Introduction
There’s no escaping the need to consider a lot of factors together and come to a judgement. Campaigning can have method with ‘scientific’ inputs but it’s also an art, a craft.
The ‘planning star’ gathers inputs from five main points:
- Ambition
What we want to achieve in terms of change (both to the problem directly, and in terms of changing potentials, or the context, to increase the possibility of longer term change). Analysing the significance of possible objectives. - Actors, obstacles and players
The who’s who and what’s what of the issue. Current situation analysis. - Social weather conditions
How things change in our society today, and how we think they’re going to change in future, the means of change and agency. Reading the tea leaves. - Communication desires
What we want to communicate as an individual, or more likely, as an organisation. This may exist quite independently of the need to achieve the immediate objective. - Campaign assets
The tools for the job. Social, material, financial, intellectual and other resources, including intelligence capacities and special campaigning tools.
The decision to start a campaign can be driven from any one of these points. A change in who’s involved in an issue, or a new resource becoming available, is just as legitimate in determining that now’s the moment to campaign, as is a study of objectives or the issue.
Each organisation will have its own priorities and ways of making plans, and there’s no way to covert these inputs into a numerical process so the right answer can be arrived at by calculation: it’s always a question of judgement. The concept needs to include a draft campaign proposition, any internal requirements or objectives, and an idea of key assumptions about why it ought to work.
Most organisations need something like this in order to give a go-ahead to a campaign idea.
Campaign Planning Star Diagram
The Star ‘points’ are the point of the thing. It’s a way to think about a concept – the rough idea for a campaign – without getting stuck in any one way of thinking. The five points can all be starting points but they always need to be factored into a concept before trying to turn it into a plan. The change objective – this is the thing you want to change, preferably specified as a detectable ‘state change’ (not an ultimate aim or goal). This is also where rationalistic and policy oriented groups often get ‘stuck’ as they have so many objectives they are used to articulating in advocacy, and would like to achieve. But in the end you must have just one. This is the obvious place most groups start but it’s not necessarily the best.
Diagram in Detail
Ambition: what we want to achieve (objective)
- Issue mapping
- Analysis of the dynamic (process) to be affected
- Significance analysis of possible objectives in terms of
- direct change to the problem
- potential for further change
- change to another star point eg who the actors or interests are, or making the social
Actors/Allies, Obstacles and Interests
The Allies, Interests and Obstacles – the ‘intelligence’ about the ‘situation’. Who the players are who really count, who controls important elements, who is already onside or against you or aware but indifferent, and who might come onside. This is the home territory of the ‘Public Affairs’ industry, and understanding this often sorts the well-informed campaigner from the enthusiastic but naive.
- Issue mapping
- Interests analysis – who is winning and losing, who would win or lose if a change occurred
- Potential allies
- Obstacles
- Existing perceptions of significant audiences (qualitative research)
- Polling data
- Players in the policy community
Social Weather Conditions – How is change happening
The Social Weather Conditions – or how change is happening these days. Trends, fashions, ways of communicating, ways of organising, shifting values, attitudes and beliefs and so on. This is the ‘softest’ and so the hardest area to investigate. It’s the zone of psychology and sociology and systems, market research and political innovation.
- Detecting social wind waves, currents, storm waves, climate.
- Mapping changes in the social values.
- Following trends in agency – who has power and influence and how is this changing?
Communication desires
The Communications Objectives – as distinct from the change objective (which you may also want to communicate of course). These are things that the organisation wants people to conclude as a result of the campaign, and are equally valid objectives, though ones that in many organisations only the management rather than the campaigners think about. Internally it is important that everyone involves knows about and accepts these – what the campaign ‘says about’ the organisation.
What do we want the campaign to communicate about us?
- our programme
- direction
- mission
- vision (see ‘glass onion’)
- how change happens eg about –
- Responsibility
- Actors
- What people can do – the problem
Campaign Assets
Assets and Resources – the things you need to devise, organise and run the campaign, from logistics and equipment to people, knowledge, money and networks. Many campaigns fail simply because they are under-resourced: too ambitious.
- (resources)
- people
- networks
- knowledge
- intelligence
- money
- social capital
- media capital
- political capital
- opportunities
- commercial
- legal
- reputation
Download Resource
Explore Further
- Find more about the Campaign Star and examples of each of the ‘points’ in Chris Rose’s book – How To Win Campaigns: Communications for Change.
- Getting More Resources For Your Campaign, Campaign Strategy Newsletter 75 November 2011
- Campaign Strategy: Start Here
- The Tactic and Action Stars
- 7 tools for defining your campaign problem, Mobilisation Lab
- The Campaign Canvas, Mobilisation Lab