What would have happened with the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s if Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were available to Martin Luther King Jr.? It’s a provocative question for Rick Shenkman, editor and founder of George Mason University’s History News Network. “Social media is all about getting people to take action, and I wonder what the effects of those clips of police dogs attacking people would have been if they had been spread virally over the Internet.”
Indeed, movements are part of our culture—as American as apple pie. Even the latest movement, the Tea Party, stems from the American value of liberty—particularly freedom from taxation, says Jonathan Collegio, VP of strategic initiatives at the National Association of Broadcasters. Collegio feels that movements are outside the boundaries of PR, nonprofits, candidates or political parties. “But you can try to tap into a movement with a grassroots campaign to motivate people to take action toward a specific goal,” he says. “For example, the health insurance companies tapped into the Tea Party movement in an attempt to defeat a universal healthcare bill.”
But just how do you create and manage a grassroots campaign that takes on characteristics of a movement—the rallying of a group of people passionate about an issue, a product or a candidate?
OUTSIDE THE BOX
Collegio says that just like any campaign, a grassroots effort requires setting clear goals and identifying all the resources you can expend toward achieving those goals. “Out-of-the-box thinking is necessary,” he says. “I know of one winning political campaign where the candidate was out-fund-raised by the other three candidates in the race, but he won by mobilizing students to knock on doors and greet potential voters with a message from the candidate on an $80 portable DVD player. Where the campaign lacked one asset, they were strong elsewhere.”
Collegio, who engineered the national transition from analog to digital television, says TV broadcasters mobilized more than 1,000 staff nationwide to give local speeches to targeted audiences, “something that many other industries could not have emulated,” he says. “It’s crucial to think about your resources as broadly and creatively as possible.”
FINDING YOUR AUDIENCE
“If your proposition is interesting enough and you’re out there on Facebook, Twitter and blogs, people will find you,” says Mindy Finn, a partner with political communications agency Engage. Finn knows how to gather the right audience, having helped Scott Brown win his Senate seat in Massachusetts, and Bob McDonnell the governorship in Virginia. “At the same time, low-budget ads through online networks can also help you target specific demos of what you have to offer.”
Collegio agrees with that strategy, saying, “Effective campaigns generate actions of passionate third-party advocates by tapping into their values, and it’s possible to do that by driving a good story through earned media or an advertising buy, and by organizing your supporters online.”
Collegio also says that identifying the right passionate audience may require research, both quantitative (surveys) and qualitative (focus groups). “Once you have all of these together you can begin mapping out your plan and identifying the tools in your tool-belt to achieve the goals you’ve set out,” he says.
SETTING THE STRATEGY
While it’s a stretch to describe the analog to digital televsion transition a “movement,” Collegio says that his experience as a political operative helped formulate grassroots strategies that came close to a political campaign.
Learning from research that some geographic areas were more reliant on free TV than others, Collegio targeted those areas for special attention with a road show. “We also knew from research that more than 40% of primary Spanish speakers relied on free TV, so we worked with Univision and Telemundo on a series of televised town halls, where literally thousands of folks showed up in person to learn about digital TV,” he says.
In addition, borrowing from political campaign tactics, Collegio reached out to more than 10,000 locally elected officials and convinced them it was in their political interest to educate their constituents on the issue; worked with more than 25,000 minority churches to distribute DTV literature to their members; and identified and worked with more than 240 organizations—from AARP to Best Buy to the Farm Bureau—in the DTV Transition Coalition, “where we worked to deliver that message to their collective memberships,” he says.
All of these grassroots efforts, says Collegio, went on behind the on-air campaign to lend support and fill in the information gaps among the hardest-to-reach viewers. The multi-platform campaign raised awareness from 38% to 98.5% in two years, and by January of 2009, more TV viewers could identify the DTV transition date than could name April 15 as Tax Day.
ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Shenkman is a firm believer in social media as a key driver of grassroots campaigns. To pull the trigger on a campaign, he says, you need money, endorsements and supporters. “You can get all of those through social media platforms,” he says. The one problem: social media doesn’t give you the tools to execute an effective campaign. “There are no tools to create actions,” says Shenkman. “You need a Web site, traditional PR outreach and people on the ground.”
Collegio, however, is truly a believer in grassroots efforts the “old-fashioned way.” “In the vast majority of cases, I don’t believe social media can be a primary driver of a message,” he says. “It is a great means of organizing people and it gives PR pros extraordinary tools to measure their efforts and keep supporters active, but the best way to reach the most people with a message is by TV, radio and the news, and through earned media, advertising or both. That’s how you really reach eyeballs and get folks thinking.”
POLITICAL SCIENCE
Collegio believes PR pros looking to start a grassroots movement should take a page from political operatives, and study the following traits of effective political campaigns:
1. They creatively look at their budgets and resources, think outside of the box and plan accordingly.
2. In messaging, they clearly define themselves and their opponents, and accentuate contrasts when appropriate.
3. They effectively measure their efforts through polls.
“Grassroots campaigns that can do these three things effectively will be a leg up over their competition,” says Collegio. PRN
CONTACT:
Rick Shenkman, [email protected]; Jonathan Collegio, [email protected]; Mindy Finn, [email protected].