Step one
Message
Strategy
Civil society values
“Good messaging is not about saying what is popular. It is about making popular what needs to be said.”
We need to be able to transmit simple, common ideas that people accept, remember and repeat, because they “make sense.” Once we articulate those ideas, we can figure out the best words, images and stories to get them across to people.
To do that, we need to tell a simple story about what civil society is, how it works and why it matters. We need to talk about the values that motivate people in civil society and their vision for the future. Using values messaging means using less political language and speaking more about underlying ideas. This makes it easier to connect with people in terms they understand.
If people believe strongly in values like community and empathy they are more likely to actively engage in and support civil society.
How to do it
Finding your worldview
If you want to develop your messaging, the best place to start is by articulating your values. This is far more than a few concepts. This is the basic understanding you have about how the world works, that explains why you want the change you work for. To find it, think about what motivates you in your work and why you believe your approach is the right one. These ideas should be very simple, so you need to challenge yourself to break down your ideas to the simplest form possible. Imagine a child is constantly asking you “Why?”
It is even better to do this process in a workshop together with your colleagues, allies and the communities you serve. There you can identify the values important to everyone as individuals, the values that bring people together as a group and the values that are particularly important in the current moment you all face. It is at the confluence of these values that you will find your main, topline values message.
Your narrative workshops should bring together a broad coalition. When you work with your allies to promote the values you all share, you do not all have to use the same slogans and hashtags.
Try to articulate the moral logic that underpins your work. This is your worldview: literally how you see the world.
Once you have articulated your worldview, you can build your narrative communications strategy around it.
-
You can carry out research to see how your ideas resonate with people today, for example, using focus groups, in-depth interviews or dial-testing (to really get a sense of how individuals respond) or surveys (to get a sense of how widespread support for your idea is).
-
You can start to test and refine the messages, images and stories that bring your ideas to life. Throughout this project, we used Facebook to A/B test messages.
-
Rather than aiming for one fixed message that you will use forever, you should be ready to constantly refine your message for different audiences, contexts and moments.
TIP - Your testing journey:
Start with simple tests and use those to inform the content that requires more time and resources.
01.
Basic test
We recommend starting with existing content or current news stories for your first round. This way you do not need to produce any material, even a link to relevant news can be used.
02.
Simple graphics
Then, based on those insights, you can start commissioning bespoke graphics or animations to take the testing further.
03.
Evergreen content and big moments
Once you have a good sense of what works, you can start to invest in produced videos, or campaign activity with your supporters to create authentic video content. By this time, you should have a strong sense of what really resonates with audiences before you go big.
Civil society metaphors
We explored different visual metaphors for explaining how civil society and the justice system work in terms that relate to daily life. These vary from an explanation of how we make change happen to a vision of what society looks like when we have more civic space.
Message testing
After working with civil society groups to articulate the values that drive their work, we wanted to test how much these messages resonated with potential supporters of civil society—people who could potentially be more vocal in supporting it when civic space is threatened.
To do this, we created a special Facebook page called ComunidadxElSalvador to run A/B tests comparing the impact of different messages, images and stories. We tested basic values, messages about civil society, different ways of phrasing and structuring our messages, and a wide range of imagery.
These results might be different for you, but we are sharing them to give an example of the questions you can answer through this kind of testing and how you can use it to refine and constantly improve your messages.
Our testing revealed some very basic insights for communicating to this particular audience: We found that actually saying “civil society” is OK! Although it feels like jargon, it worked better than alternatives like “community groups.” The idea of “giving a ride” as a metaphor for how civil society works was not as effective as we thought. The same message performed much better with an image of people crossing a river in a canoe. We think that is because the idea of hitchhiking calls to mind being vulnerable to crime, whereas the canoe imagery called to mind the solidarity people remember during natural disasters. Finally, we found that using inclusive language (gender neutral “X” terms) triggered hate speech in the comments, so we worded text in tests for certain audiences differently in early tests.
Test and insight
Imagery test –
car vs. boat
Message test
basic message formula
Shared value
Problem
Solution
Call to action
Tools & tips
Learn more about the tools that you can use: