a statue of three women having a conversation — Dan Mason (Flickr – CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Persuasive Conversation Campaigns Guide

Persuasive conversation campaigns can help break through to segments of the population who have a different perspective or have voted against you.

Contents

Introduction

Persuasive conversations, also known as values-based conversations, are exchanges between advocates and their peers or members of the public that surface personal attitudes and perceptions around social issues to shift existing positions or at least open people to a new perspective. These conversations are typically held around polarizing issues — think marriage equality in the United States circa 2008-2015 or Australia more recently — where wider shifts in attitude could result in beneficial policy changes.

When organized at scale, persuasive conversation campaigns, also known as “deep canvassing,” deliberately catalyze as many conversations as possible to achieve impact at a level that could influence voting. Such campaigns call on large numbers of supporters to carry out conversations either with their own peer contacts or pre-selected sections of the general public. This is carried out either through door-to-door canvassing or through organized phone or digital communications drives.

Blueprints for Change how-to guides are put together by campaign innovators in order to help progressive organizers and groups up their game more quickly. The “blueprints” capture, communicate and inform innovative campaigning strategies and tactics. Blueprints for Change provide their guides in Google Doc format to be able to update their blueprints with the latest information.