Lessons from Freedom to Marry Campaign: Messaging, Messengers and Public Support
Campaigners did not have a secret recipe, but a rigorous methodology behind their successful public campaign for marriage equality in the U.S.
The Theory of Basic Values
We have seen in a previous post how social psychologist Jonathan Haidt attempts to classify values into 5 major categories: Care, Fairness, Liberty, Authority and Sanctity. Shalom Schwartz from the University of Jerusalem has later on developed the theory of basic values, by which he identifies 10 clusters of values: Self-Direction – Defining goal: independent thought…
Show, Don’t Tell – Embody the Message
Actions speak louder than words. Some of the most effective campaigns show and don’t just tell their message. When a campaign has chosen its core action message (or what theorists call the “meta-verb,” such as “disrupt,” “resist,” or “confront”), it should not only say it out loud, but also choose protest actions that actually embody…
The Way to Storytelling
From Storybasedstrategy.org Storytelling has always been central to movement building and successful campaigns. Now in the face of an increasingly complex and fragmented media environment, being strategic about how we tell our stories is more important than ever. Creating a strategy to frame an issue, build an inviting brand and distill our messages into the…
Foreshadow: Tell the Future
In their paper “Changing the Story: Story-Based Strategies for Direct Action Design”, Doyle Canning and Patrick Reinsborough develop an essential argument: “In the advertising industry they say, “People can only go somewhere that they have already been in their minds.” This rings true for action organizing too. When using a story-based strategy, the aspect of “foreshadowing” is…
10 Ways To Engage Your Nonprofit’s Audience Using Stories
NON-PROFIT STORYTELLING TIPS Recently I’ve been seeing lots of corporate social media campaigns that are aiming to increase consumer engagement with the brand. For example Dunkin Donuts (#MyDunkin), Nike’s Makers campaign, etc. Interestingly, their tactics for increasing consumer engagement is to use storytelling. You see, the big goal of engaging consumers with a corporate brand…
Tips for Respectful Persuasion
From Newtactics.org How to be respectful AND persuasive 1. Tune in and connect. Use the weather, the environment, any element of communality to create the initial contact. Start with small talk or rituals. It helps create that tiny bond on which to tie your message. 2. Pace the energy. It’s hard to say this without…
What Values Are We Talking About?
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt theorized that people have two minds: one intuitive (that generates reflexes, or “gut feelings”) and one rationale, that produces reflections, thoughts, etc. In practice, people often make a decision about right and wrong based on their gut reactions, using the intuitive mind, and then use their rational mind to produce a rationalization…
Some Core Notions of Persuasion Science
With references from Nick Cooney’s essential book “Change of Heart” 1 Putting in context A core concept of behavioural psychology is that we don’t know what we want until we see it in context. Everything, including our judgements on how much something is worth, is relative and can be shaped by perceptual contrast. This principle…
Effective Campaign Messengers
Often, the public representation of organisations in the media in carried by the people who the organisation sees as legitimate: either the people in power (for example the CEO, the founder, the charismatic leader), the experts (the scientists) or the people the organisation works for/with. While this perfectly makes sense for the organisations’ policies, this…