Persuading your targets - the practicalities

So now you know the persuasion principles, what about the practicalities? There’s no need to try and be too ‘clever’ in working out the practicalities of your campaign. All you need to do is find a way to communicate in a clear way to each of your targets.

Sometimes, this might be very simple. The change you want may not have been made only because nobody has ever suggested before. So all you may need to do is meet with your principal target and ask them to make the change. You may not need much research or a brief. If this is likely and the change seems uncontroversial, then try this before you spend your time and energy on producing campaign materials. Sometimes, just asking is enough!

If your change is more controversial, or is likely to cost money, then your campaign is likely to need to be more wideranging and you will need to use more communication routes.

Ways to communicate with your targets are:

  • Meeting them individually
  • Sending them information in a brief
  • Going to meetings of influential bodies
  • Indirectly, through the media – see Matchmaking: you and the media

Meeting targets individually

This is probably the best way to communicate with your targets as not only can you make your case for change directly to them, but you can gauge their reaction to it. This is real communication – a two-way process. However, it is time-consuming, so it should be reserved for your principal target and the most important of your other targets.

Arranging meetings with Directors of Trusts, Directors in local Government or your local MP need not be daunting. If possible, bring someone who has personal
experience of the problem that you are campaigning to change.

It’s a good idea to write a formal letter to suggest a meeting, but include a contact telephone number and email address if possible so that if they want to meet you, this can be arranged as quickly as possible. Explain in the letter what you want to discuss, but make sure that the letter is no longer than 1 side of A4.

If you do not receive a reply within a fortnight or so, contact the person by phone and say you wanted to check that they’ve received the letter. Try to create a
good relationship with any administrative staff working for your target. They will hold some influence over whether your letter is seen promptly or not. In campaigning, you need as many friends as you can get.

Sometimes, you may need to supply an agenda to the person’s secretary prior to a meeting. This should list who is attending the meeting as well as the various points that you want to discuss. Try to separate your points as much as possible as this will make it easier to structure the conversation when you are in the meeting.

Prior to meetings, have a run-through with anyone else who is attending. Decide who is going to cover which points. Sometimes it can be effective for one person to play ‘good cop’ and one ‘bad cop’, but this is not a tactic for amateurs. If in doubt, be straight with your target.

Remember the persuasion principles in the meeting – be assertive, but not aggressive. Try and concentrate on points of agreement to create a positive
atmosphere.

Make sure you have some specific things you are asking your target to do. You might want to think of a range of options before the meeting – you can then  decide at the time which is most appropriate, depending on your target’s reaction to your campaign. Always ask your target to do something, even if it’s a very small contribution to your campaign.

Take notes during the meeting – it’s often hard to remember afterwards otherwise exactly what was said. You might want to take someone along to do this for you so that you can concentrate fully on what’s going on.

If your target asks you questions that you don’t know the answers to during the meeting, do not under any circumstances make up the answers. Your most important asset is your credibility – if you lose this, you’re doomed. Agree to find out the answer if this seems feasible and contact the target in the future.

After the meeting, write to your target to confirm what was discussed and any action that has been agreed and either provide information requested or explain
when you’ll be in a position to do so.

The meeting may throw up points that you haven’t thought about and give you an insight into how your target thinks, what the obstacles to your change are. You may need to rethink your campaign proposition in light of this, but don’t worry – this is a good evolution.

Why is it so important to ask people to do something?
 A new theory in campaigning surrounds the idea of ‘cognitive dissonance’: a big word, but a very simple idea.

Often your targets may not have very positive ideas about you and your campaign. So if they find themselves doing something for you, how can they explain their actions to themselves? They might decide that they’re inconsistent – but that won’t reflect well on them, so they’re unlikely to come to that conclusion. The only other explanation they could decide on is that they have some positive feelings about you.

So by getting people to agree to do a small thing for you, you’re creating a sort of chink in their armour. It really does work!

Creating a brief

You may not be able to meet all your targets, so it’s helpful to create a brief to send to people you don’t have time to meet. You can also use this to send to people who may support your campaign, though you will need to adapt it for this purpose as you’ll probably want to ask them to do something different from what you’ll ask your target to do.

