To be able to create effective cause-based action, we must understand our audience’s own narratives. We can then set narrative goals and guidelines for content creators. This is a three-step process.
Interview the audience
Interview groups, either in person or online, by race, income, gender and geography, to capture their stories. Probe more deeply by asking how specific political, economic, or social issues impact their personal narratives. These discussions can be online moderated discussions or video of in-person sessions, which are converted into transcripts.
Capture key narratives and archetypes, then create narrative themes from them
Review transcripts with campaign stakeholders to identify where their messaging intersects or diverges from audience narratives. Iterate to shape messaging for greater overlap with audience goals. Assess how the audience sees themselves in their own stories, and their narrative of society, race, gender, etc. Create a document highlighting key messaging and formats that complements and/or supports audience narratives and archetypes - a guideline for content creators to use that defines the audience narratives.
Compel and inspire content creators with narrative themes
Review scripts/videos/imagery from content creators to ensure they are speaking to the audience narratives and archetypes. The theme should be inspirational for content creators. Observe how stories impact the audience. Understand what works, doesn’t work, and why.
The goals of this process are:
Establish a process for the creation of cause-based action driven by audience narratives.
Inspire content creators to make great content based on qualitative, story-based analysis of their audience.
Allow for iteration and adjustment, acknowledging that the creative process involves intuition.
Keep the process as simple and cost-effective as possible to avoid decision-making paralysis.
Make sure the content gets better with each iteration.