What are the 10 best campaign films?

Can you help me put together a list of the top 10 campaign films? 
Here are a few more brilliant campaign/advocacy films from the last few months that I think could be worthy of inclusion in any list of ‘top advocacy films’. Do you agree? What else would you add?
These films supplement my suggestions in this post from last summer. Use the comments box below to make your nominations and the reason why.
1 – The new Robin Hood Tax film that you can star in….It’s a bit too long and the ask at the end isn’t clear, but because I really like the way it invites supporters to be part of the campaign. A campaign first?

2 – VW: The Dark Side. Cleverly made by Greenpeace and because it created a media story when LucasFilms demanded it was pulled from You Tube.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXndQuvOacU]
3 – The secret Clooney Commercial that shocked Nespresso… by SOLIDAR, its been making me smile ever since I first saw it and because the campaign targeting is genius.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhzHRuhzPSE]
4. The Girl Effect. Simple but effective.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIvmE4_KMNw]
I’d love to know what you would include? What would go in your list of top 10 campaign films?

Review: Page One – Inside the New York Times

A new documentary raises some questions about the challenges that newspapers are facing in the UK and the impacts that could have on our use of the media in campaigning.
We don’t have a UK equivalent to The New York Times, the paper of record in the US, but even so Page One – Inside the New York Times is a fascinating and thought-provoking documentary for any campaigner who wants to think about what impact the perfect storm of a decline in advertising revenue and the growth of social media will have on newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic and by extension campaigns that use them to raise public awareness of key issues.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCdsSezvACw]
The film spends a year or so, following the journalists on the Media Desk of The Times as they try to make sense of the changing media landscape and the need to cut costs, while at the same time breaking huge stories like Wikleaks.
Some of the themes that documentary picks up on are similar to issues that Nick Davies touches on his excellent book Flat Earth News which looks at the decline of news reporting in the UK, and a book I’d also recommend for anyone wanting to understand the challenges faced by many journalists.
For me as a campaigner, the documentary raised some great questions to reflect upon;

  • What’s the impact of a decline in the resources that are available to newspapers to dedicate to longer and more investigative pieces of journalism? Does this present an opportunity in the short-term where newspapers are more likely to work with campaigning organisation to provide these stories?
  • Will online sites like Huffington Post have the same resonance with policy makers? What takes the place of the columnist or editorials who cited as influencers. Will this increase the importance of key broadcast shows, like Today and Newsnight, when it comes to ‘setting the agenda’?
  • Will we see the same rapid decline in the ‘tabloid’ media? It not, do we have campaigns that were able to pitch to them?
  • What impact does a media model that is driven by ‘popularity’, for example the website group Gawker has a ‘big board’ that displays the 10 most popular stories, have on our ability to get campaign themes that aren’t interesting, but yet of critical importance in front of the public?
  • Is an increasingly open media environment a good thing because it makes it easier to get our messages out, or a bad thing because it makes it harder to get a critical mass of the public aware of our campaigns?

I’d suspect that the film will have limited releases in UK cinemas, but I’d highly recommend that you go and watch it or get it out on DVD.

The key ingredients for a good campaign action….

Getting the ‘target’ and ‘ask’ right in your action is fundamentally important if you want to have a successful campaign, so here are some thoughts about what should go into a ‘good’ action.
It’s not often that cry out in frustration at a campaign action but I did this week when a colleague forwarded me this action from Stop the Traffik, a campaign which aims to bring an end to human trafficking worldwide.
Now I’ve tried to avoid highlight ‘bad’ campaigning on this blog, preferring to celebrate the creativity and ingenuity that’s been demonstrated by many campaigns, but I wanted to mention this one as an example of ‘not so good’ practice.

