To make progress on your cause your message needs to be clear, memorable, and easy to convey. In this episode you’ll learn how to craft compelling messages that resonate with your audience and understand what your message should be and what it should not be. This episode’s guest is Joe’s former boss, Rich Neimand, whose messaging was so effective that President Obama included it in an inaugural address.
Messaging for advocacy is a central skill you must master to win your advocacy campaign. Convincing your audience to be on your side is not an easy task, and you need to draft messages that stay true to your organization’s goals but do not sound just like your mission statement. In this episode, Joe and Martín will teach you how to develop your messaging and explain what you need to keep in mind when it comes to organizational flexibility and incremental success in advocacy messaging. Martín chats with Joe’s former boss, Rich Neimand, a master of messaging whose work was even included in one of President Barack Obama’s inaugural addresses.
Resources
Advocacy Message: Know Your Advocacy Campaign Goals
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If you have campaign questions or want to learn more, reach out to us using the contact information below.
Twitter: @cmpwrkshp
Instagram: @TheCampaignWorkshop
Email: marketing@thecampaignworkshop.com
Joe Fuld
Twitter: @joefuld
Instagram: @joefuld
Martín Diego Garcia
Twitter: @gmartindiego
Instagram: @gmartindiego
Presented by The Campaign Workshop
(Intro Music)
Martín Diego Garcia (00:07):
Hey folks, you're listening to How to Win an Advocacy Campaign, where you'll get an insider's perspective that teaches you not only how to fight for what you believe in, but how to win. I'm Martín Diego Garcia.
Joe Fuld (00:18):
And I'm Joe Fuld, and you can find us @CMPWRKSHP on Twitter or @thecampaignworkshop on Instagram. Welcome, and thanks for listening to episode three of How to Win an Advocacy Campaign. On the last episode, we talked about advocacy research and polling with Anna Greenberg. We talked about why you need research, what you need to know before you start your research. And it was, it was awesome. I mean, Martín, what are we talking about today?
Martín Diego Garcia (00:47):
Today? We're, we're taking it a step further and talk about how do you utilize that research in creating your messaging for advocacy. And when we talk about messaging, we're going to focus a little bit more on the campaigns you are running as a group or as an organization, right? So there's likely going to be an overall message for your group or your organization, whether you're solving homelessness or working on climate change, or you're working on education reform, there are going to be a larger message of your organization, but we're going to focus on how do you, how do you hone that message in when you're running a particular campaign, whether you're educating the community or running a legislative campaign, how do you think about tools to utilize, to really hone in your message so that you're targeting the right message to the right people at the right time. So, as we talked about in the last episode, your message is going to change and grow over time. And whether it's through the research you're doing, through polling you're doing, through conversations you're having with the audiences in whom you're communicating with right, or a pandemic happens, right. Or some other news phenomenon happens that sort of is out of your control. Your messages are going to have to shift and move and adapt with those changes. But you want to have a particular goal in mind and a long-term vision in mind to help you really structure what your message is going to look like. So, Joe, as organizations are thinking through developing a message, particularly for the campaigns and the efforts that they are doing, what are some of the elements they should be thinking about as they're building out a plan to develop that message?
Joe Fuld (02:25):
So, I mean, I think the first is clarity, right? Really understanding making sure that your message is clear to the general public using that message in a way to proactively answer questions that the public might have about an issue, having a very clear call to action. What do you want people to do to help move this thing forward? I think often that gets lost. I think we often make assumptions in the community that people know what to do. They don't, we need to have that call to action. And then I also think urgency is super important. Having a understanding of why now, why is this important? Now all has to be part of that advocacy message. And then you need to know that, of course that message is going to change and expand over time. It might be like bringing in other community members around an issue. So thinking about who that is, what coalition partners could be getting that buy-in on the message from your steering committee, but making sure it's accessible enough that other people can feel like and be a part of it and that it fits into an organization's primary and secondary goal.
Martín Diego Garcia (03:34):
Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about what could be a primary and secondary goal? And as you're thinking about creating that message, talk a little bit about buy-in like, who do you need buy-in from on these goals as you're communicating your message.
