Crafting a Winning Story: Freedom to Marry
In this series, we’ll be analysing successful social movements and recent animal freedom campaigns from a narrative perspective. Let's begin with the narrative strategy of Freedom to Marry.
Welcome to our new blog series: Crafting a Winning Story! In this series, we’ll be analysing successful social movements and recent animal freedom campaigns from a narrative perspective. Each blog post will delve into the persuasive storytelling tactics, pervasion of messages, and content creation of a specific campaign and end with actionable takeaways for the animal freedom movement’s own communications.
This first blog post explores the narrative strategy of Freedom to Marry (FTM). This was a campaign to legalise marriage for same-sex couples in the US and has since become an international movement. It was launched in 2003, and in 2015 the US Supreme Court ruled in favour of the freedom to marry nationwide. FTM is a great example of a movement that successfully changed the narrative around marriage equality, and it has been one of the biggest sources of inspiration for Animal Think Tank in our narrative work.
How they created effective messaging
FTM created effective messaging by tapping into aspirational identities and shared values. This framed the issue of same-sex marriage as personally relevant to everyone.
Persuasion
‘Right’ —> ‘Freedom’ – FTM flipped the narrative by shifting from the ‘right’ to marry to the ‘freedom’ to marry. They recognised that ‘rights’ and ‘justice’ was too abstract and emphasised a legal lens, making people think that the push for gay marriage was for tax breaks and other legal perks. In contrast, shifting to shared values like ‘freedom’, ‘love’, ‘family’ and ‘commitment’ helped people engage with the issue in a more heartfelt way.
‘Gay marriage’ —> ‘Marriage equality’ – This simple reframe helped broaden the issue, so people no longer saw it as something that only affected the gay community, but one that affected all of American society.
People-centred storytelling and diverse messengers – FTM put a human face on the issue by placing real-life stories at the heart of the campaign and connecting them to values-based narratives. Strategic individual stories included those of couples in loving, committed relationships discussing their desire to get married, as well as the journey stories of people who had changed their mind about the issue and now supported marriage equality. Photos and videos were used to tell these stories creatively, and they used a range of trusted messengers (like people of faith), unexpected messengers (like conservatives, firefighters, and police), and everyday, relatable messengers to help persuade a diverse audience.
Aspirational identities – The values-based narratives of freedom, love, family, compassion, and equality, coupled with people-centred storytelling, tapped into aspirational identities to get people to recognise common humanity, values, and desires. Voters saw that same-sex couples shared the aspiration of “for better or worse” in marriage and weren’t trying to undermine the institution, and so they became less likely to feel threatened. Messaging also included relatable messengers, to motivate people to act in line with the kind of person they were (or wanted to be).
Catchy movement messages – ‘Freedom to Marry’ and hashtags like #LoveWins and #LoveMustWin used familiar words that were easy to remember, understand and repeat (and hence be passed on by word of mouth).
Recognisable symbols – The FTM symbol incorporated a house, heart, and an equal sign, which clearly represented values of family, love, and equality.
Balancing hope with struggle – Narratives were centred on hope and a tangible vision for the future, but messages also connected this joy to the tangible harms when marriage equality was denied to same-sex couples. In this way it followed the 80/20 rule for messaging, ensuring that 80% was hope and shared values and 20% was problem/threat.
Pervasion
Social media, online video, & email – FTM used a range of online media platforms and targeted ads to distribute messages. They offered open-source ads for others to adapt, encouraged supporters to create their own content (that was still on message) and worked with bloggers to ensure FTM content reached wider audiences.
Story Centre – FTM logged all the personal stories and contact details that were collected into a curated collection for reporters to access families impacted by marriage discrimination.
Canvassing – Volunteers had long-form conversations with voters about their values. They focused on the real, lived experiences of voters and shared their own stories and values to relate to them better. This direct contact with individuals strongly impacted persuasion abilities.
Creation
Central to FTM’s people-centred storytelling were the photos taken of real same-sex couples with their families. Pictured below are Stephen and Eddie from Arkansas (top), and Mark and Tim from North Carolina (bottom). The FTM logo with its recognisable symbols is also pictured.
Key takeaways for the animal freedom movement
Focus on connecting to shared aspirations, values, and identities to make our message personal, rather than focusing on abstract concepts like rights.
Time must be invested in understanding the anxieties, beliefs, and emotions of the public, and then addressing them upfront in communications by connecting to shared values.
Rather than talking about animals’ ‘rights’ we should potentially pivot to talking about animals’ ‘freedom’.
The lived experiences and journey stories of fellow animals and human allies can make issues more relatable and emotive, and give people a way to work through their own inner conflict.
Narrative studies by Faunalytics also found that elevating the stories and voices of meat-eating messengers mitigates defensiveness, as they are seen as relatable and trustworthy.
Shout out to Freedom to Marry! Thanks for fighting for love and equality and keep up the amazing work! Learn more about their work here.
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