Why? Because I’m saddened that a campaign with such a great aim hasn’t done its homework to identify the most effective things to be asking an MP to do and had instead come up with a ‘shopping list’ that I fear will mean most will choose to ignore the action.
I’m not suggesting that every action that it written from now on needs to be the length of an essay. Indeed many of the actions that organisations like Avaaz and ONE ask me to support are often little more than a sentence or two long, but that’s in part because the web or email copy that accompanies it sets out a clear rationale for why I should be supporting the action and are supported by evidence of extensive policy expertise.
Now I know that many campaigns are run by a small staff teams who are juggling multiple priorities (and I’ve made suggestions before about how that shouldn’t hold you back and that lots of campaigners would love to help out) but getting the target and ask right in your action is fundamentally important if you want to have a successful campaign.
For me a good action should have the following components.
1 – Be specific – To a named individual not an ambiguous group like ‘world leaders’ or similar,  this post from futuremediachange.com explains why its a bad idea. It needs to be targeted to the person who can make the change that you want to see happen. Sometimes this will be the Prime Minister or President but often it won’t be.. Indeed I’d argue that when campaigns make more use of different or unexpected target it has the potential to wield more influence than when it focuses on a ‘usual suspect’.
2 – Be achievable – Now by this I’m not saying that we should compromise our asks to make the politically palatable, if you want to ‘stop climate change’ or ‘put an end to world poverty’ continue to include that it your action.
But do ask what’s the one or two things that you want your target to do that will lead to the bigger goal. What’s the step or steps that they can take to achiever your ask? The challenge for the writer of the action is to help the person taking the action understand how achieving the immediate ‘ask’ will make the big goal move a step closer.
3 – Be informed – Linked to the above. Spend some time thinking about routes to influence on your target, who are the people that they really listen to and at the end of it don’t be afraid to change the person you’re focusing your action towards. Equally find out what your target can actually do and if you’ve got a menu of options then choose the one that your intelligence tells you will be most effective at this moment.
4 – Be measurable – How are you going to be able to know if you’ve achieved what you’re asking your target to do. Good asks should have something in them that can be measured to show if it’s been successful. It could be doing something by a date, or increasing support by a certain %, or including certain language in a piece of legislation. Include that and the report back to that took action when you’re successful.
At the end, I find that it’s help to ask, does my action pass the ‘Elevator Test’. It’s a simple rule taken from the world of marketing. Imagine that the person you’re targeting walks into a lift with you. Suddenly you find yourself with 15 seconds to make your ‘pitch’. Are you able to explain what you want them to do succinctly enough that when they walk out they’re able to turn to their advisor or aide and instruct them to do it.
What tips do you have to ensure effective actions? 
NB – If you’re reading this from Stop the Traffik, please consider this constructive criticism, and get in touch as I’d be very happy to have a chat about how you could sharpen your asks.

Using the Law in Campaigning – are we missing an opportunity?

Ask a campaigner about the intricacies of Parliament, and the likelihood is that they’ll speak at length about the role the APPGs, PQs and EDMs can play in campaigning.
But move the topic of conversation to the role of the Law Courts in campaigning and the conversation is likely to be much shorter!
Despite the judiciary being at the heart of our political system, we seem to see far few campaigns using legal routes to achieving change.
But as Mark Lattimer writes in The Campaign Handbookthe law’s authority can be invoked to constrain government action, check abuse and generally make life difficult for those who govern’ so it could be a powerful tool to use.
Indeed in recent week, we’ve seen 38 Degrees turn to legal opinionto get another view on the proposed Health Bill that was going through Parliament, and use it as a tool to challenge some of the lines that the government was putting out in the media and inform its campaign communications.