Joe Fuld (03:47):
So, I mean the primary goal could be passing a piece of legislation, but this piece of legislation might be a package of three or four different things you want over six years. And so buy-in might initially be a small group of people that really care about this issue, but as you get onto different pieces of your agenda, your platform, right, that group needs to expand to make sure that other people in the community care about it. Think it's a part of it. You know, what we're finding now is with advocacy, especially that there are a whole lot of issues that people care about, figuring out how you put your issue to the top of the list is really part of the messaging. Why now, why this urgency, why does this need to happen now? And you're gonna need to get community buy-in from other stakeholders, other groups, people within your group, maybe some non-traditional allies to make something happen now.
Martín Diego Garcia (04:47):
Alright Joe, I'm going to put you on the spot here because we train on this. Can you go through the seven Cs, which is a tool that sort of helps us think through how to really hone in your message?
Joe Fuld (04:57):
Sure. So, you know, first of all, I want to give full credit to Joel Bradshaw and Peter Fenn who taught me this. I did not make it up this game from them. But I've been using this since college, and the seven Cs are clear, concise, contrastive, connective, creative, compelling, and consistent, right? Those are the seven Cs and that is seven. So that's good. I can also count to seven, which is nice.
Martín Diego Garcia (05:23):
But they're utilized, as you are thinking through developing your message, right? As we think about message, we think about words and most folks want to use a lot of them. And so what this utilizing the seven Cs really helps you sort of do a checklist of is my message clear, right? Is it simple to understand is my message concise, right? You want to be as use as few words as possible to get your message across, is it contrastive? And we'll talk about that as I go into what, how to utilize a message box, but there's going to be some opposition likely to what you're doing. And so are you contrasting with whatever that opposition messaging is? Is it connected? Does it connect unusually emotionally with your viewers? And you can do that through storytelling. Is it creative? There's a lot of noise happening in the world, right. And so how do you get creative to catch somebody's eye? Is it compelling? Is it compelling enough that you have a sense of urgency behind it to move folks to action? And is it consistent, right? You want to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat your message. And you want to repeat it and have it consistent across all the mediums in which you are communicating to your target audiences about.
Joe Fuld (06:28):
Yeah. I mean, what I'll say on that is every campaign, you know, I work on someone is like, Hey, I'm really bored of our message. We've been saying it all the time. And what I'll say is consistency is important, even though we're bored of the message, the voters have not heard the message at all that people that you're trying to advocate to have not heard your message. So it is really important to be consistent on that message and know that just because you're saying it all the time doesn't mean that you need to change the message. It means
Martín Diego Garcia (06:58):
It's working, right? Because remember a person needs to hear your message anywhere from eight to 12 times in order for that message to really start resonating with them and them actually start listening and remembering it. And so you also want to utilize these seven Cs and a message box. And when you're trying to hone in your overall message, as you start talking to different audiences. So whether you're talking to legislators or you're talking to the community, right? Whether you are talking to older folks or younger folks, whether you're talking to urban folks or rural folks, you're not necessarily sending them different messaging or pandering to them. Right. But you you're going to be turning your message or honing in your message to connect individually with those groups. What is the most important to rural folks versus urban folks when it comes to education? Right. And so talking about particularly now during the pandemic, right, there may not be broadband support out in rural areas as there are in our urban areas. So as you're talking about funding for education, it may mean ensuring that there is access to the internet and some of these rural places. But your core message isn't really changing. You're just adding supportive individualized sort of personalized messaging to these different groups and audiences. But Joe, can you talk about how we utilize a message box in order to really hone in the best messages overall and for these individual groups you're talking to?
Joe Fuld (08:18):
Well, absolutely. And again, you can find information on the message box on our website@thecampaignworkshop.com, just go to the blog and type in totally message box. And this is a tool we've talked about in season one, but we also use it for advocacy as well. And what a message box does it allows you to create the back and forth of a advocacy campaign or an organizing campaign to really understand what is the, what is the conversation going to be in that campaign? And it is four separate sections and it is, what do we say about us? What do they say about us? What do we say about them? And what do they say about themselves? And filling out those boxes honestly allows us to really have an understanding of if there's money, if there's a public conversation, what is that conversation going to be like? What is your, what is the opposition going to say? What are you going to say? And you're able to then take elements of your opposition's conversation and move it over to your box and say, all right, if we want to knock you late against this attack, what do we say? Or if we want to be more aggressive in our opposition, to what you know, our opponents are doing, what do we say here? It really allows us to be thoughtful about the message before we put it out to the public.
