I just re-read Chris Rose’s campaign bible chapter on ‘How To Begin’. He recommends a method of designing a campaign that many will find alien. Instead of jumping in, there is a detailed screening exercise before the outward facing action starts.
Set against this pre-departure the checklist, most campaigns, both NGO and corporate, fall far short. It helps explains why most campaigns don’t land up where they planned to be.
A 10 point pre-departure checklist
First, you need to understand what motivates your audience.
The best way to do this is to split your time between listening and sending information. You have to listen to your target audience, your allies and opponents.
And, before launching, and throughout the campaign, you need to check back to see if it makes sense.
Few do this. The pre-launch testing, re-calibrating are techniques used by few. The too common cult-like messaging session is still standard. They tend to land up being sessions amounting to affirmations of faith.
Second, you need to Keep it Simple. Too many campaigns messages need a PhD to understand what’s being said. After all, if you use language that only you can understand, you can’t be surprised that it is only you who supports your message.
Third, the best communication “raises awareness, that ensures alignment, brings about engagement and secures action.
To do this, you need to highlight a problem, identify someone who is responsible, and provide a solution.” You need to provide all three.
Campaigning is:
- Solutions focused
- Driven by Events as events galvanise people.
- Practice Simplification
Campaigning is not:
- Education
- A set of arguments
- Complexity
Fourth, too many “want to educate others to see the issue in the right way before accepting their support.” You need to ignore these people. Personally, I’d recommend keeping them locked away for the duration of the campaign. These people will go off script too quickly. They’ll look to educate, convert, and in their eyes, save the target audience when they have the chance. Your target audience will run a mile, and you’ll throw away their support.
Fifth, you need to be “opportunistic, not in terms of their beliefs and values but in terms of reaching audiences”. Many reject opportunism. I don’t. I’ve spoken to a group of self-declared libertarian MEPs on the evils of fisheries subsidies, and to former Communist bloc States on the chance to harness energy sources from Canada.
The key is to reach your target audience. I’ve never minded that if a politician supports you for only one vote, just as long as they vote for you on the vote that counts. I even helped persuade Nigel Farage to turn up to vote in the Fisheries Committee to ban discards. In a tight vote, every vote counted. His vote helped.
What’s your essential communication components – a useful checklist
Rose provides a useful checklist:
- “Channel – how the message gets there
- Action – what we want to happen (and what the audience is asked to do)
- Messenger – who delivers the message
- Programme – why we are doing it – to assess the effectiveness
- Context – where and when the message arrives, including what else is going on
- Audience – who are we communicating with
- Trigger – what will motivate the audience to act”
Sixth, I’ve seen too many times – in NGOs and industry – that each of these elements is guessed at, or even worse, made up on the go.
It’s important to research this and be very clear about it. You can’t underestimate the importance of pre-launch research. As a rule of thumb, I set aside 25% of the total budget for the initial research phase. Many think this is too much. From my experience, it’s better to know before you go public that the core premises that your campaign is based on are wrong. It is better than launching and then finding out mid-campaign that the facts don’t support you.
The biggest challenge is curbing the enthusiasm of colleagues to go with a ‘great idea’, and resist the research phase for an ‘obviously great idea’. This zealotry is a good indicator that the research won’t provide the evidence to support your campaign. And, whilst it is hard to tell people the bad news, it’s far better to do it before you have launched.
Every time I have stopped a campaign because the research shows the facts did not support the campaign I’ve been accused of vile crimes akin to infanticide. I have been subject to pressure to let it pass this one time. If you do let it pass, your Achilles heel will reveal itself at the very worst time, and sink all your good work. It will probably set back your reputation by 5 years.
If you speak to you your target audience, at the wrong time, in the wrong tone, and through a channel your audience does not know exists, you have more or less guaranteed from the start that your communications are about to fail.
I wish such foolishness was rare. The vital research step is often ignored. There are few journals of record that politicians and officials read – FT, The Economist, and the National Geographic – whose coverage is influential.
Seventh, perhaps the most useful lesson is to do “what works for your target audience, and not what works for you”. If you want to win, you need to get people to back you on their terms, rather than on yours. Most organisations, both NGOs and industry, find it hard, if not impossible to do this.
For me, this inability to quiet the ego is the reason most campaigns, both NGOs and corporate, fail. Self-vindication is not a winning idea.
Eighth, I dislike the word ‘strategy’. It is a much-abused word. It is often used as a broad cover for a set of actions, often bundled together erratically, with the hope and prayer, that it will lead to some outcome.
Rose defines it in the proper sense as “changing the prevailing forces so that you can win. The strategy is your map change: more than a conventional navigation, one that doesn’t just traverse the terrain of society, but reshapes it. Your communication strategy and engagement tactics need to take supporters on a journey too.”
Ninth, after you come up with the idea you need to develop the strategy. This involves testing the messages and evidence. After this, you need to prepare an activities and resources plan. This should be a cautious costing. I recommend over budgeting by 25%. There is often project creep. Better to be cautious from the start.
When this is done, you need to get the project signed off. After it is signed off, usually by more senior people, you roll out the campaign. You need objective criteria in place to track the success of your campaign. It’s important to build in the latitude to revise. Finally, you need to build in checkpoints to see if you need to go on, adapt, or stop.
Finally, the greatest challenge is you’ll be so bought into the strategy, that you’ll not be able to identify the (huge) gaps. Self – belief and ego will cloud reality.
I find it helpful to hand the draft strategy to a seasoned professional to dispassionately review the strategy, identify the weak spots, and be brutally honest with you. This only strengthens the final product. Most people don’t do this. They dislike the risk of their ideas and plans being torn apart. These people should get out of campaigning.