Lesson 9 - Engage strategic messengers beyond the base of allies


Essence

Build partnerships to engage unusual allies trusted by your target audience in the role of campaign messengers and spokespeople - they can help in overcoming existing scepticism towards CSOs.
 


Insight

In any advocacy initiative, the messenger is as important as the message, i.e. if you can find a spokesperson or messenger that your target audience is already inclined to believe and trust, you have already done half your job. In the civic space arena, the main goal of narrative attacks is to undermine trust in the civil society sector, and is often achieved through aggressive defamation, vilification and smear campaigns. In working to effectively reach and engage broader public audiences, getting as many of the trusted messengers and influencers of the movable middle to publicly support your position is often a key step in rebuilding credibility and trust towards CSOs among sceptical audiences. 
 
Partnership building work for a civic space campaign will normally start by mobilising peers and allies who will have appeal for the existing CSO supporter group. Additionally, when considering making an appeal to sceptical middle groups, it’s important to honestly acknowledge that the lead CSO and/or existing allies may not be the best messengers! In this case, bringing on board unusual allies is important, and can include religious leaders, journalists, sports people, celebrities, business leaders, and even politicians. The advice from Beautiful Trouble which we included in our resource on strategic communications coalitions is relevant in this case of a broader public target audience: “if you’re not uncomfortable, your coalition is too small”1 .
 


 
Cases

- Kenya - Campaigners were able to recruit religious leaders, politicians who had a civil society background, as well as a range of people from the public and private sectors who were at stake to be most affected by the proposed changes that would have resulted in a loss of employment and service provision in their regions. They also were able to get support from within the executive branch of government, e.g. the ministries of finance/treasury and health, who would also be directly affected by the proposed changes. 
 
In addition, key messengers in the Kenyan case also came from the large development CSOs which work closely with governments and are at the heart of service provision in wedge issues such as health and social welfare. These are not unusual allies, but many have reported that organisations not directly publicly targeted in civic space attacks are often not aware how certain legal changes could also affect their funding and status. Once they gain this realisation, campaigners can then also recruit community groups/association, unions and religious movements.
 
 - Kyrgyzstan – In this case, campaigners reported that having a “choir of arguments” creating pressure was key to their victory. These included business people from across the key sectors of the economy talking about why shrinking civic space is also a problem for them. Further, people within the executive branches of government at various levels and even politicians in the parliament, came out in support of the campaign and coalition2 . 
 
See the Advocacy Cases Section 6 for more details and background on the cases.


 
Action

  • Make partnership building a task in the campaign team from day 1 -  In our experience, campaign teams have tended to focus their efforts on messages and content with the partnership work left for later and often being a last-minute rush, rather than a key pillar of the strategy. Given the core role that the rebuilding of trust plays in civic space campaigns and the important role of a broad-based coalition in achieving that goal, we recommend having someone or a team (if you can afford it) working to bring partners on board from day 1. See our ’10 keys for mobilising strategic communications coalitions’ resource for strategic and practical advice on doing this work.


 
What you can get wrong 

  • Over-relying on messengers - Campaigning to deliver change is a long-term endeavour entailing lots of hard work, and it’s important to remember that messengers are often there for you to do just one job, such as post online a few times, introduce you to people, or attend or host a few events. They don’t normally become part of the campaign team! This is also an issue in the policy advocacy arena with so-called ‘policy brokers’3 . For this reason, as one of the Kazakh campaigners we supported argued, you need to work on a “diverse coalitions of artists, influencers, NGO leaders, private sector and politicians” to ensure strength and sustainability.

 

  • Thinking that celebrities are always the best messengers - When the subject of campaign messengers comes up, the default answer from many is to get celebrities on board. To be clear, if you can get their support and they are effective in delivering the message you want, then this can work in creating attention and momentum. But often a noisy focus on a campaign with lots of media attention is not what is needed. For example, the backing of an influential academic with no public presence can be key to moving a policy process forward. So, it’s important to be tactical in planning to deploy partners and the type of support they can best offer at the right time to achieve defined advocacy goals.

 

  • Being unrealistic about working with social media influencers – in the early days of social media, people were excited by the promise of working with social media influencers to mobilise public support, avoiding the gatekeeping in the traditional media sector. With the growth of social media business, many important influencers have agents and it really requires a significant investment of time and money to get them on board for a social cause. You may be able to get a committed champion influencer to come on board for your campaign, and who would even be willing to make their own content for the campaign. However, our experiences regarding influencers has been that they are more risk-averse and financially-motivated. In the Kazakh case, influencers were willing to share campaign material, but not publicly state their support for the campaign or even share the campaign hashtag. This kind of risk aversion in protecting their brand is not so surprising in that environment, but the investment in the cause was significantly less than the campaigners were hoping for in bringing influencers on board.

 

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