On completing this lesson you will be able to recognise two strategies and two activities used by effective campaigns.
Environment campaigners around the world are tackling a long list of environment issues – over-development, land clearing, marine debris, over-fishing, mining, global heating, toxic chemicals, genetically modified organisms and many more.
To help campaigners take on this seemingly endless list Silent Reef has developed a simple approach to running effective environment campaigns that works for any environment issue.
Our approach consists of two elements:
Let’s take a look –
Campaign strategies
A campaign strategy describes how a campaign will achieve its goal. Our approach recognises two broad strategies:
- Advocacy
- Behaviour change
An advocacy strategy works to influence business and government decisions. Typical goals for campaigns using an advocacy strategy are to:
- Stop a development
- Create a national park
- Ban a toxic chemical
Advocacy campaigns achieve their goals by pressuring targets (e.g. a corporate CEO; a politician) to decide in their favour or circumventing targets to remove their power to decide the outcome.
Pressuring targets involves either convincing a target that the campaign goal (or other campaign solution) results in better outcomes than the issue or creating the conditions in which a target recognises that deciding in favour of the campaign is their only option.
Advocacy campaigns apply pressure on targets from many directions with the most powerful pressure usually coming from members of the public taking campaign-organised actions, such as petitions, letters, marches, strikes, boycotts and more.
A behaviour change strategy works to change people’s behaviours that damage the environment. Typical goals for campaigns using a behaviour change strategy are to:
- Stop public littering
- Reduce shark fin soup consumption
- Increase public transport use
Behaviour change campaigns achieve their goals by removing the barriers stopping people from making the change, barriers such as I have no reason to change and I do not know how to change and I do not have the resources or skills to change.
And here we see an important similarity with advocacy campaigns.
Advocacy campaigns must also remove barriers. In this case, the barriers stopping people from acting in support of the campaign goal.
And the crossovers keep coming because behaviour change campaigns sometimes use advocacy to remove barriers to change, for example, pressuring government to install litter bins to help create the conditions in which people stop littering.
Do not worry if you cannot tell whether yours is an advocacy or behaviour change campaign, especially if you are just starting out. It will be clear once you have set your goal and decided how you will achieve it. Our Write Effective Campaign Plans course shows you how.
One campaign to rule them all
For convenience, Silent Reef often speaks about advocacy and behaviour change strategies as two different types of campaign. However, this does not mean your campaign must fit neatly into an advocacy or behaviour change box. You can and should explore both boxes for ideas and techniques to use in your campaign.
For environment campaigners there is just one type of campaign – environment campaigns. And we use every available tool to achieve our goals.
Campaign activities
The second element of the Silent Reef approach to running effective environment campaigns is the activities campaigns use to achieve their goals. Once again, our approach recognises just two:
- Communication activities
- Non-communication activities
Campaigns are most effective when they use both together.
Communicating with the public is a crucial campaign skill.
Environment campaigns do not achieve their goals because they have great financial or political power. Typically they have little of both. Environment campaigns achieve their goals because they have great people power, and it is the role of the campaign communicator to build this power and direct it where it makes the most difference.
Campaigns communicate with many audiences consisting of members of the public, including the local community directly affected by the issue, the general public concerned about the issue or yet to realise the issue concerns them, and (for behaviour change campaigns) the change community – the people whose behaviour is damaging the environment.
Through their communication activities campaigns take their audiences from not caring to caring, from no involvement to active involvement, and from behaviour that damages the environment to behaviour that does no (or less) harm.
But although advocacy campaigns pressure targets to decide in their favour, neither advocacy nor behaviour change campaigns should pressure an audience to give their support.
Pressuring an audience can trigger denial (It’s not a problem) or resistance (Don’t tell me what to do!). Denial and resistance are potential dead ends. Causing people to act or change is very difficult once they have either of these reactions. Our Communicate Effective Campaign Messages course shows you how to avoid denial and resistance and motivate active support for your campaign.
Neither advocacy nor behaviour change campaigns should pressure an audience to give their support.
At the same time as communicating with their audiences, effective campaigns run non-communication activities.
Some non-communication activities help motivate people to act or change while others help create the conditions in which people can act or change. For advocacy campaigns, some non-communication activities increase pressure on targets or circumvent targets to remove their power to decide the outcome.
Non-communication activities take many forms, such as researching issue costs and solution benefits, working with industry on a technical solution and challenging an issue in court.
And while advocacy campaigners meet with their targets to explain public opposition, behaviour change campaigners meet with business owners and government politicians to secure the infrastructure and resources needed to make the change possible for their change community.
Take your campaign skills to the next level with Silent Reef online courses –
Write Effective Campaign Plans – Plan your path to campaign success from tactics to goal.
Communicate Effective Campaign Messages – Develop and deliver campaign messages that turn a passive public into active supporters.
So, this is the Silent Reef approach to running effective environment campaigns.
Using communication and non-communication activities, advocacy campaigns pressure targets to decide in their favour or circumvent targets to remove their power to decide, and behaviour change campaigns remove the barriers stopping people from changing a damaging behaviour.
Using this approach will make your campaign more effective. But a note of caution – it does not guarantee campaign success.
This is because the final decision is not yours to make. Targets can decide against your campaign regardless of the pressure you put them under and people can decide not to change a damaging behaviour no matter how many barriers you remove.
But this does not make you powerless while others decide the success of your campaign. Your power – or rather, your superpower – is the determination to keep on campaigning until your natural areas, wildlife, community and local businesses are protected and safe.
You now understand in broad terms the Silent Reef approach to running effective environment campaigns. Your course shows you in detail how to use this approach in relation to your chosen subject.