These five distilled steps are a tool to increase interest in a topic that is considered complex and daunting.

These five distilled steps are a tool to increase interest in a topic that is considered complex and daunting.

11

Audience

22

Proximity

33

Persuasion

44

Framing

55

Communication

Research revealed that people find it easier to support nuclear issues that they have encountered in their personal lives. This means we must know our audience intimately — including their habits and  interests — in order to tailor effective messages.

INDIVIDUAL

What is their background and beliefs? What ideologies do they hold? Where do they live?

ROUTINES

How do they spend their time, both personally and professionally? Why?

MOTIVATIONS

Who or what motivates them? When do they feel frustrated and disinterested?

INFLUENCES

What gets their attention? What are they reading, listening to and following?

CONCERNS

What issues do they stand for and engage with? How did they come to be involved?

Messages that are personally meaningful help believers start a conversation, and attract not-yet-believers through topics that matter most to them. When we attach nuclear threat to issues our audience already cares about, it becomes relatable.

As with all other tools of oppression, nuclear weapons divide us and makes us afraid of one another.

Nuclear weapons pose an unacceptable risk to our life-sustaining environment. 

 The production, presence and use of nuclear weapons puts our health and our lives at risk.

Nuclear threat is an economic issue. Our world is over-armed and yet basic needs are unmet.

Proximity Research

Mushroom clouds — a universal symbol of nuclear danger — grab attention and score high on awareness. However, they fail to engage people in further action. Persuading people to act is achieved by elevating a fact from something that happens to other people (a threat) to something that happens to their community (a cause). 

THREAT

The starting place is the belief that a statement is true. Belief doesn’t require exhaustive details and history — just one memorable argument or experience.

CONCERN

A threat is elevated by a sense of urgency to a concern — something your audience thinks about over and over because it matters to them and their community.

CAUSE

A concern becomes a cause when it is shared with others — in conversation or through social media — once your audience has the confidence to own the message.

PROGRESS

Progress is seen when your audience takes action for the cause. It’s sustained through progress toward a goal, appreciation from a community, and personal validation.

Nuclear threat looms in the background, ever present. This danger is abstract, inevitable and something others must solve. Reframe messages to avoid paralyzing fear and permit communities to own their anger, indignation, and action toward nuclear danger.

Focus on community

Focusing on community is more effective than making this a personal issue or global issue: it taps into our collective desire to protect those we care about.

Connect through cultural relevance

Share messages through culturally relevant voices, enticing quips and artistic images that fit into social media feeds. Develop messaging around broadly shared ideals: sole authority, democracy, no use/no first use, gender and inclusion.

Keep it ownable

Keep the message simple, relatable and repeatable. Your audience cannot own a message they struggle to retell or fit into a conversation.

Invoke hope

Write in a pre-detonation frame. Our assured demise fuels resignation rather than activating innovation, protest, or change.

Confronted with so many issues each day, people focus on those that require immediate attention. To compete, you must create urgency. This is done through stories that cultivate curiosity or incite anger.

The stories must match a generation that is imaginative, generative, industrious and determined to make the world a better place. They are coming of age with tools that amplify their voices and provide unprecedented power to invent and to create positive change. Messages must provide connection to, and agency over, ensuring a future free from nuclear risk.

The following five ‘Tenets of Communication’ guide the development of language and messages that demand attention and deliver a clear path to action. The first three tenets help us to move our audience from intention to engagement, while the second two tenets guide the actions we attach to that engagement. 

Provoke emotion. Avoid fact-storming.

DO elicit a reaction: Use a headline that intrigues, appeals to our innate desire to protect others or requires the reader to question their assumptions.

AVOID language that is balanced and measured: A litany of statistics or fair, agreeable and factual statements require no action, fail to inspire agency and mitigate the need for further consideration.

Invoke compassion. Beware of overwhelming.

DO harness emotional intelligence: Encourage people to take action against that which is unjust, unnecessary and unacceptable.

DO reference tangible human consequences: Connect nuclear danger to impacts on the food we eat, air we breathe, water we drink or the health of our community.

Embrace the absurdity. Don’t be insensitive.

DO illuminate a dark topic by lightening up: While nuclear threat is serious business, there are ways to convey its importance while offering some light-handed or even dark comedy to get a point across.

AVOID going too extreme: Beware of humor that is cold, callous or makes light of people who have suffered from nuclear incidents.

Be inspiring. Don’t be negative.

DO make room for new approaches: Couple incremental corrective measures with invitations for creation, innovation and non-traditional problem-solving methods. 

Don’t reinforce the status quo. Negativity, fear-mongering and a lack of receptivity to new methods, ideas and actors reinforces inertia.

Be collaborative. Refrain from insularity.

Embrace contribution from experts in disparate disciplines. 

DO invite, network, and allow for participation: Along with physicists and policy makers, be open to technologists, media experts, investors, inventors — those that bring a different approaches that allow for new solutions.

DON’T discount those without nuclear knowledge: Insisting on nuclear expertise limits contributions from collaborators and innovators who bring tested approaches, subject matter expertise and new ways of tackling age-old problems.

Confronted with so many issues each day, people focus on those that require immediate attention. To create urgency, use stories that cultivate curiosity or incite anger. Then deliver a clear path to action.

Provoke emotion. Avoid fact-storming.

DO elicit a reaction: Use a headline that intrigues, appeals to our innate desire to protect others or requires the reader to question their assumptions.

AVOID language that is balanced and measured: A litany of statistics or fair, agreeable and factual statements require no action and mitigates the need for further consideration.

Invoke compassion. Beware of overwhelming.

DO harness emotional intelligence: Encourage people to take action against that which is unjust, unnecessary and unacceptable.

DO reference tangible human consequences: Connect nuclear danger to impacts on the food we eat, air we breath, water we drink or the health of our community.

Embrace the absurdity. Don’t be insensitive.

DO illuminate a dark topic by lightening up: While nuclear threat is serious business, there are ways to convey its importance while offering some light-handed or even dark comedy to get a point across.

AVOID going too extreme: Beware of humor that is cold, callous or makes light of people who have suffered from nuclear incidents.

Be inspiring. Don’t be negative.

DO make room for new approaches: Couple incremental corrective measures with invitations for creation, innovation and non-traditional problem-solving methods. 

Don’t reinforce the status quo. Negativity, fear-mongering and a lack of receptivity to new methods, ideas and actors reinforces inertia.

Be collaborative. Refrain from insularity.

DO invite, network, and allow for participation: Along with physicists and policy makers, be open to technologists, media experts, investors, inventors — those that bring a different approaches that allow for new solutions.

DON’T discount those without nuclear knowledge: Insisting on nuclear expertise limits contributions from collaborators who bring tested approaches, subject matter expertise and new ways of tackling age-old problems.

Messaging Toolkit

Write your new narrative

Write Your New Narrative

For an emotionally charged issue like nuclear danger, engagement depends on giving people an opportunity to move away from fear and toward new solutions. This simple roadmap has been created to guide communications that reignite conversations and empower progress.

For an emotionally charged issue like nuclear danger, engagement depends on giving people an opportunity to move away from fear and toward new solutions. This simple roadmap has been created to guide communications that reignite conversations and empower progress.

Action Roadmap
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Action Roadmap
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