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Communicating Outside the Box

A comprehensive tool for developing effective communication strategies. Learn how to clarify objectives, survey the environment, identify target audiences, craft compelling messages, plan communication activities, and review your plan. Includes helpful resources and case studies.

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Communicating Outside the Box

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  1. Communicating Outside the Box • Open Society Foundations

  2. Communications Planning Tool • CLARIFY YOUR OBJECTIVE • What are you trying to accomplish? • Make your objective SMART • Specific • Measurable • Achievable Realistic • Time-bound • SMART: In one year, move 100 people from an institution in Zagreb to community housing. • Not SMART: End segregation of people with mental disabilities

  3. Communications Planning Tool • 2. SURVEY YOUR ENVIRONMENT • Don’t craft a communications plan in isolation. • Ask yourself: What staff resources do you have to devote to this plan? Are other organizations working on the issue from a different angle? If so, how will your work overlap? The answers to these questions may impact your plan.

  4. Communications Planning Tool • IDENTIFY DECISION MAKERS & TARGET AUDIENCES • Who has the power to give you what you want? If you can’t reach that person(s) directly, who can you reach that will influence your decision maker? • Each audience needs a specific message. • --Remember, the “general public” is never a target audience.

  5. Communications Planning Tool • 4. CRAFT MESSAGES • Identify a Shared Value: Start from a place of agreement • Address Barriers: What concerns does your audience have? • Make an Ask: What do you want your audience to do? • Look Ahead to the Future: What positive outcomes await?

  6. Communications Planning Tool • 5. PLAN COMMUNICATONS ACTIVITIES • Who will best connect with your audience? • What activities will you use to deliver your message? • Think outside the box.

  7. Communications Planning Tool • 6. FINAL REVIEW • Is It Doable? • Are your resources in line with your strategy? • Are you motivating the right people to take action? • Are there areas that require further research? • Can you measure progress?

  8. Resources • SPIN Academy: www.spinacademy.org • SMART Chart: www.smartchart.org • Tactical Technology Collective: www.tacticaltech.org

  9. Case Studies • Open Society Foundations

  10. Torture Map GOAL: Get human rights on the agenda of the annual meeting of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (held in Tashkent). OUTPUT: Human Rights Watch distributed a “tourist” map to meeting participants that included both landmarks around Tashkent and places where people had been tortured. The map literally gave people a tour of the data HRW had collected on abuses. KEY POINT: Sometimes projects will require gathering more or different data. HRW had information on the human rights abuses but not the right data for the map. Had to gather the actual addresses.

  11. Show Us the Money for Health GOAL: Raise public interest on funding crisis for health in Sub-Saharan Africa and build youth mobilization OUTPUT: Music video, dollar bill fact sheets, demonstrations KEY POINT: Tap into “bling culture” to highlight funding disparity

  12. Dirty Water GOAL: . Create mass media exposure alarming New Yorkers about the thousands of children dying daily from a lack of clean water, and the urgency to help with donations to UNICEF. OUTPUT: UNICEF created the Dirty Water vending machine and set it up outside a busy shopping center in NYC. People could donate a dollar in the machine or make a donation via SMS. KEY POINT: Jarring the apathetic.

  13. No Pain in Our Families GOAL: Provoke public discourse on issue of lack of pain medications in Georgia. OUTPUT: Concert, prime time commercials, 1-hour feature show on popular program Nanuka’s Show, Street Actions KEY POINT: Use mass media, popular entertainment and social media to highlight taboo topic.

  14. Sarajevo’s Red Line GOAL: . Commemorate 20th Anniversary of start of the war in Bosnia. OUTPUT: 11,541 empty red chairs to mark the lives lost in the conflict. KEY POINT: Drawing on national emotion and shared values.

  15. Women Can’t Wait GOAL: Raise support among UN Human Rights Council to adopt Working Group on Discrimination Against Women. OUTPUT: Equality Now campaigned for several years for this mechanism and organized a performance by Sarah Jones of Women Can’t Wait!, a dramatic peek into the lives of women who suffer legal discrimination of all kinds. KEY POINT: Use performance plus celebrities to convey serious messages to decision makers.

  16. The Drug Lords GOAL: Raise awareness of 50 years of failed drug policy and unintended consequences of punitive drug policies like the UN treaty. OUTPUT: Drug lords demonstrations outside UN, videos, spoofs. KEY POINT: Using satire to drive home a point.

  17. Why are these examples successful, or not?

  18. Things to consider:Data/facts are keyBudgetStaff time/skillsEthical concernsReputational questions

  19. Group Exercise In groups, identify 1 SMART objective and target audience. Discuss themes for messages and brainstorm potential communications activities. Come back and present to the group. You have three minutes to tell us what you want to do, how you plan to do it, and why it is a great idea.

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