Atticus Finch - A great campaigning lawyer

While at the end of last year, the Fawcett Society challenged the Government’s emergency budget on the ground that it hadn’t been drawn up in accordance with the law, and in particular the legal requirement to consider the way in which different measures impact differently on men and women.
Both are excellent example of how campaigners can make use of the law, so what might be stopping campaigners making more use of legal routes?
Cost – It’s an area where specialist legal training is more often than not needed, and unlike other campaigning activities it’s hard to get far without having to draw on this advice. Most campaigners can learn ‘on the job’ about how to write a good e-action or organise a stunt but that option doesn’t exist, and because of the high cost of professional help that can be prohibitive for many campaigns, plus off-putting to a CEO counting the pennies!
Speed – In an environment when campaigns want to win victories quickly, the deliberative nature of the law can mean that decisions that do or don’t support a campaign can take months or years to come, for example the Fawcett Society’s case took 3 months to be heard by the High Court (and that was quick!). 
Knowledge – As campaigners, were just not as familiar with the legal system. We might have an understanding of how to use Freedom of Information or certain Environmental Information Laws but that’s about it. Most campaigning courses don’t spend long looking at using the law, plus add to that the legal environment is often changing with new laws being passed and judgments being handed down and it can be hard to keep up.
But given the examples of 38 Degrees and the Fawcett Society what  resources are available to those campaigns looking to consider this?
Mark Lattimer’s The Campaign Handbook has a whole chapter devoted to ‘Using the Law’ although I’d suspect that some of it is now a little date, while Campaign Central has a section devoted to ‘The Law and Campaigning’ although much of it focuses on what campaigning you can and can’t do because of charity law.
Specialist groups exist to help provide advice and undertake pro-bono work for charities and other groups. I’ve been able to make use of Advocate for International Development, who title themselves as ‘lawyers ending poverty’ and provide support for development NGOs.
What other resources exist for campaigning looking at using the law? Should we make more use of legal routes in our campaigning?

Holding successful events with MPs in Parliament

Conference season is upon us and many campaigners will be packing their bags to head off to Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester.
But  as Chloe Stables notes in an excellent post about making the most of attending conference they can be ‘expensive, hectic and occasionally frustrating‘ but other options for engaging with MPs do exist.
Back in March, I was involved in organising an event to mark World Water Day, which at the time one colleague musedwas a better use of resources that organising an fringe meeting at Party Conference.
A modest objective of getting 12-15 MPs along was set but in the end we got over 40 MPs came to join in, a great success and far more than we would have got attending a fringe event at conference.

David Burrowes MP at the event
One of the 40 MPs who attended the event

The idea was simple. Invite MPs to join us on and walk 100m with a jerry can on a course we’d set up in Victoria Tower Gardens, it was a symbolic act to remember the fact that many people have to walk up to 6km to get access to something we expect to get from our taps, and we hoped that it would help to build links with Parliamentarians who could act as champions for the issue in the coming year.
You can read more about the event here, but it got me thinking about what some of the elements that made the event a success.
Perhaps they’re nothing new but I wanted to share them to see what insight others have about what works when looking to engage MPs in events in Parliament.
1. Provide a photo opportunity – It’s a cliché but the offer of a photo and a pre-prepared press release undoubtedly encouraged some MPs to join us. We set up a water pump and promised to get the release to them within 3 hours. It was nice to use this as a way of helping the MP demonstrate the interest they had in the issue.
2. Targeted the few not the many – The decision was taken early in the planning not to actively invite all MPs, but to identify and approach a smaller number of influential MPs on the topic, for example those on key select committees or those who’d shown an interest in the issue previously. We hoped that our invitation was more likely to get noticed, and we already had a relationship with some which made it easier to follow up with.
3. Followed up via Twitter – Ahead of the event, we got in touch with those MPs who used twitter to remind them to come down. At least one mentioned that this had made the difference about them attending or not.
4. Used our supporters – We invited our supporters who lived in the constituencies of MPs we had an interest in to attend, but had realistic expectations about the number who’d be able to join us on a Tuesday. We also encouraged them to get in touch and invite their MP along anyhow. Again, a number of MPs mentioned that this was one of the reasons they joined us.
5. Made the most of our contacts – We found that amongst an extended group of colleagues had a number had contact with friends who worked for MPs or who could raise the profile of the event inside Parliament. A few well placed e-mails and calls from them certainly helped to increase the numbers attending. A reminder that sometimes it’s useful to use your personal contacts.
6. Kept the event going for two hours – Allowing MPs a longer window of time to come along seemed to yield dividends in reducing the number of MPs who simply couldn’t join us because of diary clashes.
What successful events have you organised with MPs? Is Conference a useful forum to engage with MPs? What have you found works and what hasn’t?
Some of this post originally appeared on the NCVO Campaigning Forum.