Martín Diego Garcia (09:44):
As you answer those questions that Joe has laid out through the message box, it really helps you get a better sense of what is your target audience hearing from all of these different perspectives, right? They're hearing your positive message. They're hearing your opponent's positive message, but they're also hearing what you're saying about your opponent and what your opponent's saying about you and having a better understanding of what those, all of those different pieces are, will hopefully make your message stronger than your opponent's and help you break through all that noise.
Joe Fuld (10:13):
That's right. And you know, we're really excited this week to hear from Rich Niemand, who works with organizations on message development. I should say I worked with him or for him early on in my career. He was one of my early bosses. And I learned a lot working at the firm Bates Neimand. He now is at a firm called the Neimand Collaborative, and he works with groups, organizations, and foundations on building messages. And he's going to talk to us about getting started with building a message and what mistakes to avoid. So really excited to hear from Rich. Once we come back from the break.
(Music)
Martín Diego Garcia (11:03):
We're back and I am joined now by Rich Neimand, who is somebody I've only heard through Joe's stories, but super excited to finally get to meet Rich Neiman is the president of Neimand Collaborative, a social impact marketing firm that leverages private and public sector market forces to message progressive causes and create change for the public good. Rich specializes in education, health, financial inclusion, transportation, and conservation. Before founding Neimand Collaborative, Rich was the creative director at Bates Neimand, creative and marketing director at JAMKO Service Corporation, and art director for the nationally known and groundbreaking Jacoby and Meyers law offices. And back in the day, he was one half of a duo referred to as the brisket squad. Thanks, rich. Thanks for joining us.
Rich Neimand (11:48):
Thank you.
Martín Diego Garcia (11:49):
So obviously we're going to start with the brisket. What was this brisket squad? Well,
Rich Neimand (11:54):
The brisket squad is tough stuff cooked up in gravy that in the words of the late great Mr. Bill from Los Angeles, who's Mr. Bill's barbecue, you don't need teeth to eat. More specifically it was the moniker and fax setter for the team at Bates Neimand back in the days when Ross Bates and I were partners. And when fax machines were used for instantaneous communication with campaigns. Ubrisket has always been my personal metaphor for good messaging. It's a tough piece of substance made easily digestible and delicious.
Martín Diego Garcia (12:28):
That's amazing, and probably the best way I've heard about the business that we work in.
Rich Neimand (12:33):
Right.
Martín Diego Garcia (12:33):
That's fantastic. So we brought you on to talk a little bit about your experience in messaging and particularly messaging in the advocacy space. So for our listeners and organizations who are thinking about messaging, how do you begin to build a message for advocacy?
Rich Neimand (12:48):
The same way you figure out who you want to talk to and how you want to talk to them at a cocktail party. It's really an intuitive way. What we do is we meet people where they are we find connecting interests and then we help lead them to a better place. And we do that in a four step process that I'm going to very much oversimplify, but the first thing we do is we set goals. We try and find out what people are trying to achieve with whom and how fast and look at how hard or easy that may be. The second is we do research mostly motivation research among stakeholders and audiences about where the values of the organization collect with what those stakeholders value, how they really connect. And we actually develop, have a complex way of developing the DNA of decision-making of these audiences and figuring out how to create one message for them. From there, we take that one message that builds valued relationships across the entire group of people who are necessary to create social change. And from that, we create a message framework and a brand framework that guides all advocacy messaging, and most importantly behaviors and expenditures. And then we market it. We create a huge marketing plan saying that, well, it's going to take 10 years to do this. Here's the first step, third step, fourth step. Here's where we should be. And we don't make any expenditures unless we know what the impact's going to be.
