Three tips for making people the focus of your policy work
By Austin Berg, Director of Content Strategy at Illinois Policy Institute
Drawing attention to your message can come in a lot of different forms.
But one way to really stand out can be stories.
Here are three things to keep in mind if you’re thinking about launching a storytelling initiative at your organization:
Disclaimer: “Stories” in this piece are defined as personal interviews with real people, documented with photo, video and/or written word. Fictional stories can be really effective too, but those are a whole different animal.
The game is attention. You probably don’t remember a single story from Occupy Wall Street. You remember “the 1%.”
Not every issue needs a story. Scarce dollars might be better invested in direct lobbying, polling, or email acquisition instead of being spent on getting 10 personal stories on a given issue—especially if you don’t have budget to properly promote them to the right audience. In fact, trying to shoehorn stories into an issue where they don’t fit can hurt more than help you.
At the same time, compelling stories can significantly reduce your conversion costs in a digital campaign and often provide an added benefit in the form earned media.
Personal stories are different from other pieces of content because they are very effective at leveraging two things: relatedness and fairness. Good stories over-perform in social media because of this. For more details, I would encourage you to stop reading this article and go read this 2008 study by David Rock.
What do we mean by relatedness and fairness?
Relatedness might come from obvious things like the way someone looks, the way they talk, or even how they cook. But it can also come from things that are deeper, like their work ethic or how much they love their children.
In 2015, Illinois Policy Institute was making a documentary on food carts in Chicago. This was in the Vine era when 90% of marketers were saying nobody had the attention span for long videos. We were pushing six minutes on this video and wanted to cut, so we got rid of a sequence of the vendor explaining how she makes her tamales.
But then we remembered relatedness. And we put it back in.
The video received one million views organically on Facebook and sure enough, so many of the comments were to the effect of: “That’s how my mom makes them!” “Tamales oaxaqueños >>>>” And so on.
A single image of a person, even if it lacks perfect polish, delivers enormous amounts of information: from how someone carries themselves, to where they are located, to their fashion and their facial expression. All of this or none of this can be relatable. The key to one of our best-performing pieces of content ever—a photo and story of a man leaving Illinois for Arizona—was relatedness.
Even more powerful than relatedness can be fairness.
When someone perceives something as unfair, it activates a part of their brain linked to disgust, which results in a powerful threat response that can spur action. We can all think of stories in the policy space that revolve around treatment many perceive as unfair. It may be a tax hike, an unjust criminal punishment, or plain old corruption.
These ground rules should be a solid foundation for thinking about how to incorporate stories into your marketing.
But be careful. None of this matters if your stories aren’t authentic. Just as recognizable as relatedness or fairness is lack of authenticity. This can be hard to put into words. But like the uncanny valley, you know it when you see it.
When you cut corners on authenticity, you risk not just telling a bad story, but ruining trust in your brand in the long term.
Austin Berg is the Director of Content Strategy at Illinois Policy Institute.