Five for Friday….16 September

Here is the latest selection of articles that might be of interest to campaigners….
1. Great guide from Fair Pensions about how you can become a shareholder activist.
2. Short but useful guide from movements.org about campaign planning.
3. Some good suggestions from M+R Research Labs about what makes a successful e-campaign action.
4. Brian Lamb argues that e-petitions are a shallow form of campaigning.
5. Finally, I think this action from Swiss organisation, SOLIDAR is excellent. Great target selection, a funny video and a clear message.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhzHRuhzPSE]

Campaign Totals – Top 15 organisations

In my final post about the Campaigns Totals survey that I’ve been running over the last few months, I’m going to take a look at what the results tell us about the organisations running these campaigns.
I’ve already noted that actions are being generated by a vibrant civil society, and that through my survey actions from 66 organisations were named in the responses, and that excludes the 76 actions that I wasn’t able to identify an organiser for.
The table below shows the top 15 organisations by actions generated, and the only organisations to generate more than 20,000 actions in the 12 months of the survey;
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheet/pub” query=”hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0ArsF-z0r3hFfdFhMX1pqcS1aY3ZleV91UW4zdExReXc&single=true&gid=0&output=html&widget=true” width=”500″ height=”570″ /]

It’s interesting to note that the vast majority of actions are being generated by charities or campaigning organisations, like Greenpeace who because of the way their work is considered aren’t able to take advantage of ‘charitable status’ as opposed to trade associations or other corporate lobbying groups.

With regard to the ‘top’ issues that actions are being generated on;

  1. Sustainable Development  – 57 actions including 25 on Climate Change and other actions on bio-fuels, oil, nuclear and energy policy.
  2. International Development – 54 actions including 11 on debt and other action on aid spending, women’s rights and water/sanitation
  3. Animal Welfare – 14 actions including on issues such as circus animals and battery hens.
  4. Public Services – 12 actions including a number focusing on cuts.
  5. Tax policy – 10 actions

Astroturfing, 38 Degrees and MPs views of e-actions

Should we be concerned about Stephen Phillips MP writing to constituents in response to 38 Degrees last campaign to say that he will;
‘in the future not respond to campaigns run by what purports to be a, but what to is most evidently not, a non-political organisation’
Perhaps not, unless you work for 38 Degrees and even then I suspect that you’d think it’s good publicity. Although this tweet suggests that it’s not simply Philips who take this approach to 38 Degrees at the moment.
But Philips isn’t the first to complain, last summer we had another Conservative MP, Dominic Raab say;
‘there are hundreds of campaign groups like yours, and flooding MPs inboxes with pro-forma emails creates an undue administrative burden. I welcome anyone who feels strongly about AV writing to me in person – rather than copying an automated template’
While a few weeks ago Labour backbench, Steve Pound MP wrote in Tribune;
‘On any given day there will be between three and five campaigning bodies, trades unions or special interest groups encouraging their members and supporters to e-mail their MP – and woe betide the miserable Member who fails to reply by return’

Astroturfing - actions designed to give the appearance of a "grassroots" movement

