Our Services
Clarity, culture, and communications working in sync.
Every engagement with Big Bite starts with sense-making. We map what’s shaping your context, from sociocultural patterns and political values to the pressures beneath the surface, before we design anything at all. From there, we build strategies that align your communications with your long-term vision and what your public cares about, creating work that holds up over time.
Depending on the project, we bring in collaborators that can include media researchers, filmmakers, creative strategists, or experts in creative placemaking.
Across it all, runs a single thread: narrative is cultural infrastructure. Our work connects what’s said to what’s believed and built, so your stories and campaigns strengthen trust and imagination, while nudging the world toward its better nature.
Narrative Strategy & PositioningYour team walks away with a narrative framework that anchors all of your communications in a relevant cultural context; a living reference that guides strategy, storytelling, and decision-making long after our work together ends.
For moments when tweaking language no longer works. We help our partners step back from messaging cycles to see the broader narrative landscape shaping their field.
To get to where you want to go, you need a map. Our process starts with that mapping: existing or opponent narratives, emotional undercurrents, shared values, and dinner table concerns influencing how people think about your work. From there, we identify where your values overlap with those of your public, and design an approach that grows from that shared ground. The result is a narrative strategy that connects your vision to public imagination.
Building Narrative Power with appalachiaCase Study
-
Environmental advocates across Appalachia were struggling to gain traction against petrochemical expansion in the Ohio River Valley. While fossil fuel companies spoke in human terms — powering the nation, providing good jobs, and fueling regional pride — advocates focused on environmental loss, pollution, and public health. In a region where identity is rooted in work, family, and contribution, one side was talking about people and purpose, the other about land and loss. The result was a widening values gap and declining public trust.
-
We began by analyzing the dominant narratives shaping public understanding of energy, work, and prosperity. Then, through deep community listening and narrative testing across the region, we identified the shared values that cut through political and cultural divides: pride in hard work, care for family, interdependence, and leaving something better for the next generation. These became the foundation for a transitional narrative that honored the past while opening space for green new futures.
-
The resulting strategy shifted how advocates in the region talked about prosperity and transition. Fear-based messaging that once centered on destruction evolved into stories about belonging, legacy, and renewal. It informed new coalition strategies and visual storytelling projects, including Appalachia Reframed, a yearlong mentorship program training trusted local artists and community storytellers to expand narrative power across the region. The work was later incorporated into Green New Deal policy briefs as a model for regional alignment around economic and environmental transition.
“We’ve been working on environmental issues in Appalachia for 40 years, but for the first time, our messaging felt like it came from here.”
Comms CalibrationYou walk away with a clear, actionable blueprint for refinement: a recalibrated messaging hierarchy, guidance on tone and structure, and a shared narrative foundation that ties it all together. It’s equal parts audit and alignment, all in a process that turns scattered content into a consistent, values-led voice your audiences can trust and you can have fun with.
For when the message doesn’t quite match the mission. Maybe your organization’s public voice has drifted from its values or the work has evolved faster than your language. We review how you’re communicating across materials, campaigns, and platforms to identify where logic, tone, and framing might be working against you, and get it all working for you.
We identify where meaning breaks down and where it can be strengthened through emotional coherence, rhythm, and clarity. It’s a full look at how well your organizational story comes through.
Strategic Comms Audit: National Education InitiativeClient details have been anonymized due to the sensitive nature of their work and the current political climate.
Case Study
-
A national education initiative housed within a university’s social research lab wanted to align its communications with its evolving research and K-12 partnerships. Its external messaging emphasized equity and inclusion — values central to its mission — but did so in dense academic language. As those terms and that tone became politically sensitive in key regions, and with key constituencies, the initiative risked misinterpretation and a loss of credibility with parents, educators, and partners.
-
We reviewed the lab’s communications ecosystem, from web copy to audience pathways, to assess tone, clarity, and alignment with core values. The audit surfaced where academic dialect was unintentionally creating a sense of exclusion or anxiety for parents and educators. We reframed the lab’s story through shared values of empathy, connection, and care, creating a site and messaging strategy that made the work accessible without diluting rigor for researchers.
