{"id":2925,"date":"2022-07-06T16:23:43","date_gmt":"2022-07-06T16:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=2925"},"modified":"2022-07-06T16:23:43","modified_gmt":"2022-07-06T16:23:43","slug":"now-thats-interesting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=2925","title":{"rendered":"Now That’s Interesting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month I saw a story on Twitter<\/a> that made me think \u201cthat\u2019s a great idea for a movie plot\u201d: an \u2018inciting incident\u2019 from which a story unfolds.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bird researchers had fitted a GPS tracker to an Oystercatcher, a coastal wading bird. First it flew from it’s home near Dublin to the island of Sanday in the Orkneys, north of Scotland.<\/p>\n

That was not unusual but then something strange happened. \u00a0 It embarked on a tour of the UK, again not unusual in itself but this time, instead of visiting rocky coastlines, sandy bays or wildlife reserves, it frequented a campsite, a pizza restaurant and a street in Ealing, west London. \u00a0And from its new base in the London suburbs it was reporting on its whereabouts, every two hours.<\/p>\n

Surmising that an unsuspecting tourist had probably found the device on a beach\u00a0and picked it up\u00a0(they are designed to fall off after a time and be recovered), the scientists went public, offering a reward for its return.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

via BBC<\/em><\/p>\n

My point for campaign designers is that this created an interesting story.\u00a0 Your campaign is more likely to \u2018work\u2019 and \u2018have legs\u2019 in social or other media if it\u2019s interesting.\u00a0 As journalist Mike McCarthy once pointed out, most campaigns are about something significant but few are interesting, which is why news editors often do not cover them.<\/p>\n

So think through your campaign as if you were making a movie. \u00a0Story-board it. What comes first?\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Try to find a way to create the inciting incident which grabs attention and wants the audience to know more. It doesn’t have to be the very first step in a multi-step campaign, it applies to any important staging post or ‘beat’ in the story of the campaign.<\/p>\n

This usually means you have to do-something to make it interesting. Something unusual, surprising, unexpected or strange, or involving a protagonist already of great interest to a target audience, or breaking a record, setting a precedent, recalling a much loved significant moment (significant for the audience): there are lots of ways to be interesting.<\/p>\n

What’s Happening?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Twitter, essentially a news channel, prompts you with \u201cwhat\u2019s happening ?\u201d \u00a0Not (despite the mass of tweets which do just this) \u201cwhat are you thinking?\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 Unless you are incredibly powerful or influential, our opinions are not interesting in themselves, campaign groups included.<\/p>\n

Nor does just being about an \u2018important issue\u2019 make a campaign interesting. Indeed if it is recognized as \u2018an issue\u2019 \u2013 a matter of contested opinion \u2013 that almost signals the opposite: this is probably complicated, esoteric and with no resolution.<\/p>\n

If you want to know what happened next to the GPS tag, check out the BBC story<\/a>. \u00a0But why would might you want to know?\u00a0 Because it\u2019s an unfinished<\/em> story.\u00a0 We don\u2019t know the outcome or the consequences.<\/p>\n

If the thing that happens has an obvious conclusion, or you are told the ending by the campaigners, that usually kills the story: there is no drama. Which is why the whole of the campaign plan (your intended story plot) should not be communicated at the start of the campaign but revealed, Scene by Scene and Act by Act, through the things you make happen.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

from YouTube<\/em><\/p>\n

The GPS tag story illustrates one other point which some readers are probably very familiar with. \u00a0The tag is a \u2018thing\u2019, it\u2019s the grit in the oyster of the story.\u00a0 Movie makers call such objects a MacGuffin<\/a>, an object on which the story hinges, like The Ring in Lord of the Rings. \u00a0If you can provide one, so much the better.\u00a0 It makes your story-making so much easier.\u00a0 And this was a story not about all birds or even all Oystercatchers or why-the-researchers-were-doing-it but about one bird, one tag and one incident.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s that mean for campaign design?\u00a0 Make each step as simple, restricted and binary as possible. Boil it down, crystallise reduce and reduce until it merits no more unpacking.\u00a0 That will make it easier to achieve your immediate objective, whether you are at the stage of (1) generating awareness by showing the problem, (2) revealing the solution, (3) providing a way to engage, or (4) calling people to action<\/p>\n

(If you have interesting campaign examples of a McGuffin or a campaign made interesting, please get in touch<\/a> or tag me @campaignstrat on twitter. \u00a0See also: ‘be interesting’ in the case of a campaign<\/a> by Friends of the Earth, and, selling a ‘big idea’<\/a>; and why campaigners should be story-makers<\/a> not just tellers).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month I saw a story on Twitter that made me think \u201cthat\u2019s a great idea for a movie plot\u201d: an \u2018inciting incident\u2019 from which a story unfolds.   Bird researchers had fitted a GPS tracker to an Oystercatcher, a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2925"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2930,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2925\/revisions\/2930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}