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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
In our previous post, we have given an overview of what framing is and why it matters. We continue this exploration with additional extracts of the excellent report done by the Movement Advancement Project. So, how do we do framing? “Frankly, it’s not easy to effectively frame an issue. Why? Because good framing starts from…
From humor to rainbows, here are a few ideas on getting the attention of your audience.
From the release of political prisoners to political change, both large and small, letter-writing campaigns have also been a solid staple for social activists across the world. Although modern technology may have replaced the written letter with emails and social media, the tactics within these campaigns still remain largely the same. Today, we give you SEVEN…