I was recently asked to assess a digital advocacy campaign by an international organisation. The leadership team wanted to know the best practices in online advocacy and how they compared.  

My first thought was that this was a huge PhD thesis-level task. How could you possibly reduce advocacy campaigns to a series of best practices – there are so many, and they’re all so different. But I don’t like ducking challenges, and I let the idea percolate. 

The line, ‘Everything is a campaign,’ came to me. I remember using it a lot at Reuters and the World Economic Forum –  it had something to do with how good ideas get diluted when lots of people get involved. I’d used the phrase to get teams to keep their eye on the prize.

Blame Obama

I can’t find the quote online now, but it’s from an Obama speech, and the fuller version is,  “Everything is a campaign. Every day, we’re either campaigning for change, or we’re campaigning for the status quo.”

At Reuters, I’d studied Obama’s use of digital media when he first ran for the presidency in 2007 and how his team had ruthlessly exploited newish digital networks to get noticed and raise funds. They had an absolute focus on measurement, experimentation, and optimisation, which seemed universally applicable. 

This approach had worked well in building professional online communities and later at the World Economic Forum to persuade teams to think about digital communications first, not last, when designing projects. 

So, after convincing myself I knew a bit about this, I said ‘yes’.

So, What Are The Best Practices in Digital Advocacy?

The web is full of research on the elements of successful campaigns. But it’s overwhelmingly directed at commercial activity where the campaign goal is simple – persuade someone to buy. 

Advocacy is less direct, aiming to shift perceptions, behaviour, and, usually, policy. All of which are hard to measure. I suspect that’s why there’s precious little empirical research. So I asked around for examples of successful advocacy campaigns, and three featuring International Organisations and Non-governmental Organisations stood out. 

Universal Access to HIV/AIDS drugs

This complex campaign forced pharmaceutical companies to permit low-cost antiretrovirals in the ’00s. It contributed to the pressure that led to the creation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDs, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The roots and complexities of this campaign are well covered in the ‘HIV campaigning in the 2000s’ edition of the 100 Campaigns that Changed the World podcast, but here’s a summary: 

• There were villains and heroes as Big Pharma took South Africa’s government to court over plans to create low-cost antiretrovirals in one of the great PR missteps. That created a focal point. 
• Many celebrities, including Freddie Mercury and Princess Diana, gave the campaign a recognisable face and made it feel personal, relatable and human.
• HIV was the biggest barrier to development and human security.  That resonated with officials in finance ministries and overseas aid departments, particularly in the G8 countries. 
• The issue brought together groups across society. Act Up in the US was hugely disruptive and influential, as was Students Against AIDS — now Restless. NGOs struggling to get the public to engage with their Aid and Fair Trade campaigns were enthusiastic players. 

The Montreal Protocol

This resulted from a campaign in the ‘80s and ‘90s that pulled the scientific community together, mobilised public opinion behind the outlawing of CFCs, led to consumer boycotts, and largely closed the ‘Ozone Hole’.

• Images from the British Antarctic Survey in the mid-80s first showed the ‘hole’ appearing about the Antarctic. This completely grabbed the public’s imagination and the idea that the chemicals in their fridges and aerosols damaged the Earth’s shield against radiation and endangered their health.

• A global network of scientists raised the alarm. NGOs followed up with extensive media work, including follow-up work to deal with alternative gases brought in by industry due to the criticism but were still unfriendly to the Ozone layer.

The Bangladesh Accord

In 2013, 1134 people were killed in the collapse of a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where clothing was being made for international brands. It was the worst of a series of fires and building collapses, and blanket media coverage led to a huge consumer backlash against brands using dangerous labour practices. 

