for human society, transforming trust from an invisible currency into a programmable framework, and Sign sets the standard for this new era of seamless collaboration across humans, nations, and AI.

Once trust can be quantified, it becomes currency.

Sign makes trust programmable.

Although it’s not as impactful as Notion's statement, it’s good enough. I’d rate it 80-90 points.

This only covers the vision part, just two small paragraphs.

A better Blurb/One Pager should also include:

• Why Now

• Our Unique Position

• Product

• Traction

• Fundraising Revenue Partnership

• Team

By the way, I’d like to add some personal remarks.

The Crypto Marketing 101 series was inspired by Sanpan's Crypto Veda, and I thank him for consistently providing valuable content, which has inspired me greatly.

In 2024, I helped dozens of projects, big and small, with marketing planning, starting from the portfolio my company invested in to many friends who proactively introduced projects to me because they thought I did well.

Marketing is far more than just finding a few KOLs; most agencies have realized this. I went from being unknown to achieving some success (1 project on Binance, 2 projects on OKX + Upbit, countless on Tier 2 exchanges, and many 100M+ memecoins). After a year of reading, talking to people, attending meetings, and staying up late, I believe I have reached a level I consider acceptable, but I need to continue to strive for excellence.

Crypto Marketing 101 will continue to be updated, always open-source, maintaining the spirit of crypto in a market where the scythe swings.

If anyone has needs, feel free to DM me, and you are also welcome to ask for materials from Mango Labs.

I can help, but freeloading is not acceptable.

Happy New Year and may your work be prosperous!