Academy

Strategy: Laughing Our Way to a Better World

Africa For Norway was one of the highlights we wrote about last year. ‘The funniest campaign this year’ I said.
Being funny was the strategy Sindre Olav Edland-Gryt explained in the recently recorded TEDx talk in Barcelona.

It’s Radi-Aid vs Oh Dear.
“By turning the tables the spoof video has sparked a lot of debate and self-reflection in both media and development organization.”

Sindre Olav is Human Rights campaigner for Saih and africafornorway.com. He is a self-trained communication professional and wrote his master’s thesis on religion and development. One of Sindre’s mantras is why creativity and humor is key to getting people involved in the fight for human rights. He believes that the repeat portrayal of negative images often creates apathy and a feeling of hopelessness.

The TEDx talk from Sindre Olav:

Non-profits: embrace the pearls for your cause

I bought myself an Apple TV recently. And I’m not the only one who connected the TV on the internet. It is the new thing to explore.
It changed my media consumption madly. Instead of watching the regular stuff I spent my spare time with exploring short films. And there is a lot out there. The kind of stuff I’m not watching on my desktop computer. Because I’m too impatient for. But slumped on the couch is a different story.

That makes me think. What can non-profits do with with new online evolution? The connected TV is in it’s early stages but you can already can do something. Without any budget.
Build yourself a playlist on Vimeo or YouTube and start exploring. As the title above says ‘embrace the pearls for your cause’. I see it as a new way of storytelling.

Is He A Real Man? The “Vrai Djo” SFCG Project in the Democratic Republic of Congo

In the Democratic Republic of Congo or DRC, sexual violence is a community-wide problem.  Rape, in the DRC has been used as a weapon of war and sadly continues to increase even after.  According to the peacebuilding NGO Search for Common Ground or SFCG, it is estimated that there are over 400,000 surviving rape victims living in the DRC today.  In this environment violence against women has become normative behavior. 

SFCG says “the campaign turns common assumptions about male behavior in familiar situations, such as going to a job interview, on their head. The peacebuilding organization Search for Common Ground, believes sexual violence is best addressed when men are active partners in the solution.
According to C-Picks at C-Change, Country Director Dirk Koch, explains “One often sees campaigns that denounce men’s behaviors and say what they should not do, but one never sees a campaign that motivates men to become positive, to find their inner strength, and to respect women and girls.”

The Vrai Djo Campaign features five short films and three audio spots which are broadcasted throughout the country. The PSAs (Public Service Announcements) feature Celeo Scram, “a Congolese superstar with a positive image”, In the spots he says he says “A real man (Vrai Djo) is a man who knows what he wants and knows how to control himself.

The campaign instead shows a person who respects himself and respects the women and girls around him.” The films portray scenarios that often lead to sexual harassment or abuse which would be familiar in the Congolese context (e.g., a job interview or a wife returning late from work) and shows instead opportunities for men to support the women in their lives.

Social Photography in your Communication Strategy: Instagram

Instagram is huge. Recently it became the largest mobile social network. Remarkable because the social photography app is only available for the iPhone until now.
I started with Instagram also last year. I stopped with Twitter and now I’m trying to express myself without words. I love it.

I was curious if brands, and in particular non-profits, use the network in their communication strategy. That was a disappointing search.
Socialfresh published an article in the autumn last year with a small list of brands using Instagram. And I found a smaller list of non-profits.

One of them is charity: water, the non-profit organization bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations.
Gorgeous pictures from their field work and inside pictures which give the viewer a nice insight in their work.
I spoke with Paull Young lately, the Director of Digital at charity: water. I was curious about their thoughts and strategy. Read it after the break.

Clean water from a charity: water project in Brus Laguna, Honduras.

The campaign evaluation is also something to share

In all stages of campaigning the final stage is the one which is mostly invisible for the outside world. We write for over six years now about nonprofit campaigns and we rarely see the results. The results that’s what matters finally.
The result of a fundraising campaign is clear. It is about the final amount. In awareness campaigning it is more difficult. A goal like behaviour change is difficult to calculate. 
It don’t have to be hard figures. Within an organization a campaign evaluation is a routine. But how is that for the outside world? For all volunteers?

At Osocio we judge mostly on design or copy. Now we are talking about the results.

That’s why I was pleasantly surprised when Priscilla Brice-Weller shared her campaign evaluation on Google+ and Facebook.

Priscilla did a campaign with her organization All Together Now earlier this year. The campaign with the name Give Racism The Finger was the first national campaign to erase racism in Australia.
We wrote about it in May this year.

She published the evaluation on the All Together Now website using Storify.
I talked with Priscilla last week about this evaluation.

NGOs seldom publish a review of their campaign results. Why did you do it?

One of the key strategies we decided on when we started All Together Now in 2010 was that all our work would be evidence-based. This includes publicly sharing the results of our programs to show what works and what doesn’t in anti-racism campaigning (i.e. providing evidence).
So we published a review because doing so is at the very core of our work. The more creative the review is, the more likely people are to read it.

Read more after the break.

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