It is of course easy to dismiss these MPs as a few grumpy MPs who simply need to get control of their inboxes, but are these the views of a growing majority?
If so, then I do think we need to worry as it could mean that e-actions to MP could rapidly become a blunt and ineffective campaign tool.
I’m not aware of any empirical evidence that exists about the views of MPs about e-actions, but anecdotally the MPs I’ve heard will tell you that they see e-actions as being less ‘influential’ as a handwritten letter, which itself is less ‘influential’ than a visit to a surgery (or similar).
I don’t think that this response of Philips means we should stop running e-actions to MPs, but I do wonder if as campaigners we need to work with the Speakers office and others within Parliament to help to identify a way of ensuring that those who take e-actions as a legitimate way of engaging in the democratic process aren’t ignored by MPs who simply think that these actions are a ‘nuisance’.
But it also highlights the importance of using other tools in our campaigning to demonstrate grassroots support, perhaps more interestingly is the description that Guido Fawkes used to describe 38 Degrees in his blog as a ‘left-wing astroturfing operation’.
Astroturfing being a term used in the US for a number of years to describe as ‘advocacy in support of a political, organizational, or corporate agenda, designed to give the appearance of a “grassroots” movement’.
It’s of course unfair and unfounded to because one of the other tactics that 38 Degrees selected to use to campaign on the NHS Bill was to encourage the public in Lib Dem constituencies to phone their MPs, and they’ve also spent months building local groups to get behind the campaign.
But the impression that some see many of the e-actions we’re generating as a sector are coming from organisations that don’t have any ‘grassroots’ support behind them is a concern, especially if the majority of MPs start to view them in this way.
Perhaps if there is a lesson to take from all of this, it’s that tending to and building a ‘grassroots’ is as important as building a big mailing list to generate e-actions.
Do you agree? How much longer do you think e-actions to MP will remain effective?

Campaign Totals – A look at the departmental figures

I’ve received responses from all but 2 departments (Ministry of Deference and Ministry of Justice) that I approached, but what do the final totals tell us about the way that they’re responding to the actions that we’re sending them?
1. Real variation in numbers between department – I’m not surprised to see the Treasury come top of the survey as it feels indicative of the importance of the department and George Osbourne in a time of declining government budgets, but it’s interesting to see how few actions that No10 appears to have received in the 12 month period.
I’d expected to see more actions being sent to the Departments of Health and Education, but perhaps organisations that focus on these issues have been channeling their resources to influence MPs who have been involved in scrutinising key pieces of legislation going through Parliament.
The table below has a breakdown of the number of actions different departments have received.
[googleapps domain=”docs” dir=”spreadsheet/pub” query=”hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0ArsF-z0r3hFfdE9FUXk1ME4zRUl3T0hCczZybHV0WlE&single=true&gid=0&output=html&widget=true” width=”500″ height=”700″ /]
2. Big differences in how departments handle campaign actions – The quality of the responses I’ve received has really varied. At the top departments like DFID and DEFRA, incidentally both departments that you sense deal regularly with civil society organisations, have been able to provide me with detailed breakdowns by organisation, action and topic.
At the other end of the scale some departments weren’t able to provide me with any breakdown at all, see Department of Culture, Media and Sport as a good example.
Most departments fall somewhere in the middle, but the exercise has really highlighted to me that we can’t assume as campaigners that our actions are immediately recorded and passed upwards to Ministerial teams. It’s vital that we combine our handovers of campaign actions with other method of notification to staff in Ministerial Offices.
3. What’s in a title? It’s been alarming to see how much of a campaign message seems to be lost when the actions are grouped together. If this is the sort of information that is being processed is a list of actions by title which then gets passed up to Ministers in one form or another, then I’m not sure actions entitled ‘Inspired’ or titles like ‘Get Clever about Climate Cash’ are very clear on what they’re asking for. It seems to me the most effective are those that can be easily summarised like ‘Bingo Say No to 22% Tax’ or ‘Support New Jobs with a Green Investment Bank’ are likely to be clearer at speaking to the policy change that’s being requested.  The Department of Culture, Media and Sport was very helpful in providing me with information about how they display this information to Ministers.
I’ve also been struck by the number of responses that I got that didn’t include details of the organisations behind the actions (despite explicitly asking for this information). If organisation are also using campaign actions as a way of building broader influence with government departments.