Getting Started With Narrative Change #8

Getting creative to spread our narrative

It’s time to create our final communications content and narrative interventions! Having come up with the essence of our narrative ideas to meet our goals in chapter 6, we tested those out in chapter 7, and now it’s time to put what we’ve learnt into practice. In this chapter, we’ll transform all the raw materials we’ve come up with into solid content: exploring formats like video, graphics and creative action.

It’s possible at this point that you’re wondering: “how do I actually fit all the best practice you’ve covered into the comms that I actually do day-to-day?” Great question! The main thing here is to just give it a good go. It’s very rare that you’ll have the opportunity to create a single piece of content or action idea that does all of the things you want or need it to do. However, we encourage you to get producing, and to spread the key components of your narrative out through different outputs.

Here’s an example from We Make The Future demonstrating ways of using elements of the tried-and-tested ‘Race Class Narrative’ over time, breaking it down into different formats:

So, let’s get creating!

Start your creative brief

Before making any kind of communications content or narrative intervention, it helps to make a short creative brief. This is a tool that summarises:

• Your campaign focus.
• Who your audience is.
• What you want them to think, feel and do.
• How you plan to reach them—which media platforms, cultural spaces, or types of communication will be most effective.
• The key messages and narrative content that you’ve been working on up to now—including learnings from any testing carried out so far.
• Any creative/ design inspiration you already have that you’d like to influence the final output.

Ideally this tool will help ensure you and your teammates are really agreed and not just making different assumptions which come back to bite you later. And it will be really useful if you are getting someone with specific design skills to help—share this to help get on the same page easily.

Here’s a great simple example from PIRC friend and associate, Sho Walker-Konno:

So let’s kick-off your creative brief by answering the following:

What are you hoping to create communications content or a narrative intervention for? Who are you targeting? And what do you want them to think, feel and do?

Choose your platform

So, we’ve covered those foundational questions, now it’s time to work out which media platforms and cultural or social spaces make most sense for you to reach your audience through. This is not just about the largest platforms (mainstream media and social media) but also who they trust. Are they influenced by the people they know? Or by something they see everyday on the street or at work?

It can help to pause here and think about where the dominant narratives that influence our audiences are being spread—those might make sense to be our battlegrounds to try and push back with our progressive narratives. Alternatively, we might choose to bypass those battleground spaces in favour of more intimate ways to connect—through local community initiatives, their union representatives, or their favourite podcast. The choices we make here will look different for all of us, depending on our narrative goals.

Here’s an overview of some key platforms available to us for reaching our intended audiences, as campaigners. For each area, we’ve included some signposts to more information and learning, and offered some practical examples of narrative initiatives that are geared towards these platforms:

• Traditional media/press
  e.g. broadcast interviews for TV news, letters to newspaper editors, writing opinion pieces.
  Spokesperson and Press Officer handbooks from NEON
  How to respond to the culture wars, from Align & NEON
• Social media & digital campaigning
  e.g. targeting corporations on Twitter/X, mobilising young people on TikTok, organising a demo via Whatsapp, shifting beliefs through podcasting.
  How to generate 100 social media concepts in 1 hour.
  Online training and support for digital campaigning from Social Movement Technologies —including these free access offerings.
• Pop culture interventions
  e.g. script-writing for stage or screen, influencing producers of TV programmes, writing features for magazines, targeting the gaming industry.
  Transforming the storyline of a major TV soap, with All About Trans.
  Culture-defining initiatives lead by racialised groups, like POCC, MAIA, and interventions for migrant justice by PopChange.
• On the doorstep
  e.g. door-knocking (or ‘canvassing’) ahead of elections, hosting community meetings, persuading your nan.
  Using ‘deep canvassing’ methods to support change through 121 conversations—on the doorstep, on the sofa or by the coffee machine.
• In the streets
  e.g. organising demonstrations that tell a powerful story, designing media stunts, setting up industrial action with your union.
  The Beautiful Trouble toolbox for strategies and tactics that have inspired people-powered victories and upended the status quo.

Which platform does it make most sense for you to use, thinking about your audience and goals?

We haven’t covered everything in the overview above, so please include any different ideas you have here that feel strategic for you and your audience.

Choose your format

Thinking about your core messaging, and the audience you want to reach: What format will be most effective? If you’re looking to tell a story that demonstrates change, a video might help you to bring a sequence of events to life. Or perhaps you want to get something shared and reported quickly, in which case an unedited photo might be better.

Where will your audience most likely be reached? Does that suggest a specific format will be more useful? Maybe you’re hoping to persuade inner-city parents, in which case you might want to organise a door-knocking initiative or a local community meeting.

We cover some key formats below—click on the drop-down buttons to explore these in more depth. It’s not an exhaustive list, but hopefully you’ll find some inspiration here. Let us know if you’d like us to add any other formats to the list in the future, and we’ll do our best!

Graphics and Visuals

e.g. posters, infographics, banners, content for social media.

Why this format?
Good visuals make people feel first, and think second, and have the potential for wide reach (e.g. through meme-culture). They can bring abstract ideas to life, and easily bring principles, communities and experiences into the frame using symbols (e.g. the rainbow pride flag, or a fist raised in solidarity).

Top Tips

• Pick up some graphic design basics, and brush-up your photography skills.
• Search beautiful free image databases at: here, here and here.
• Make use of free software like Canva and Adobe Spark.

Podcasting

Why this format?
Podcasts are simple to create, intimate and impactful.

Top tips

• Make it regular, we humans generally thrive on routine!
• Imagine you’re talking to a friend – keep it natural and conversational.
• Start shorter (10 mins) and go longer (40+ mins) as you build your experience.
• Use free audio editing software, like Audacity.

For more, sign-up for free to SOGI’s Podcast e-learning course.

Advocacy Emails

Why this format?
Emails provide space for us to unpack our full narratives, and provide signposts and opportunities for action. It’s also possible to build-up deeper connection with people over time, if we get our email strategy right.

Top tips

• Get to the point in the very first sentence.
• Only ask people to do one thing.
• Make it personal.
• Is it clear for the reader: Why this? Why me? Why now?
• Use the post-script.

For more, check out this guide from More Onion on crafting a good email. Social Movement Technologies provide in-depth training for folks who want to nail their email strategies for the long-term.

Let’s give it a go…

It’s time to finish your creative brief! 

We’ve set up a template for you to duplicate or download and have a go at filling in your full creative brief, ideally with your group (but it’s okay to do this solo too). Take another look at Sho’s example above for inspiration, and let us know if you need any support?

If you’d like to, please send a copy of your brief or a prototype of your narrative intervention to us by email or on Twitter/X. We’d love to see what you’re creating. 

Let’s get reflective…

We reckon there may be enough learning links and creative inspiration to reflect on in this chapter, so we’ll leave it there! 

In the next chapter, we’ll plan the path ahead for implementing your communications content or narrative intervention, and we’ll explore (meaningful) ways to monitor your impact. Meanwhile, if you’ve got any questions or feedback you’d like to share, feel free to drop us an email on courses@publicinterest.org.uk