Martín Diego Garcia (14:23):
That sounds, one, super simple. And two, I would imagine takes a very long time to do.
Rich Neimand (14:27):
It does, and multiple partners who are, who are much smarter than we are.
Martín Diego Garcia (14:31):
And so as these organizations, whether they're smaller, large, or starting to think about this, you mentioned research and some other pieces, what are some other kinds of infrastructure or support that these organizations should put in place before even starting this process of crafting messaging?
Rich Neimand (14:46):
Well, you know, that varies by every organization and their capacity, but in general what you need is money organization, strategy and implementation that that's how you win. So you have to be able to do that or put it together very quickly. You also need to be an organization that's willing to change in order to win, and you have to have the money in place to hire a great team to drive implementation. So good messaging is useless without great infrastructure. And all of that requires great leadership. And I would say the first thing you need to do is commit yourself to leadership. And all of our successful campaigns are the result of working with nonprofit leaders who are visionary, strategic, collaborative, and highly operational.
Martín Diego Garcia (15:35):
Absolutely. You hit on something there around like they, we often get from organizations, right? Well, this is how we've done it, or this is why we exist, or this is the messaging we've always used. And unless you're adapting to change to the current times and what is currently relevant, right? You are going to become quickly irrelevant with the messaging that you're using. So you touched a little bit about lead, on leadership and, and a number of different factors that, that go into crafting a message. What kind of buy-in is needed from organizations, from partners, from stakeholders, et cetera, and how should they go about starting to get that?
Rich Neimand (16:06):
Well, first off you need total buy-in otherwise it doesn't work, right? You know, if somebody is off message or somebody's off strategy, it's a nightmare. And it can quickly derail something, especially in a highly visible campaign. We get buy-in by engaging all the stakeholders in the process of goal setting and research on strategic and message development. And it's usually done in one-on-one interviews, really assessing what they feel is important to them, what they feel is out there, what they feel we should know. And then we actually put that to use, and then we keep them informed through our discovery and development process so that they feel included and heard. Ultimately they buy into the strategy and message because they help create it.
Martín Diego Garcia (16:57):
Yeah. So we talked a little bit about vision, right? And visionary leadership. How does an organization's vision influence its message and how can organizations develop a particular vision to help inform their messaging?
Rich Neimand (17:09):
First off, an organization's message must has to be consistent with its vision, but it can't sound like their mission or vision statement, right? And that's where people go absolutely off the rails with all this technical language. The other thing is in developing your vision, you really want to talk to the people who you want to serve. And so many times you have organizations that are out there taking a very academic approach without really getting down on the ground and seeing what people need and whether or not their vision is aligned with the realities of what's going on today. Organizations have to understand how to connect their values with what voters and stakeholders value, and they have to speak to them on their terms and in their language. Organizations should have a vision of where they want to go and be very open and fluid about how they want to get there.
Martín Diego Garcia (18:09):
Absolutely. I mean, I think I spend most of my time changing or wordsmithing the language in which our clients send us to be like, nobody understands this. Nobody's going to know what these words mean and this jargon that your're, you're trying to get to, to send to them, and you have to sort of turn it into what is the accessible language that they would understand while still delivering the message in an effective way.
Rich Neimand (18:31):
Yeah. I always think about my childhood growing up with my father who was from Brooklyn and it kind of a tough guy, you know, he was a machinist and he worked all the time and he would come home late at night. And I talked to him about all these things, that abstract things that I was interested in and social issues and everything else. And he would look at me and say, what are you crazy? And you just sort of have to like, get past that whole thing. You gotta, you gotta figure out how to talk to your father. And, and it's not talking to them on simplistic terms because I mean, this is a guy who knew how to balance a checkbook better than I did. Incredibly smart, could do calculus in his head. He didn't go to college. His worldly experience is still, is still much sharp is much sharper than mine, right? So I have to figure out how to communicate with him on words that, that, and things that he could understand and make that connection. Although we did go head to head for about 20 years, but that's all right.
Martín Diego Garcia (19:38):
Right, as every, every child and parent relationship goes. So as you know, right, organizations have competing interests, whether they're immediate actions or efforts that they are doing with sort of longterm community building strategy, education, et cetera. How does messaging work in relation to organizations short-term and long-term goals to have them weave together and be symbiotic versus being in contention with one another?
