Digital Storytelling and Policy Change: Bringing Campaigns to life through personal messages and testimonies

Background:

Policy campaigns involve a lot of data and message collection– but this information is meaningless if not brought to life through storytelling. Digital resources including videos, GIFs, images, and websites are critical to creating an emotional charge behind your campaign. If you’re able to employ these strategies with purpose, you’ll move a strong base of supporters for your issue.

Program background:

This session will discuss the methods of digital storytelling and using online strategies to progress policy campaigns with examples from three different policy change efforts:

“No Minor Sale” works to educate the population about the dangers of illegal tobacco sales to minors, and the benefits of tobacco retail licensing. A cohesive campaign titled, “DREAMS” launched in 2018 featuring an online video of a local mom suffering the effects of early tobacco use. This video and accompanying creative pieces (gifs, digital ads, etc) brought her story to life, making the issue of underage tobacco sales personal for the community.

“Free The Night” is a campaign in Oklahoma working to support local bars/clubs that voluntarily agree to make their businesses smokefree. The campaign used two video-based campaigns: one telling stories of local musicians and the other the story of local bar owners who have gone smokefree. Each campaign included web, gifs, digital, and social media strategies. These features gave the campaign momentum and increased the number of bars interested in converting. “Counterbalance VT” and “Connecticut T21” collected messages on the ground, then used them to tell local stories through animated GIFs and interactive website collages. See how these efforts create and extend the in-person support they’ve garnered.

Evaluation Methods and Results:

No Minor Sale

• 2+ million total Facebook impressions 142,000+ engagements (12,897 link clicks to No Minor Sale’s website, 129,489 video completions, 306 content shares, and 176 comments)
• 37 events in 19 cities, generating 2,865 handwritten messages of support from 126 cities
• 139 pledges online
• 16 in-person presentations to local community groups, generating 11 campaign partners for NMS

Free The Night:

• 39 Bars & Clubs Converted to Smokefree
• 50+ Community Events
• 8,700+ Handwritten Messages of Support and 450+ Photo Petitions of Support
• 23,000+ Visits to Mobile-Friendly Smoke-Free Bar & Club Finder
• 222,000+ Online Actions in Support of Smokefree Bars
• 40 Musician Partners/Supporters
• 8,400+ Facebook Supporters
• 30+ Earned Media Stories (Newspaper, Blogs, TV & Radio)

Counterbalance VT and Connecticut T21: Engagement examples and strategic results will be discussed.

Conclusions:

Storytelling is an essential strategy to create a groundswell of support for campaigns. Digital tools bring these stories to life and engage audiences in a progressive way, making it more likely that your campaign will garner extensive support and succeed in your objectives.

Implications for research and/or practice:

This presentation will give practical examples and strategies for utilizing digital media to tell stories and advance policy campaigns on the ground and online.