-
The recalibrated narrative reintroduced the lab to its audiences in plain, human language. It translated complex research into a relatable story about belonging and wellbeing, helping parents, teachers, and researchers see themselves as part of the same mission. The resulting strategy strengthened credibility, reduced risk, and positioned the lab as a trusted leader in a politically charged education landscape.
Workshops & Learning SpacesParticipants leave with shared language, emotional clarity, and concrete methods for bringing meaning into their day-to-day communication. Each session builds narrative fluency, or the ability to think, speak, and design messages that feel magnetic.
For teams who know that narrative matters but don’t yet have a shared way to work with it. Our workshops turn abstract ideas into something you can play with, practice, test, and apply.
Each workshop is interactive by design — part strategy, part sandbox, part deep-breath reset. Even when we’re working with complex or high-stakes material, our sessions center curiosity and fun. We use frameworks like our own Root-to-Fruit, Hope-Based Communications, and game theory to help teams explore values, test framing, and practice communicating with creativity.
Hope-Based Future Builders GuildCase Study
-
Idealist Consulting wanted to help its team navigate a climate of fear-based communication, both in the world and within client work, by finding a more hopeful and sustainable way to frame challenges. The goal was to reconnect the team’s consulting practice to shared values of optimism, agency, and community care.
-
We designed two 90-minute, interactive sessions blending neuroscience, storytelling, and game-based learning. Participants became “guild members” from a thriving alternate universe, tasked with helping this one catch up. Through imaginative exercises (including a custom-designed puzzle adventure video game), they practiced five Hope-Based Communication shifts — from Fear to Hope, from Problem to Solution, Against to For, Threat to Opportunity, and Victim to Human — while learning how these shifts reframe stress responses and activate creative thinking.
-
The sessions helped participants link the science of emotion to everyday communication, translating heavy material into shared insight and relief. Team members described feeling calmer, more connected, and newly equipped to approach client storytelling with clarity and care. The workshops became a model for how hope-based frameworks can serve as both learning tools and internal culture-building experiences.
“Michael’s Hope-Based Communications session helped us rethink how we communicate by leading with solutions, opportunity, and humanity instead of fear or urgency. It was so helpful to our work, and made us feel connected. ”
Risk & Resilience StrategyYou walk away with a clear, principles-based strategy for responding to risk in real time: values anchors, decision frameworks, and message guidance that help your work stay aligned when conditions shift. We focus on your long-term narrative resilience so you can avoid crisis comms, giving you the ability to stay true and credible when it matters most.
For organizations navigating polarized or high-pressure environments. In moments when language or visibility carry real risk, we help clients see how narrative, political values, and public perception interact, so they can communicate with confidence even under scrutiny. We bring significant experience in repressive political contexts, including work in closed countries.
Our process combines narrative and risk analysis to spot where framing or language could expose vulnerability, and where clarity or consistency can build trust. Working alongside our legal partners and a cadre of digital and physical safety and security experts, we design strategies that align vision with protection so civil society groups can build support with creative savvy.
Risk-informed narrative & legally informed comms: Nonprofit SecureCase Study
-
In today’s polarized political climate, many mission-driven organizations are operating under new levels of scrutiny and legal risk. Funders wanted a way to ensure their grantees were equipped not just with safety and security tools, but with communications strategies that wouldn’t expose them to unnecessary backlash or misunderstanding.
-
As a founding member of D.O.N.E.- Dept. of Nonprofit Efficiency, we partner with Nonprofit Secure — a nonprofit safety and security hub that supports funders and their grantees in politically volatile contexts. We provide narrative and communications strategy grounded in legally informed risk analysis and values alignment. Our role helps organizations assess narrative vulnerabilities through both a legal and sociopolitical lens, strengthen their public positioning, and communicate with clarity without compromising integrity or safety.
-
In 2025 alone, we helped nearly 50 organizations, universities, and museums across the U.S. navigate complex and often hostile environments with confidence and calm. By combining legal, narrative, and framing expertise, we equip funders and grantees alike to anticipate risk, communicate safely and authentically from principle, and maintain public trust. The approach is informing broader field discussions about resilience, accountability, and narrative power under pressure.
“For the first time, we felt like we could navigate what’s happening without compromising our work or our principles. The reframes helped us see clearly, communicate with integrity, and breathe again.”
Client anonymized due to the sensitive nature of their work and the current political climate.