Rich Neimand (20:03):
Well, goals are goals. So short-term goals or long-term goals. We set w what we feel is that we go in and we set messaging at the highest level, but looking at the longterm, and then we start applying it to short-term opportunities. So that way you have consistency and you build messages strength over time. We ha we always keep in mind that the wide scale change that we want to do doesn't happen all at once. And so then it becomes a lot like what it used to be like when you're a kid trying to do those monkey bars, you know, where you get up on the steps and you're, and you're, and, you know, it's going to hurt your hands, but you grab that first wrung and you swing and you get to the second one. And the third one on the whole idea is to get enough momentum going, that you can get all the way to the end of it. And finally get off of those damn things.
Martín Diego Garcia (21:00):
Absolutely. What a great analogy. Right. But it is slow, but yet if you keep continued the momentum, you will, you will make it to the other side and hopefully have some larger impact, right, by the end of the, by the end of the longer-term goals there.
Rich Neimand (21:10):
Yeah.
Martín Diego Garcia (21:11):
Um so you have a ton of experience in the advocacy space, and particularly with messaging, any examples of some of your favorites of successful advocacy messaging? Yeah.
Rich Neimand (21:21):
I think that the multi-front communications campaign for the case against Proposition Eight and Defense of marriage equality stands out to me as our generation's high watermark for everything. And not just for messaging, you know, winning is everything and they did winning. Right. Of course, I'm really proud of the impact. We've been able to make for our clients. We're so consciously back room, right. And that a lot of people don't know what we do, but I, I kinda, I feel that our research and messaging for people for bikes has changed the way bike advocates grow and support building bike infrastructure in car centric cities, by speaking to improving everyone's mobility, you know, no matter what form of transportation they use, we just totally help them break through that dynamic of I'm a bike rider. You're a car that you hate me. I hate you. It, it just, you're not going to get support for that. I love what Protect Our Winters is doing with a message framework. We did for them to organize outdoor sports athletes and enthusiasts to say the natural areas they love from climate change. It's really hard to get them involved in advocacy. And we figured out a way to develop a message that helps them rise above politics and get people who tend to be solitary or physically oriented into the abstract thing of of advocacy.
Martín Diego Garcia (22:57):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. As you were naming all those issues, I was, I was personally identifying with a lot of them, right. As a California and somebody who identifies as LGBTQ as part of the community, right. Prop Eight, absolutely. As somebody who recently moved from the the East coast of DC, New York, public transportation, to California, where we are having that battle of car versus bike ride and what like wildfires and climate change. Right. I think as you, as you mentioned, we're all the backroom folks. I think of that scene from Devil Wears Prada where she's like somebody in this room decided that you were going to wear this specific color because this, this, and this, and there's this like trickle down effect of like, we have no idea how these messages are crafted, but they're so crafted so well that they get ingrained in our brains. And we're, we identify with them without knowing all of the work and the effort that into putting them together.
Rich Neimand (23:46):
Well, you know, my greatest joy is, is to hear something I wrote coming out of the mouth of somebody. And I think the peak of my career is I, I, I have two sons and they have absolutely no idea what I do or how I do it, or I try to explain it to them. They don't get it. And we're watching Barack Obama's inauguration. And two lines came out of his mouth that I had written for clients that got into, you know, his his messaging. And I sat there and screamed, that's my line, that's my line! That's my line. That's my line! I, I worked 10 years on that line. That's my line, you know, and they thought I was crazy,
Martín Diego Garcia (24:33):
But the impact is, like, I get goosebumps just thinking about that. Right. But like, to have somebody like president Obama who is right, who's speaking something to the nation, that was a brain child of yours is I can only imagine,
Rich Neimand (24:45):
Oh man, it's like Beyonce, you know?
Martín Diego Garcia (24:50):
Right, right, right, right, right. So last one, at least. Do you have any recommendations of some of your favorite resources when it comes to messaging tips, whether these organizations are trying to adapt and, and to, to the current space or, or just jumping into the advocacy messaging space for the first time?