The Bangladesh Accord, which included mandatory site inspections, commitments to dealing with workers’ grievances, and legal recourse, was signed by major retailers, NGOs and Unions in 2013. A similar accord was struck for Pakistan in 2022.   Behind this ground-breaking agreement were a series of important campaign tactics: 

• The formation of a global coalition of labour unions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other stakeholders. This coalition included organizations like IndustriALL Global Union, UNI Global Union, and various NGOs focused on labour and human rights. 
• Activist groups and labour unions encouraged consumers to demand safer working conditions by boycotting or pressuring brands associated with factories that did not sign the Accord. 
• Mainstream and social media coverage was aided by the involvement of celebrity endorsements from the likes of Emma Watson, Naomi Campbell, and Pharell Williams.
• One audience segment targeted was younger women, tapping into concerns over ethical consumption, and a side-effect was the creation of a Fashion Transparency Index.  
• Engagement with Brands: Activists engaged in dialogue and negotiations with major clothing brands and retailers that sourced their products from Bangladesh. By targeting the brands directly, they pushed for the adoption of the Accord’s safety measures and inspections in the factories they used.

What do Successful Advocacy Campaigns Have in Common?

All successful campaigns are successful in different ways, and far more has been written about the ones that worked than the ones that failed. Nevertheless, there are some clear common success factors without which campaigns, big and small, will always struggle:  

• Relatability: A simple, emotionally-appealing narrative 
• An advocacy hook: A smart argument to get decision-makers to think afresh
• Visual appeal: In order to get noticed in mainstream and social media
• Network smarts: The ability to mobilise the grassroots, influencers, journalists, and the wider public to keep the pressure on decision-makers

Even a campaign with all these attributes will need help if it is to change perceptions and behaviour, given competition from other social change programmes. But without all of them, none is likely to succeed.

	Access to HIV/AIDS drugs	Montreal Protocol	The Bangladesh Accord
Relatability hook	Heroes vs villains – greedy pharma companies blocking access to cheap life-saving drugs	Stop all CFC emissions to close the hole above your head	People working in unsafe factories are dying creating your fashion goods
Advocacy hook	AIDS is a threat to economic development & human security	Hole is a threat to global health and food supplies	Ethical shopping is a megatrend you need to get the right side of
Visual hook	Celebrities: Princess Diana, Freddie Mercury, and much of the western entertainment industry	Satellite imagery of the ‘hole’	The fires and building collapses. Endorsements from likes of Emma Watson, Naomi Campbell, Pharell Williams
Network smarts	A coalition of grassroots organisations from the global LGBTQ community, media and arts, students	Mobilisation of the global science community	A coalition of unions and  NGOs. Fashion magazines and social media influencers got behind the cause

Campaign success factors work at both the macro and micro level

There’s a remarkable symmetry between the success factors behind ambitious social change campaigns and the actions required to draw attention to individual pieces of content. 

High-performing content teams treat every blog, video, and social post as a campaign in and of itself. Producing the content is only the beginning of the process; building an audience for it is just as important, if not more so.

Smart operations invest time and energy into finding the best relatability and informational hooks, visual treatments that ‘pop’ for users, and seek ways to use their networks to amplify reach.

When Obama’s team tried to cut through with digital marketing, they road-tested every email subject line and every social post to establish what worked best. Sixteen years later, the technology has advanced to the point that anyone can do the same using readily available tools.

Before you start, check your idea has these three hooks

1. Relatability/advocacy: Workshop your idea to maximise its appeal to the audience you are after. Think hard about the emotional trigger. If there is none, then you will struggle to make much impact. I prefer positive emotions – ‘make me smarter’, ‘give me some hope’, ‘help me make a difference’ – but tapping into outrage, fear of missing out, and other negatives all are fair game.
2. Visual: Many organisations leave this until the end and then realise too late that the story idea is difficult to illustrate. This is particularly important for blog posts. Think about the most creative thing you could do to stop a busy user from scrolling past your social promotion for the blog. Clue: it is unlikely to be a stock photo.
3. Networking: Think about who in your organisation and its networks you could get to help boost the reach of your posts by sharing. Done right, this can be the most powerful engagement tactic but be warned that it can also be a lot of work. If you think about this ahead of time, you can shape your content for the influencers you have in mind.

How to Develop a Campaign Mindset

The overwhelming tendency in organisations is to create top-down processes that make coordination simple. The risk of that approach is that it makes it hard to course-correct if things don’t go according to plan.