I’ve worked on a number of advocacy campaigns, usually led by a coalition of civil society groups. I’ve campaigned to defend our rivers, lakes and wetlands, end imported deforestation, and worked on a bunch of city-level campaigns on transport-related measures.
These are all very different topics, but the checklist I run through when deciding which digital tools to leverage, and the imagery, videos and words we’ll use in these contexts is always the same…
- Why are we doing this? What are we trying to achieve advocacy wise, and how does comms support this?
- Who are we trying to influence, and who could they be influenced by?
- What can comms do to help us get there?
- When does this need to happen (and do I need to warm my audience up before)?
- How will we know we’ve been successful?
These questions provide the architecture of the content. When it comes to adding some much-needed colour, here are some things that are intrinsic to good campaign content and worth considering before you open up your sketchbook, design software, or drop your favourite content creator a line:
- Good campaign content has clear intent (why, who, when, what, how are clear)…
- …and clear emotion – it makes the audience feel something
- It has an explicit call to action for the viewer, tailored to the audience we’re addressing and optimised for the platform we’re using
- The content plays off other comms and advocacy tactics (e.g. media story, a stunt)
I hope you find these tips helpful when laying the foundations for your next campaign. If you’d like to look into collaborating you can always get in touch.
Happy content creating!