Rich Neimand (25:08):
I think you have to find some professionals that you can trust. Talk, talk to people who have gone through the process through your peer networks find people who work for them and particularly find out whether or not they won. It's, it's not an academic exercise. Messaging is a is like an, it is an art it's, it's the combination of rationality and emotionalism that does it. And, and I think that if people like the, how to, part of it go to a professional who you've been referred to and look at their record, but I think if you just want to know how to message or learn how to do it, I think you have to look to outside to sources outside the profession to figure out really how to do it. You know for me, my, my career has been deeply touched and improved by my passion for art and fiction and music, particularly jazz, blues, and funk. Um you know, you listen to somebody like Thelonious Monk, and you think about how he builds on a theme and the importance of silence, right? Not saying everything, letting, letting the note be there, and what's not there letting what's not be there pauses the cadence and messaging James Brown. I mean, listening to James Brown, the dude is a master of seduction, right. I mean, he just is. And then the repetition repetition behind that you look at writers that a big part of messaging as narrative, and you look at writers like Jasmine Warren and Colson Whitehead, and they really astound me with their ability to communicate the emotional clarity necessary to change the reader. Right. I, you have to think about how that happens. Like how, when you read a book, it really affects you while the messaging for an organization. That's what it has to do. It can't be this thing that well, data shows that yada yada, yada, and therefore you should do it, the dataset. Well, yeah. Okay. You know, and then I also think that there's a lot of people out there it's very hard to understand the chaos of what's going on. And I dunno, I found people like the writers like Javier Marias and Roberto Bolano, Juan Gabriel uh Vasquez. They've been really instrumental in helping me understand the times we live in and how we should see it and react to them. And then the ways in which our personal foibles lead us to both failure and redemption you know, we all come to advocacy with a lot of personal foibles, a lot of blind spots, a lot of things. And we are going to have failures, but the idea that we're we're trying, and we're persistent, there is a chance for redemption. And to me, the only redemption there is, is winning is making progress. It, I don't want pyrrhic victories, I don't, it doesn't do anything for me. I, it, that background that I had in politics was you, you have to win on November or else you've lost for everybody. And that's the way I still feel an advocacy.
Martín Diego Garcia (28:35):
Yeah. Yeah. Um well, thank you so much for your insights. And I'm going to have to turn on James Brown now and see what I can learn as I am writing my messaging. But appreciate you joining us for this episode.
Rich Neimand (28:48):
Sure thing.
Martín Diego Garcia (28:48):
And to find out more about rich in some of what he talked about, check out the links in the description, but now we'll take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll discuss some of the key takeaways when it comes to messaging for advocacy, we'll be right back.
(Music)
Joe Fuld (29:15):
Well, in the words of James Brown, I feel pretty good about advocacy messaging after listening to that interview, or I feel good about it. So anyway, Rich highlighted some some things to think about when it comes to advocacy messaging about aligning with the values of your audience making sure that you build from small wins to a bigger win, thinking about the big picture and how that can make an an incremental focus and an incremental path to get you where you need to go. Your organization needs flexibility, and you really have to make sure you get buy-in from partners and make sure they feel involved and a part of the progress.
Martín Diego Garcia (30:01):
Yeah. I think one of the other important things that he'd touched on, right, was message consistently and how your message needs to be consistent, but it should not be a replication of your vision statement as an organization or your mission statement as an organization, right? You have a mission in which your organization is trying to achieve, and your message should relate to that and support that, but not be identical with that. I think the other thing that's important is right. It's how do you continue to understand that your message is not about you as an individual or you as an organization, right. But it's really about the audience and the targeted folks that you are communicating with. And the more you know about them, the more you're able to craft a message that will resonate with those targets. So continue to do that research, continue to do have those conversations, continue to collect that data so that as you were getting those more of that information, and you're able to hone in and personalize your message as much as possible so that it resonates with your audience.
