Communicate with purpose – using Story Canvas for effective communication campaigns

Introduce to the participants the idea of using communication and developing messages with cer- tain purposes - at personal or professional level. Ask participants to think about messages from ads or social marketing campaigns or other public campaigns and to reflect about the final purposes of those messages.

Starting from their ideas, talk to them about social marketing and about the three main purposes social marketing/advocacy campaigns are designed for: to educate people, to motivate people or to make people act in a certain direction.

Introduce the participants the new planning tool specially designed by Digital Storytellers for online

storytelling campaigns, with a social purpose (educate, motivate or move to action).

Select one successful advocacy online campaign and present the canvas by providing examples from this specific campaign; involve the participants in deciphering and analyzing the campaign.

For instance, you could use one of SAIH advocacy videos, from this Youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/saihnett/videos

Such as:
Who wants to be a volunteer?

Let’s save Africa, gone wrong

Answer to questions of the participants referring to certain aspects from the canvas, insist on the importance of keeping the right order on following the canvas sections, when developing a plan for a storytelling campaign, talk about any advantages the participants see in using the canvas or about any fears/obstacles they could see in implementing it.

Split the group in five teams and give each team one of the following topics to work on and plan an online storytelling campaign using the Story Canvas, each of the campaigns having a certain pur- pose from those you presented before:

1. Toeducate:avideostoryprojecttoraiseawarenessabouttheenvironmentaldisastercaused by an oil company in Amazon villages in Brazil.
2. Tomovetoaction:avideostorytorecruitvolunteersforcleaning/takingcareofdogsatadog shelter in your city.
3. Tomovetoaction:avideostoryforfundraisingtoopenayouthcenterforyoungpeopleatrisk;
4. Tomotivate:avideostoryprojectforpromotingthedialoguebetweenyoungnativepeopleand young migrants & refugees from one community, making young people care about this topic;
5. Toeducate:avideostoryprojecttoeducateyoungpeopleontheteenagepregnancyphenom- enon and negative consequences.

Explain the participants that the video script is the final results of their planning; the story for the video - the core of the Story Canvas - is the last section they need to fill in, after they manage to fill out all the other sections of the canvas. Thus, ask the participants to follow the canvas and design the video idea/the story only at the end.

They can take notes on a flipchart paper, in teams, but then they have to fill out the online version of the story canvas available here: https://www.digitalstorytellers.com.au/the-story-canvas/

Filling out the online version helps them in the process, as it explains each step, provide examples and ideas.

Once the Story canvas is filled in online they can download it as .pdf and share it by email or in the social media group you open for them.

Each team presents to the whole group the campaign they planned and the story they designed, once they answered all the canvas’ sections.

Give feedback to the teams on the campaigns they planned and on how they used the canvas. Re- flect with the participants on the biggest challenges they had while planning their campaigns, and how the process affected the story they chose to use in the campaign.

Also, reflect with the participants on the purpose of their campaign - how this purpose influences specific objectives, audiences, activities, steps, and, finally, the story.