Be honest…are your campaigns getting cut-through?
A number of campaigning organisations approached us last year, feeling frustrated that the government wasn’t listening to them.
We’d been vocal about the fact that too many campaigners were ignoring the science behind effective communication and behaviour change.
And we knew that was why their messages weren’t getting through.
So we designed a campaign to fix it.
We decided to use our public affairs backgrounds, behavioural science expertise and communications experience to teach the sector how to put their issues on the political agenda.
And in just 12 weeks, we reached and engaged over 350,000 people (organically, with no advertising spend) and shifted the narrative in the climate and nature communications space.
Here’s the 3 comms tactics that made this campaign so effective…
1. Rhymes and puns
“Coughs and sneezes spread diseases”
“Beanz Meanz Heinz”
“You only get an oo with Typhoo”
There’s a reason why some of the most memorable advertising slogans in the world rhyme.
Behaviourally, rhyme increases believability.
Studies have shown that rhyming proverbs were 17% more believable than their non-rhyming counterparts.
When tested with brand slogans, the rhyming versions were rated 22% more trustworthy, and the participants were 10% more willing to try the brands.
Rhyming also more than doubles memorability – a crucial factor if you want people to listen and take action.
However, it’s a tool that’s fallen out of favour in communications and advertising in recent years, especially as brands and agencies have focused more heavily on purpose messaging.
Behavioural marketeer Richard Shotton and colleagues argue that this is because agencies want to appear sophisticated and academic to justify their fees, and because their pay is not tied to the performance of their comms they haven’t got “skin in the game” so aren’t prioritising science-backed techniques that drive results.
(It’s one of the reasons we’re so proud of our industry-leading results, and why we do focus on science).
We knew we needed to include some hard-hitting messaging that would play into the doom-heavy messaging the sector had been using – to capture attention from the campaigners we wanted to engage, and add a sense of urgency to inspire action.
But we also know that doom and gloom doesn’t create behaviour change, it just triggers fight or flight and turns your audience off.
So to make this work, we balanced it with a number of puns, rhymes and light-hearted slogans with a serious underlying message.
Again, it’s been proven that if you can trigger laughter or positive emotions from your audience when viewing your comms, memorability and persuadability increases.
We also played into people’s front-of-mind priorities, making climate messages and calls to action relevant to them and their families, and drawing on relatable cultural references to childhood books like ‘One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish” to create warmth, nostalgia and an emotional connection to the call to action.
The result was a balance of highly engaging, shareable and memorable content that got organic cut-through.
2. A reasonable ask
Too often, campaigning organisations are ignored because their asks don’t translate into policy, or make political sense.
Amending existing legislation is much quicker and easier than creating new legislation, yet campaigning organisations often push for new laws, for example.
While this campaign wasn’t about changing policy, we wanted to show what a reasonable ask would look like:
1.5% of parliamentary time dedicated to climate and nature issues.
Sounds simple. Feels obvious. Makes you wonder why the government isn’t already spending at least that much time.
And that’s the point.
As an ask it was easy to agree with, because it felt like common sense.
Members of the public didn’t have to work hard to understand and support it, and for politicians, it didn’t feel like an overpromise that they wouldn’t be able to deliver.
From there, we would have started building the influence and relationships to campaign for how they use that time. (Although, in this case, we worked with our campaigning clients to do that through their organisations, driving change at COP28 and contributing to a number of government consultations on policy changes).
There’s nothing wrong with breaking your campaign plan into stages and aiming for a series of smaller wins rather than one big change. In fact, it’s good public affairs practice.
3. Trusted messengers
Well-established, trusted messengers are the key to successful messaging.
Who is saying it is just as important as what they are saying, especially when it comes to advocacy campaigns.
The Edelman Trust Barometer shows that we are more likely to trust “someone like me” as a trusted expert, and we know from behavioural science that we’re more likely to do something that our peers are doing, thanks to social norms.
Once we’d captured the attention of campaigning organisations, we needed to teach them the principles of effective campaigning.
But to drive lasting behaviour change, we needed to do it with a trusted messenger, and de-risk the behaviour change by showing that it was already working for their peers.
While NGO representatives and CEOs rank as neutral for the general population, they are the “someone like me” we were trying to engage – so we knew that they needed to be our trusted messengers.
We designed a series of video interviews, called Sustainability’s Leading Voices, where we could put trusted CEOs, business and NGO leaders and seasoned campaigners in front of our audience, and have them share the campaigning techniques and policy changes that have worked for them.
We used livestreaming technology to make these as engaging as possible, and then had our editors create a series of short clips for Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts – even branding them in our guests’ branding for some of our speakers, so they could share them on their channels too.
This highly engaging format worked with the algorithms to extend our reach, and get a longer lifespan out of each piece of cornerstone content too.
Did it work?
Not only did the campaign reach and engage over 350,000 people organically in 12 weeks, we also achieved our goal of changing how the sector talks about climate and nature to put these causes on the political agenda.
- The polling data we gathered during the campaign has been used by 4 NGOs and campaigns so far, to build an evidentiary basis for sensible policy asks in food waste, fair pay for farmers, plastic pollution and anti-deforestation policies.
- Our behaviour change messaging was adapted by 2 businesses and 1 NGO that we worked with following the campaign, to develop their advocacy and public affairs strategy in advance of the 2024 general election.
- Our positioning research has been used by 5 consultancies and comms agencies and turned into keynote speeches, webinars, out of home advertising campaigns and advisory work with their clients, creating the ripple effect needed to shift the narrative long term.
- The Leading Voices series proved so popular with our audience that it will be returning in 2024 as a regular series. Prepare to hear from the Chief Executive of a global advocacy organisation, one of the most prominent sustainable fashion campaigners, ESG leaders and more! Coming soon…
And, crucially, when the 2023 by-elections caused a rowing back on green policies across the political spectrum, we were ready. Our clients were fully briefed on how to respond, and were able to pivot their messaging to prioritise cost of living and keep climate and nature on the agenda.
We were proud to support a number of clients to implement this strategy in their advocacy work at COP28, which saw some historic outcomes for climate and nature, and we’re looking forward to supporting even more public affairs teams, campaigners and climate and nature focused organisations in the run up to the 2024 general election.
So if your climate and nature campaigns could benefit from greater cut-through, and you want to embrace the science to drive real change, do get in touch.