Joe Fuld (30:57):
Absolutely. I mean, I think this whole idea that Rich talked about, about meeting people, where they are and using sort of where the constituent comes from and their story to motivate them to take an action is super important. People are going to have different reasons and different life experience that drives them to be a part of your movement. It's not all going to be the same right. In the world that I've worked in around you know, LGBT rights. Right? One of the things that I think about is it might be a family member that motivates folks. It might be their own personal story. It might be a friend's story, right? So thinking about what are ways they could be involved in the criminal justice work that we have done, like I often think about that. There might be people who have been, you know wrongly, you know, a part of the criminal justice system, and that's a motivator around a family member. It also might be someone thinks that, Hey, this is not a good use of my tax dollars. And that might be a motivation to get someone involved in criminal justice reform. I think you have to really think about who are the constituencies you're talking to and what is going to drive them and using those personal motivators to help bring them in to your coalition.
Martín Diego Garcia (32:15):
Great. And then be thinking about right, as you're, as you continue to have conversations in your campaign continues to move forward, right? How do you know that your, your message is resonating and then that's actually working right? And Rich talked about how one of his lines that he wrote ended up in a speech by president Obama, but I'm not sure we'll get there, but, but as you, as you start hearing your message, be repeated back to you, and that could be whether it's on social media, it's through conversations with community members, whether it's in the press, right. This, as soon as you start hearing your message getting repeated out in the world, you know, that it's resonating and you know that it's working. So keep those in mind.
Joe Fuld (32:52):
Yeah. And you're gonna really be able to see in real time, what are parts of your message anecdotally that are working with people and what is not right. And there are ways of you to test it in real time. That is not just anecdotal, but really, really quantifiable. Whether that's a digital ad that you can tell how many clicks, whether it's an email with subject lines that say how many opens you've got or applause on a zoom call, whatever it is. There are definitely ways that you can, judge, is your message working. Are you getting donations? Are you getting engagement? And you want to keep track of that as much as possible, and you need to try different modes of communication to see how you're reaching specific audiences. And if it's working for you.
Martín Diego Garcia (33:38):
Absolutely. Right. And again, going back to meeting people where they are, right? Like the more you know, about what other values they hold, what are their interests? What are their expectations you'll have a better sense of, is this message going to read better on Instagram versus on a TV ad on radio versus in a newspaper letter to the editor. Right. So think about all the different ways that you can communicate this message to meet your audience, where they're already getting their information. So in addition to honing in your message to make certain that it's resonating, you may also have to adapt your message to whatever medium in which you're communicating to your audience as well.
Joe Fuld (34:16):
Yeah. And you also really want to think about how does that message proactively answer the questions of the constituents you're trying to reach? How does it give them engagement and how does it proactively again, speak to them? If you can proactively answer those questions, you're going to get faster. Buy-In, you're going to get more engagement,
Martín Diego Garcia (34:37):
Right? For example, right? Like if, if you are working on the census and people don't really understand what the census does, your message should include the answer to, well by filling out the census, it means that we will get the revenue and the, and the resources we need from the state government to do X, Y, and Z. Right. You should already be answering the question before your audience has asked it. Right. So think about what that question is for your audiences know and research your audience so that you can home in your message, check out the blog so that you can take a look at how to utilize the totally message box in your campaign. But that is a wrap for this episode. Thanks for listening in, if you have any specific questions or comments about how to get ready for advocacy or set up advocacy goals and how that particularly homes in your message, feel free to reach out to us using our social media or emails that are in the show description.
Joe Fuld (35:26):
On the next episode, we'll be dissecting grassroots and grasstops advocacy with Christopher Coes. We'll walk through how they're different, but how they really can be complementary, and what your campaign needs to do to harness the power of both.
Martín Diego Garcia (35:42):
Definitely excited for that. So until next time, this is Martín Diego Garcia
Joe Fuld (35:46):
And Joe Fuld, breaking down how to win an advocacy campaign.
Martín Diego Garcia (35:51):
How to Win an Advocacy Campaign is Joe Fuld, Martín Diego Garcia, Hope Rohrbach, Daniel Lam, Heidi Job and Elena Veatch. Music by Mike Pinto. Sound editing by the Global Startup Movement. Special thanks to the team at The Campaign Workshop. Remember to review like, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
(Outro Music)