2.6 Messengers & Supporters

The second step of the narrative change campaign planning process – Build out the elements - consists of eight elements that guide you through the development of the campaign tools and approach. On this page, we focus on the sixth element - Messengers & supporters.
 

1. Messages
2. Stories
3. Slogans & hashtags
4. Evidence
5. Visuals
6. Messengers & supporters
7. Threshold forum/publication
8. Action plan

 While the elements in the table above are presented in a series, the reality of this step is that you need to iterate back and forth among the different tools through the campaign build out process. 

In the sixth element of the build out process, we turn to another powerful pillar of any narrative change campaign seeking to build trust with target audiences – messengers and supporters. As many advocacy practitioners say and we emphasise in our work, the messenger is often as important as the message. Put simply, if the source of the message is trusted by your target audience and has legitimacy in the community, it will be a lot easier to get your message across. In fact, if the default expectation at the start is that the source should be believed, before they even begin to speak, you are 10 steps ahead. However, the opposite is also true, and is another dimension of the predictable irrationality of human behaviour, where we often almost automatically dismiss or ignore unknown or untrusted sources1 . 

Choosing suitable messengers and supporters involves two main tasks: 

As best you can, choose messengers and supporters that are legitimate voices for the middle.

In your campaign plans, in the best-case scenario, you are looking for messengers that are trusted in the tribe of your more conservative target segment(s) of the middle and for these segments, these can often include people like community leaders, journalists from trusted newspapers, people wearing a uniform (police, firemen etc), faith leaders, and teachers. To give a good example of an organisation investing in putting together a network of such messengers, the National Immigration Forum in the USA has a group called ‘Bibles, Badges and Business’, who as their name would imply, are faith leaders, police and firemen and business people who politically are more on the right, but who are also supportive of migrant inclusion and willing to speak out about it. So, you can clearly see that by putting together this group of supporters, campaigns from this coalition will have a lot more legitimacy with middle audiences than those more firmly from the liberal corner.

This is a good example of using a strong messenger in a national campaign featuring an ambulance crew in Germany, who have a volunteer Syrian refugee working with them. The volunteer/refugee says “this land has given me protection” (Dieses Land hat mir schutz gegeben) and with the ambulance man - a strong and trusted messenger for the middle providing public services - answering, “now we protect it together” (jetzt schutzen wir es gemeinsam). This campaigning effort is an attempt to reframe a strong fear-based, anti-migrant narrative around the threat of young male refugees travelling alone, and you can see that such a picture with this messenger is an attempt to build resonance first and create the kind of dissonance we have been discussing throughout these guidelines, to catalyse some rethinking.
 
CASE 1 – British Future – Poppy Hijab – UK 
 
In the launch letter for the campaign which was published in the Daily Telegraph (a trusted source for the middle), there were 21 signatories – nine of which were current or previous member of parliament, five held titles (e.g. Sir or Baron), seven were army officers, and four military historians. So, these are not only people who provide support to the claims of the campaign, but more importantly, are people of standing for the audience in the Telegraph and middle in the UK.
 
CASE 2 – Hope Not Hate – Shrewsbury Muslim Prayer Centre - UK
 
In the campaign, the appeal to a group of conservative county councillors adjudicating on a planning application for the prayer centre was an argument based on a core conservative value of the right to worship. They were also able to convince Christian leaders/priests to deliver this message to the politicians, i.e. their own faith leaders from their own community. 
 

 
Work on getting committed and skilled spokespeople and supporters who are a good fit for the campaign.

As evident in the second example, this question of messengers covers both those who are the potential spokespeople for the campaign (literally messengers) and also those who can support your positions and be your more temporary champions. It is often the case that it is difficult to get individuals to commit to taking a leading role in a campaign, but you can get supporters to play specific smaller roles and also to publicly support you in your efforts. This is obviously a core consideration in putting together a team and coalition behind the campaign. As can be seen from the third case, Hope not hate decided not to be the face and voice of their own campaign, but instead drew on faith leaders to play this role. Among many campaigners we’ve consulted and work with, there is a realisation that you may not automatically be the right messenger for campaigns targeting the middle. This may be a difficult realisation for some activists and does entail putting your ego aside for the sake of the campaign!

While legitimacy is a key starting point for messengers or spokespeople, on a practical note, they also have to be willing and able to deliver the intended message in the campaign. Good messengers are usually people with good communication skills, speak well in public and who are warm and engaging. Further, you have to be sure they are politically and interest-wise on the same page as you and not deviating from the messages of the campaign for other ends.

• Who are your intended spokespeople for the campaign? Do they have the legitimacy to be believed by your middle target audiences?
• Do your planned spokespeople have the communication skills needed?
• What other support can you get from people who are trusted by the audience?
• Does your choice of spokesperson and supporters serve to support and reinforce the campaign message?

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• 1Kahneman, Daniel (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. & International Centre for Policy Advocacy (2012) Making Research Evidence Matter: A Guide to Policy Advocacy in Transition Countries.