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The Hope Gap
A collaborative paper exploring the gap between the promise of social acceptance and the reality we're living in today with insights on how to bridge the divide.
Introducing The Hope Gap: Bridging the divide between promise and reality
It started with a conversation between two beleaguered colleagues over coffee in the late Summer of 2024: in the climate of media-driven culture wars, systemic healthcare underfunding, rising housing costs, increasing political division and pay gaps, what is giving you hope right now?
So often, our hopes for a fairer world feel delayed or even out of reach. We feel like we’re taking steps toward social progress, only to be frustrated by the next click-bait headline, presidential election result, or ignorant campaign. In the attention economy, we’re distracted from the big questions and the even bigger answers we need to create as a society.
This growing sense of disenchantment drove us to bring together our collective expertise to write something that genuinely does give us hope as we enter 2025.
What is The Hope Gap?
Hope is defined as ‘a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen.’ It’s not a wish upon a star, nor is it a guarantee that the future will change. But hope is a tool, and it’s central to progress. It is the engine of the tireless activists who take to the streets and the corporate advocates pushing for change within institutions. And it requires us to be pragmatic, optimistic, and collaborative.
The Hope Gap is the gap between the promise of social acceptance we know is possible, and the reality of what we are experiencing in our lifetimes.
We’ve examined just how big this gap is and set out some solutions in our latest report by bringing in the views from business leaders from a range of industries, and DEI practitioners across sectors. Over the course of three months, we continually asked people: what’s giving you hope?
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The report focuses on three critical sectors that shape both our perceptions and our realities: business, marketing & advertising, and media.
Each of these plays a massive role in shaping the societal norms, values, and narratives that influence our expectations and desires for the future:
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Business at Large
As places where many of us spend a significant portion of our time, businesses have the power to shape markets, influence consumer behaviour, and lobby governments for change. They are uniquely positioned to lead by example and also advocate for social progress. -
Marketing and Advertising
This sector influences societal norms on everything from beauty standards to gender roles and can create or challenge the expectations we have for ourselves and others. The power of marketing to shape social narratives is undeniable, and as such, it has the potential to both reinforce and dismantle stereotypes. -
Media
As gatekeepers of what we see and hear, the media holds immense sway in shaping public understanding of societal issues. Whether through television, news, or social media, the media influences our collective understanding of what's happening in the world and what the future could look like.
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By bringing together experts from these sectors at a roundtable in November, we identified ten practical solutions to close The Hope Gap. These solutions, detailed in the report, are designed to drive systemic change and bring the promise of social progress closer to reality.​​
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To read the full report and learn more about the practical solutions we've identified see below to download your copy today. If you'd like us to come and talk to your board or team about hope and our findings then please get in touch.
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Together, we can close the gap.
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Special thanks goes to attendees of our Hope Gap roundtable who attended from Burberry, Golin, Hope & Glory, ISBA, ITV, LIONS, More in Common, OMG and Unilever.
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