Use your campaign proposition to write this (see Ready, set, plan! page, Working out your proposition section) as it also needs to be as simple as possible.

What’s the problem?
So start out by explaining what the problem is. If you’ve got a clear and shocking fact on this, use that. For example, in Rethink’s physical health campaign, we have consistently started our materials with the fact that people with severe mental illness die 10 years younger than the rest of the population, because of physical
health problems. Not suicide or self-harm or mental illness, but physical health problems. And these can be resolved.

What’s your solution?
 Explain exactly what changes you want to make. This could encompass a few different actions that need to be done to provide a complete solution to the problem.

Remember that you don’t need to put everything that you know about your campaign in your brief. It should be, well, brief, at the most 2 sides of A4. If people want to know more, they can contact you – so make sure your contact details are included.

What do you want people to do?
Give people a clear action to take. This will obviously depend on who your brief is aimed at. If it is people without a clear line of influence on your principal target, you could ask them to write to your principal target – give them their contact details to make it as easy as possible for people to participate. If the change you want is complicated and involves lots of different targets, you can give people the option of contacting a few different people.

The SOS campaign gave people the contact details for their local NHS Trust, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Health, the Prime Minister, local
MPs and the local council. If there’s one person who clearly has the power to make your change, then make sure you ask people to write to this person FIRST. They can then contact others if they want to get more involved.

You could also ask people to send you an expression of their support (e.g. through a petition or pledge). You can then tell your target about the numbers of people who have supported you and use these figures in any media work you may do.

If it is people with a clear line of influence on your principal target, do not under any circumstances give them a standardised letter to use or even tell them exactly what points to make – they are likely to find this patronising. Your brief has explained the problem and your preferred solution – this is enough. Ask them to discuss your change with your principal target. Ask them to contact you to discuss your campaign further and give your contact details.

Example brief (26 kb) [pdf]

Balancing quality and quantity
Standardised letters or postcards or signatures on a petition will have an impact on decision-makers - if there are huge amounts of them.  People don't read them as they know what they'll say - all they see is how big the pile is.  If you're confident that a large number of people will support you, but that each of them will not be very committed, then this is a good option.

Personal letters take more time and effort for your supporters to write. But one personally written letter is worth at least 100 postcards - it is worth the effort.  If you have few supporters, use this option.

Going to meetings of organisations

It’s likely that some of your most important targets are going to be local organisations, like patient forums or Local Implementation teams. A good way to get support for your campaign is to attend these as the attendees will already be interested in mental health issues, so they are easy targets for you to persuade of the need for change.

Find out when such meetings are to be held. Contact the person who convenes them and ask if you can come along to a future meeting and talk about your
campaign. Send them your brief to explain your issue.

Prepare a short presentation (10-15 minutes long, including a speaker who has personal experience of the problem if possible) and be prepared to answer questions. Run through your presentation with your co-speaker beforehand and decide who will answer questions.

As the people at these meetings have a lot of experience themselves of the local health system, they are likely to be able to offer advice to you on your campaign – so go along being prepared to learn something from them as well as persuade them of the need for change.

Take along copies of your brief, with an action included, to give to the people in attendance. Tell people that they can contact you for more information.

How does the media fit in?
Of course, it’s not just other decision-makers and other people in health organisations that influence your targets. All kinds of other things influence their
behaviour. In a mass-media age, the media is an important influencer.

Think about what media your target might read. Local politicians and local health trust staff are likely to scrutinise local media very closely. Of course, it’s most
important for politicians, who rely on popularity to keep their jobs and are likely to scrutinise local media very closely. But it’s also true of people who are employed
to serve the needs of their community, like people who run health trusts.

So often you’ll have a principal target who is influenced directly by what the media say about what he or she is doing. But even if your principal target is not so directly concerned with local media, people who have influence over him or her will read the local paper, and listen to and watch local news programmes.

Getting coverage for your campaign in the local media can therefore be very helpful. There are particular rules to the media game. Read the Matchmaking: you and the media for tips and tricks of the trade.

Now you’ve worked out your tactics, add them to the Campaign Planning matrix.